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Kate Forbes’ WhatsApp jibe at Nicola Sturgeon

Credit: Paul Campbell/PA Wire/PA Images

Not all is rotten in the state of Scotland. For at least former member of Nicola Sturgeon’s ancien régime appears to have actually believed her talk of ‘openness’ and ‘transparency’. Step forward Kate Forbes, the former Finance Secretary now banished to the backbenches. Amid the ongoing palaver about the Scottish government’s missing WhatsApps, the one-time SNP leadership candidate has stepped forward to announce that she has retained all of her Covid WhatsApp messages – unlike, er, certain colleagues. Even more than that: she has already handed them to the Covid Inquiry. Two gold stars for Forbes! Hapless Humza could only dream of such competence…

This being politics, Mr S could not help but wryly note the timing of Forbes’s declaration. Her statement today that she has ‘not deleted anything’ which includes, she says, ‘retaining all my WhatsApp messages’ raises more questions for the SNP government from which she has been excluded. Yousaf told LBC on Monday that the Scottish government ‘had a social media messaging policy’ which ‘actually required us to routinely delete WhatsApp messages’. So did Kate Forbes breach then cabinet policy? Or was the policy just a little different to how Humza has been spinning it?

Forbes’s admission also puts pressure on former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, whose tacit support of Yousaf was so crucial to his succession. Sturgeon protests that she has ‘nothing to hide’. Yet she was rather elusive when quizzed by journalists last night. In fact, Sturgeon managed to avoid answering the question of whether she had deleted her own WhatsApp messages from during the pandemic after being questioned on it a whole, er, four times.

All this on the day that Scottish Labour recorded their first lead in a Westminster poll since 2014. Wonder what they’re all saying on WhatsApp about that…?

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Steerpike

Steerpike is The Spectator's gossip columnist, serving up the latest tittle tattle from Westminster and beyond. Email tips to steerpike@spectator.co.uk or message @MrSteerpike

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