If there’s one thing the SNP truly excels at, it’s maintaining double standards. The extraordinary case of the Scottish government and the missing legal advice makes clear just how hypocritical the SNP is when it comes to conduct in public life. Scottish nationalists are swift to condemn opponents at the slightest whiff of impropriety but, as this matter demonstrates, when it comes to their own morality, they’re more easy-going.
Back in 2021, then first minister Nicola Sturgeon was cleared of breaching the Scottish parliament’s ministerial code over her involvement in the case of complaints made by female civil servants against her predecessor, the late Alex Salmond. Inevitably, opposition parties demanded details of the investigation into Sturgeon, undertaken by senior Irish lawyer James Hamilton. The Scottish government resisted until the information commissioner ordered them to publish relevant documents.
Ministers then – unsuccessfully – appealed this decision. Of course, what came next was a demand to SNP ministers that they publish any legal advice relating to the decision to appeal. Eventually, last Saturday, the government dumped on its website more than 100 pages relating to the case.
Now we know why the Scottish Government was so skittish. Not only do we now know ministers were advised that appealing the earlier ruling was unlikely to succeed (and therefore was a waste of time and money), we also know that – throughout Hamilton’s initial investigation in Sturgeon’s role in the Salmond affair – a civil servant appointed to assist him was reporting directly to John Swinney, who was then deputy first minister.
Swinney, now first minister, made a statement to the Scottish parliament on Tuesday afternoon of the ‘nothing to see here’ variety. Everything had been above board and there was no need for concern. Unsurprisingly, opposition MSPs refused to back off the case.
Scottish Conservative leader Russell Findlay cut straight to the chase. ‘Here are the facts,’ he said:
A Scottish Government official was transferred to work for James Hamilton while he investigated allegations that Nicola Sturgeon breached the ministerial code. But we only now discover that during this time the official was passing information directly to Mr Swinney. She even drafted letters from Mr Swinney to Mr Hamilton – who she was working for. The government then spent huge sums of money trying to keep all of this secret from the public.
Findlay, a former tabloid hack with a nose for a story, has now called for a judge-led inquiry into Swinney’s conduct. Scottish Labour’s deputy leader Jackie Baillie – every bit the bruiser Findlay is – said Swinney was ‘a human shield for Nicola Sturgeon’ and, accusing him of withholding information while operating a culture of ‘secrecy and spin’, said the suggestion the civil servant seconded to the Hamilton inquiry provided information, directly or indirectly, to the Scottish government raised huge questions about the independence of the process.
Echoing Russell Findlay, Baillie added:
Given the need for integrity and good governance the First Minister must agree that Parliament should instruct a judge-led inquiry.
SNP MSPs want this to be seen as a story about process, but it is not. Rather, it is precisely the sort of cover up and obfuscation that would have nationalist politicians enraged if it involved another party. One renegade nationalist politician privately concedes as much. ‘If it was the Tories or Labour behaving like this at Westminster,’ said that veteran MSP, ‘we’d have unleashed the flying monkeys on them.’
Of course, the chances of Swinney agreeing to a judge-led inquiry are wisp-thin, but that doesn’t matter to the SNP’s opponents. They’ve already got the win they wanted by exposing yet more secrecy and cover-up by a party that demands the utmost integrity from opponents while refusing to hold itself to the same standards. No matter how emphatically the First Minister denies any wrongdoing, the facts are out there now for all to see.
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