Nicola Sturgeon played politics with Covid, and now all Scotland knows it – Brian Wilson

In its hour of need, Scotland was taken for a political ride by the then First Minister

In its view of Nicola Sturgeon, I suppose Scottish public opinion during the pandemic divided into two camps, determined largely by political disposition. The larger faction wanted to take what it saw and heard at face value. It did what it was told and trusted the motivation behind decision-making. Where political difference existed, it was suspended in pursuit of a greater good.

A substantial minority of the worldly wise, on the other hand, never doubted that Ms Sturgeon’s behaviour was tempered by political calculation. It could see that differentiation with the rest of the UK was being contrived for longer term purposes. It watched the cult of personality being constructed and occasionally protested that her daily addresses to the nation were more about politics than public health.

There is no doubt which of these two interpretations prevailed. Even those who could see what she was up to respected the fact that many Scots were hanging on her every word. There was caution about offending that faith and being accused, however perversely, of “politicising” the pandemic.

Those who actually believed in Nicola Sturgeon's public persona were failed the most (Picture: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

We comforted ourselves with the hope it would “all come out in a public inquiry”. Unsurprisingly, the same thought occurred to Ms Sturgeon and her acolytes. As confirmed this week, they took the precaution of destroying evidence in industrial quantities. There was to be no trail.

Nike conference outbreak

I have an aversion to wisdom after the event and prefer to look back to what I wrote at the time; for example on May 6, 2020, after the revelation that the first substantial outbreak of Covid in the UK had occurred at the Nike conference in Edinburgh in late February. “If there is some legitimate reason for having withheld that information, then let’s hear it. In the fullness of time, the judicial inquiry into how Scotland has handled the pandemic will pursue the same question and many others. Jibes (from Ms Sturgeon) about ‘politicised nonsense’ will not suffice."

I continued: “In Scotland at present, we have an appalling care homes tragedy, an abysmal level of testing… and now this revelation that the virus was among us before the public was allowed to know. These are circumstances that demand questions and answers which transcend politics but for which politicians must expect to be accountable – even in Scotland.”

That was the contemporaneous reality. Yet a parallel effort was underway with civil servants, advisers and politicians conspiring in inglorious unity to paint an entirely different picture of Scottish exceptionalism and then exploit it politically. In its hour of need, Scotland was being taken for a political ride. I recall my words from that time only to reaffirm that critical decisions, involving thousands of lives, were taken in the early stages of the pandemic in full knowledge that those responsible would eventually be called to account.

Yet the destruction of evidence about how and why decisions were made was rampant. This was not due to ignorance or misunderstanding but as a cynical policy which betrayed trust and the right of the bereaved ever to know what went on. That is the crux of the matter.

My view of Nicola Sturgeon as a nasty piece of work goes back a long way. However, even I was startled by her response on May 6, 2020, when the Labour MSP Neil Findlay said he did not often “plead” but was doing so now. “Why on Earth are we continuing to discharge patients from hospitals to care homes without establishing whether they are positive for Covid-19?”, he asked. “Please stop that practice now to save the lives of residents and the great people who look after them.”

That practice had been highlighted and halted in England the previous month. However, Ms Sturgeon chose to take the plea personally: “Please do not ask such questions in a way that suggests we are not all trying to do everything we possibly can in order to do the right thing.” I wrote at that time: “Why, in early May, instead of snash towards an MSP who ‘pleaded’ with her, could Ms Sturgeon not have acknowledged the same major error and guaranteed the practice would cease? That is a question that must in time be answered.”

A ‘convincing’ fraud

But will it, even now, be answered? The care home scandal is one of the most important areas for the public inquiry to address and is certainly one the bereaved want answers about. Yet it evolved within the period when communications were systematically deleted, in full knowledge of their future relevance.

Of course, there were other things happening in Scotland at that time. The trial of Alex Salmond ended in March 2020 and the political fallout was competing with Covid for the headlines. It is inconceivable that Ms Sturgeon was not effing and blinding on WhatsApp about that too, particularly in communicating with her amanuensis, Liz Lloyd.

So there was more than one reason for a digital clear-out before any inquiry into anything started taking an interest in the First Minister’s inner thoughts and manoeuvres. The people most deeply failed by Ms Sturgeon and the squalid cast of sycophants around her are those who actually believed in her public persona. Some will be bought off by headlines about her views on Boris Johnson. Most are well past that stage of tolerance or blind faith.

As the former SNP MSP Joan McAlpine succinctly put it: “What a fraud this woman was – but a convincing one.” If she had played the pandemic straight and honest, she could have emerged with a legacy to be proud of and Scotland might have fared much better. Sadly, the personality and modus operandi of Nicola Sturgeon ensured from the outset that this was never even a possibility. Most of Scotland didn’t know that at the time. It does now.