Covid Inquiry: Nicola Sturgeon's deleted WhatsApp messages are scandal on par with Downing Street parties – Brian Wilson

Former First Minister’s missing messages would have revealed that everything was about headlines, political manoeuvring, and seeking difference with Whitehall, Brian Wilson suspects

Everything that some of us said and long suspected about Nicola Sturgeon is, step by step, proving to have been true. Do not believe a word that the former First Minister said, or a promise that she made, or a sentiment she expressed. Everything was a calculation.

To understand what went on during the Covid pandemic within the workings of government – whether UK or Scottish – it is essential to have access to the communications which took place between ministers, advisers and officials. These were the nuts and bolts of the daily activity by those in charge at this moment of unprecedented crisis.

This fact has long been acknowledged by the UK Covid Inquiry to the considerable embarrassment and difficulty of ministers, most notably former UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock. His WhatsApp communications revealed more about the machinery of government at crucial points than anything in the official record. Ms Sturgeon knew that as well as anyone and the hazard of deleting WhatsApp messages was made clear to her at the time.

Nicola Sturgeon presided over a despicable culture that sought to deny the public's right to know (Picture: Jane Barlow/pool/Getty Images)

Sturgeon must answer to Holyrood

Yet only now is the full extent of her deceit allowed to emerge. There are no WhatsApp messages at all, the Covid Inquiry has been told, because she got rid of them all at some point. They were ritually deleted and there is therefore nothing, repeat nothing, remaining of the information they contained for the inquiry to take into account.

How under any circumstances can this be explained or justified? Why are we only being told this now? However, Ms Sturgeon is not only accountable to the Covid Inquiry. She remains accountable to the Scottish Parliament and, if necessary, to the courts. She must be prevailed upon to answer to them all.

The exchanges between a senior civil servant, Ken Thomson, and national clinical director Jason Leitch, the ubiquitous presence during the pandemic, are particularly revealing. WhatsApp deletion was a “pre-bed ritual”, Leitch told Thomson, after being warned that the messages could be revealed by freedom of information requests. So they knew exactly what they were doing and why.

Hidden revelations

What a despicable culture – created and presided over by Ms Sturgeon – in which the priority was to cover the trails of decision-making and the motivations behind them. This whole jigsaw of obstruction must be put together and as a complete a picture as possible assembled in the interests of the public and particularly the bereaved.

But does anyone doubt that the same culture – conceal, deceive and prevaricate, with contempt for the public’s right to know – persists today? Everything was about headlines, political manoeuvring, and seeking difference with Whitehall, rather than cooperation. That, I am sure, is what the WhatsApp messages would have revealed.

While lives were at stake, the focus was on positioning rather than prevention. To its eternal shame, Downing Street partied; it is little better that Bute House plotted to conceal. Ms Sturgeon may now be history but the raw reaction of many to what has now emerged will shape the way in which her legacy is judged.