Scotland

The inquiry into the Alex Salmond affair has concluded that Nicola Sturgeon misled parliament and potentially breached the ministerial code. If you could swear you heard the exact opposite yesterday, that’s because you did. On Monday, the Scottish Government’s independent adviser James Hamilton released the findings of his inquiry into whether Sturgeon breached the code. He considered four potential violations: Sturgeon’s unminuted, belatedly reported meetings and phone calls with Salmond; whether she intervened in the sexual harassment investigation against him; her omission of a meeting with a Salmond representative from a statement to parliament; and her government continuing to oppose Salmond in court in spite of the advice of counsel.

Let me first deal with the general confusion. Most Scots think that the Hamilton Report, published today, deals with the question of whether the First Minister misled the Scottish Parliament when she told MSPs that the first time she knew of the allegations of sexual misconduct against Alex Salmond (of which he was acquitted of in a criminal court) was on 2 April 2018.  On any view this is hardly a ringing endorsement of Nicola Sturgeon’s reliability It does no such thing. Instead, the report deals with a possible breach of the Ministerial Code by Nicola Sturgeon on the question of whether she ‘failed to feed back’ the terms of

A newly independent Scottish state would have to implement eye watering spending cuts or tax increases to stay afloat, according to new analysis. If the new state were to balance the books using tax increases alone then Scotland’s three income tax bands, which are broadly equivalent to the basic rate in the rest of the UK, would have to go up by 26 pence in the pound, taking Scotland’s basic rate to 46 pence. Alternatively, the gap could be filled by raising VAT from 20 per cent to 49 per cent. Such massive tax rises would represent at least 10 per cent of Scotland’s GDP. The analysis comes from a

What now for Nicola Sturgeon? Labour MP Jess Phillips isn’t sitting on the fence. ‘At best Nicola Sturgeon was unprofessional with those women’s lives; at worst, she misled parliament,’ Phillips told Question Time viewers last night. Keir Starmer has also said Scotland’s First Minister must go if she did indeed break the ministerial code in the course of the Alex Salmond saga. But why are so many others in the Labour ranks unwilling to speak out against the SNP? Sturgeon’s departure is, after all, in the Labour party’s best interests. In two months’ time, Labour will be looking to take seats from the SNP at the Scottish election. And, politics

At First Minister’s Questions this afternoon Nicola Sturgeon accused Ruth Davidson of peddling baseless conspiracy theories, dredged up from ‘the bottom of the barrel’. For all that Davidson, like the rest of Sturgeon’s political opponents, might profess that their interest in the Salmond-Sturgeon affair rests on nothing more than ‘just the facts, ma’am’, the First Minister was clear their concern is primarily opportunistic and political. If they wished to pal around with Alex Salmond and his cronies in some kind of ‘old boys club’ that was their prerogative, but the people of Scotland will deliver their verdict in May’s elections. And there is, of course, some truth in that charge. The

The fallout from David Davis’s intervention in the Alex Salmond affair is all about the messages. The texts which the veteran Tory says he was given by a ‘whistleblower’ contain disturbing conversations between senior SNP and Scottish Government staffers. They raise questions about party involvement in a government investigation, the alleged ‘interference’ of Nicola Sturgeon’s chief of staff, and what the First Minister knew and when. The motivations behind these exchanges will be picked over by those convinced Salmond was the victim of a conspiracy, those convinced the Scottish Government fouled up but had good intentions, and a small smattering of Scots patiently waiting for the Holyrood inquiry to put