Should Nicola Sturgeon resign? Karma's a bitch.
Politicians are entitled to the presumption of innocence. Pity she didn't apply it to others in her predicament in the past.
You have to hand it to Nicola Sturgeon her news management is still spot on. Releasing her “I am innocent” statement last night assured that the front pages today all carried the “I” word in their headlines about her arrest under Operation Branchform. She's no fool.
Like the “not in my worst nightmares” statement she made on her return to parliament in April after her husband Peter Murrell's arrest and release, it contained just the right amount of emotion and assertion of probity. The subtext: how could this be allowed to happen? People don't call me “Saint Nicola” for nothing.
Clearly she has not contemplated resigning from the party in order to “clear her name” and remove the cloud of negative headlines hanging over the SNP government. The very idea! Yet this is precisely what she has expected of other SNP politicians who have become enmeshed in the law, like the former SNP minister, Michelle Thomson.
She had to go over property dealings which turned out to be perfectly legal. Then there was the former children's minister, Mark McDonald. He was forced to resign in disgrace in 2017 over a couple of allegedly risque texts to a woman colleague which turned out to be anodyne and contained no hint of abuse. He never recovered.
Nicola Sturgeon's statement insisted on her right to “the presumption of innocence”. I don't recall her and her coterie according that presumption with much enthusiasm to Alex Salmond before. or indeed after, his acquittal on charges of sexual harassment and assault three years ago. Salmond voluntarily resigned from the SNP to clear his name as early as 2019 after he was accused of misconduct by that internal inquisition set up by Leslie Evans, Nicola Sturgeon's permanent secretary. This was part of her sexual harassment policy set up after #metoo. The Court of Session subsequently ruled that this disciplinary process had been unlawful, that Salmond had been wrongly accused and that he was entitled to costs of £500,000 – to be paid by the taxpayers of Scotland. But he wasn’t welcomed back.
Now I am not suggesting any cross-over, link or comparison here between the Salmond criminal case and Nicola Sturgeon's arrest under Operation Branchform. As we keep being told by the Crown Office and Police Scotland we are not allowed to say anything that might be prejudicial to an ongoing investigation. So I will simply confine myself to the words issued by Police Scotland yesterday. It said that Nicola Sturgeon had been “arrested as a suspect” in a criminal investigation into SNP “funds and fundraising”. I make no comment on that, merely that there are ample precedents in the SNP for politicians in similar circumstances being required by their own party to resign pro tem.
Nor am I saying that political parties are right to expect this. Quite the reverse. I think it is against natural justice for politicians, like Mark McDonald, to have their careers destroyed because of baseless allegations of wrong-doing. This somehow became the norm after #metoo which I am afraid was accompanied by a widespread and reckless suspension of the very presumption of innocence to which Nicola Sturgeon has appealed in her “distress”.
Nicola Sturgeon was of course heavily influenced by #metoo, as she stated herself in the parliamentary inquiry after Salmond's acquittal. She repeatedly alluded to his alleged misconduct saying: “I refuse to follow the age-old pattern of allowing a powerful man to use his status and connections to get what he wants”. This, remember, was after he had been acquitted, yet she went on to condemn her predecessor for failing to apologise to the women he had wronged by his “inappropriate behaviour”.
Well, now figures in the SNP, like the former leadership contender, Ash Regan MSP, are saying that Nicola Sturgeon should do the decent thing and “voluntarily resign her SNP membership until this is all cleared up”. In an interview for BBC Scotland's Good Morning Scotland she said that the former FM has become “a distraction from the work of government” and that if Sturgeon doesn't go voluntarily: “Humza Yousaf needs to think about taking decisive action”.
“The SNP code of conduct” she went on”, says that members should refrain from conduct she that is likely to cause damage or hinder the party's aims”. It was Nicola Sturgeon above all who promoted this code of conduct. Karma, as they say, is a bitch.
I agree with all of this and made the point myself about her specific quote on the "presumption of innocence", a courtesy that Sturgeon and her mob did not afford Salmond either at the time of the charges or even AFTER he was acquitted. She, instead, went on to undermine and cast doubt on the verdicts returned at his trial at every opportunity. Salmond also had sought to distance his Party from the situation he was in by resigning. Sturgeon possesses no such courage because, always, it's about her and her alone.
I hope she'll be even more distressed when she realises how many of us were repelled by her lies and obfuscations at the Salmond inquiry, not to mention the rigging of that inquiry, and have zero sympathy for her in her current plight. You'd think after all the diabolical Salmond shenanigans she'd have ensured this hole in the finances would be dealt with pronto, but all she did was lie and lie again. But the best policy would have been not to rip off often low-paid and loyal party members in the first place - kindergarten stuff, but that's where the SNP is under the Murrells' "stewardship".