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 her various meetings with Alex Salmond and others between March and July 2018. Mr Hamilton’s 61-page report concludes that she is not guilty on that ‘failure to feed back’ point. On the more significant issue of her misleading Parliament the verdict of the Holyrood Inquiry report, which has still not been published, will be determinative.
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