This week is still going to be a bad one for Nicola Sturgeon. But it seems probable that we won’t know just how bad until May, after the Hamilton inquiry today found that she did not break the ministerial code.
By aggressively stonewalling two inquiries, the First Minister has managed to forestall calls for her resignation by casting herself on the mercy of the electorate, which still looks set to return the Scottish National Party in the May elections.
Attention has mostly concentrated on how Sturgeon and her ministers have obstructed the Holyrood inquiry. But as pro-Union legal blogger Ian Smart has set out, there were huge and unnecessary delays to James Hamilton QC’s inquiry into a potential breach of the Ministerial Code too.
What incentive does Sturgeon have to slog through years of factional strife, sex scandals and declining education outcomes?
The First Minister had recently become much more enthusiastic about Hamilton’s report, with some commentators wondering if her sudden change of heart suggested she might have known what Hamilton was going to say today.
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