What we still don’t know about the Salmond affair

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. Hamilton found no breaches on any count and declared the omission to be ‘the result of a genuine failure of recollection’ and ‘not deliberate’.

The Scottish Parliament inquiry into these matters, published this morning, reads not merely like a separate inquiry, but as though it dealt with a separate set of facts.