So, Nicola Sturgeon has survived the most torrid weeks of her career and will lead the SNP into its election battle.
Although the Holyrood inquiry into her government’s bungled handling of allegations of sexual harassment against Alex Salmond found she misled parliament, she was let off the hook by Irish lawyer James Hamilton.
And of the two probes into her probity, she has opted to accept the verdict of the one with the most favourable outcome.
She also won the Tory driven vote of no confidence in parliament on Tuesday, removing any risk of enforced resignation.
After all the drama of the past months, the marathon sessions to the parliamentary inquiry, the reputation trashing, the leaks and the alleged lies, the denouement seems like an anti-climax.
Parliament has now broken for the election, politicians have returned to their constituencies to launch their campaigns, and the moment when Sturgeon’s political life hanged by a thread has passed.
But while her jubilant supporters cheer what they claim is the First Minister’s exoneration, her opponents – inside and outside the SNP – can take heart; this is not over yet.
Sturgeon was never going to concede her throne without damning ‘smoking gun’ evidence. However unlikely her version of events has appeared, and however much Salmond’s claims were corroborated, it was her word against his. But while Hamilton gave her the benefit of the doubt, she does not emerge unscathed.
Sturgeon’s former law professor, Alistair Bonnington, pointed out that Hamilton’s remit was limited and attempts to widen it were strongly resisted by the SNP government, which has fought at every turn to keep the truth hidden from the public.
Sturgeon may now defend her integrity but if she and her team had nothing to conceal, why did they go to such lengths at concealment?
Even Hamilton’s report contained so many redactions it made reading it difficult. These, he said in an accompanying letter, were edits by the SNP and ones he regretted.
I am deeply frustrated that applicable court orders will have the effect of preventing the full publication of a report which fulfils my remit and which I believe it would be in the public interest to publish.
The cross-party inquiry was also frustrated by the SNP administration, which refused to hand over crucial legal advice and access to government documents which might have explained how ministers wasted £500,000 of taxpayers’ money on their in-house investigation into Salmond.
The independent former Green MSP Andy Wightman, seen as the decisive casting vote on the committee, told the Courier that the government’s stalling and delaying was ‘not the way in which to do an inquiry’.
Farcical levels of memory loss plagued witnesses, from the First Minister (who notched up more than 50 ‘I don’t recalls’) down to her husband, SNP chief executive Peter Murrell, who couldn’t remember if he had What’s App on his phone, to the country’s most senior, and most forgetful, civil servant, Leslie Evans.
Worse, the Lord Advocate, James Wolffe, who sits in Sturgeon’s Cabinet and has been widely accused of ‘going native’, made a mockery of the Scottish Crown Office by using it as a blunt instrument to censor the press.
That there is a culture of cover up within SNP upper echelons is now common knowledge, with party insiders queuing up to expose the uglier side of Scottish Nationalist rule.
One veteran Nationalist and former SNP MSP, Dorothy Grace Elder, wrote at the weekend that she’d had the ‘deep freeze’ treatment from Sturgeon when she complained about bullying.
The party is riddled with dirty tricks. The Salmond saga is only part of it all. No daylight is allowed to shine, no challenge by different views.
Voters may be uninterested in the details of who knew what and when but they get the overall picture of a regime so degenerate that is has stopped even pretending to govern in their interests.
On Monday, the day of the Hamilton report, the SNP launched a bill for a new independence referendum. We might still be in a lockdown, and we’re told we’re still fighting a pandemic, but the Scottish government considers this a priority.
Successive polls over the last month have shown a drop in support for independence, with a 12-point swing away from separation since Sturgeon appeared before the committee.
An overwhelming majority believe Covid, the NHS, the economy and jobs take precedence over constitutional matters.
But it will not be Unionists alone who reject Sturgeon on May 6. There are desertions from separatists, who are taking to Twitter, ‘disgusted at the lies, evasion and deceit that has been on display’.
Scotland deserves better. It is now up to the electorate to pass judgment, deliver the only sentence Sturgeon cannot ignore and throw out this corrupt government at the ballot box.
