Scotland’s former first minister Nicola Sturgeon fought back tears on Wednesday as she defended her leadership style and record during the Covid pandemic at a highly anticipated public inquiry appearance.
Giving evidence to the independent probe into the UK’s Covid response for the first time, Sturgeon denied claims of political opportunism during the crisis and said she felt “an overwhelming responsibility to do the best I could”.
Sturgeon, who quit leading Scotland’s devolved administration in Edinburgh last year, also maintained her long-running criticisms of former UK leader Boris Johnson.
The told the inquiry that he was not just the wrong person to be in charge during the pandemic but “the wrong person to be prime minister, full stop”.
Asked by Jamie Dawson, a lawyer for the inquiry, whether she was “precisely the right first minister for the job”, Sturgeon replied: “No.”
“I was first minister when the pandemic struck. There’s a large part of me wishes I hadn’t been,” she added, her lip trembling.
“But I was and wanted to be the best first minister I could be during that period. It’s for others to judge the extent to which I succeeded.”
Sturgeon, the former Scottish National Party (SNP) leader, stepped down as first minister last year, saying she lacked the energy to continue after nine years in the role.
With health policy a devolved matter for the governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, her popularity soared as a result of her daily media briefings on the pandemic.
– WhatsApp deletions –
But Sturgeon denied claims that she politicised the Scottish government’s response, given that her high profile helped bolster the SNP’s push for independence from the rest of the UK.
“Did I take a firm grip on leadership? I hope I did,” she told the hearing in Edinburgh.
“I had a sense of responsibility that as first minister I had to lead from the front, that I had to take the decisions collectively but ultimately have an attitude that the buck stops with me.”
Sturgeon has also come under scrutiny for admitting that she deleted WhatsApp messages sent and received during the outbreak.
In December, Johnson was grilled on why he had failed to provide about 5,000 WhatsApp messages from late January 2020 to June 2020, claiming that the app had “somehow” automatically erased them.
Sturgeon acknowledged that she deleted her messages on the platform but said her use of it for government business was “extremely limited”.
Any use of it, she told the hearing, “would not relate to matters of substantive government decision-making”.
Deleting messages was in line with long-established Scottish government policy and done only after key decisions were properly recorded, and not left on devices such as phones that could be lost or stolen.
“I am certain that the inquiry has at its disposal anything and everything germane to my decision-making during the process and the time period of the pandemic, and the factors underpinning those decisions,” she said.
