Sturgeon’s survival turns attention back to independence – and the SNP’s record

Nicola Sturgeon has survived the greatest threat she has yet encountered to her political career. James Hamilton, an independent adviser to the Scottish government (and former director of public prosecutions in Ireland) cleared her of allegations that she had misled the Scottish Parliament over her government’s botched handling of a sexual harassment probe into Alex Salmond, her predecessor and mentor. Had the verdict gone the other way, there would have been pressure for her to resign.

The next test is the elections on 6 May. She may yet have time to repair the damage that polls show the drama has done to her standing and that of the SNP. Polls in the coming days will show the effect of this week’s ruling. But the picture that emerged of her government during the parliamentary investigation and the separate independent investigation was not flattering. Cronyism, confusion of party and government business, lack of professional process, the appearance of bias: Salmond’s fusillade of accusations was damaging precisely because some of it rang true. Many people reading and watching the Scottish news daily might be hard pressed to summarise the details of the case. But they could describe vividly the impression it left.

Sturgeon must persuade voters that she deserves their trust in the SNP's independence mission

The challenge Sturgeon now has is to persuade voters again that she and the SNP deserve their trust not just in leading the Scottish government but in their campaign for an independent Scotland, the cause with which she and her party have made their mission. There are no obvious alternatives in Scottish politics right now, either to her or the SNP (although these elections may show whether Anas Sarwar, the new Scottish Labour leader, has real potential). But that is not the same thing as infusing voters with real enthusiasm.

Other parties accuse the SNP of looking tired, having run Scotland’s legislature as a minority or majority government since 2007. They point out that the record of public services has been patchy (a point on which the IfG will publish next month). For all the complex factors that go into a culture of drug use, Sturgeon talks as if Scotland’s record of drug deaths – now at its highest ever level and more than three times that of any other country in Europe – is not something into which her government could have made more inroads.

Attention in Scotland now turns to the SNP's past record and its vision for the future

All the same, as polls show, she has won the reputation of handling the first year of coronavirus with deftness, speed and sensitivity, qualities often missing in the Johnson government’s record in the pandemic. If leaders are judged by their ability to handle a crisis, she is thought to have done well. Her performance clearly persuaded more people that Scotland not only could run itself, but that it would be better off doing so.

Attention will now turn, as it should, both to the future and to the past: to her proposals for independence and their credibility, and to her government’s record in office. This week, her government also published the draft Independence Referendum Bill – the draft legislation for the holding of a second referendum. The SNP says it will introduce the referendum legislation if the May elections return a majority of members of the Scottish Parliament who support independence. The UK government says it will withhold its assent, and the Conservatives, Lib Dems and Labour have urged Scotland to focus on recovery from coronavirus not the constitution. All that controversy may be to come. But that will depend on the outcome of the elections in just over a month’s time.