Humiliation for Nicola Sturgeon as former ally calls her 'convincing fraud' in latest spat

Nicola Sturgeon

The former First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, has been labelled as a “convincing fraud” by one of her own former Members of Scottish Parliament (MSP).

The comment was made by former SNP MSP Joan McAlpine – one of Sturgeon’s old allies – in relation to deleting her pandemic WhatsApp messages despite promises to hand over everything.

At the Covid Inquiry on January 19, it was confirmed Ms Sturgeon had retained “no messages whatsoever” and her deputy John Swinney had used an “auto-delete” function to clear them.

Counsel to the Inquiry, Jamie Dawson KC said: “Under the box ‘Nicola Sturgeon’, it says that messages were not retained, they were deleted in routine tidying up of inboxes or changes of phones, unable to retrieve messages.”

Sharing a clip of a press conference from 2021, Joan McAlpine tweeted: “What a fraud this woman was – but such a convincing one…”

Nicola Stugeon

Ms McAlpine. who is known for her opposition to reforming the Gender Recognition Act and for her views on sex and gender, was a member of the Scottish Parliament for the South Scotland region from 2011 to 2021.

The former First Minister told the Covid inquiry earlier this week: “To be clear, I conducted the Covid response through formal processes from my office in St Andrews House, not through WhatsApp or any other informal messaging platform. I was not a member of any WhatsApp groups. The number of people I communicated with through informal messaging at all was limited.”

However, she claimed that handwritten notes were kept. Ms Sturgeon added: “Also, any handwritten notes made by me were passed to my private office to be dealt with and recorded as appropriate.”

Opposition parties have continued to demand answers.

Craig Hoy MSP, the Scottish Conservative party chairman, said: “Nicola Sturgeon must think the Scottish public are fools if they believe there is nothing untoward here.”

“The former First Minister appears to have deliberately and repeatedly deleted her WhatsApp messages and she must have done so for a reason.”

Meanwhile Jackie Baillie, the Scottish Labour deputy leader added: “Nicola Sturgeon’s betrayal of the people of Scotland is disgraceful and shows just how far she has fallen. Millions of Scots deserve answers over what happened during the pandemic, particularly those who lost loved ones – potentially criminal deletion of vital messages threatens to prevent this happening.”