Thread by @mafevema

@NicolaSturgeon demonstrates once again how she is the best politician in the UK. A masterful opening statement skillfully mixing political & personal, just the right tone in my view. What a fighter she is.

And what mastery of her brief. She hardly glances at her notes.

She answers the first questions exposing clearly the difficulties of setting policies, the complexity of taking decisions under multiple pressures, how every choice is always balanced against others.

"Even in the days we were best friends, Alec Salmond has a tendancy to see most things as being around him" you bet.The policiy was not put in place because of Alex Salmond but I did not allow any consideration about Alec Salmond to influence it" She said if she had taken her red

pen and crossed out the words "former ministers" she would be legitimately be sitting there today.

A very good passage on her relationship with AS & how if she could have found "a legitimate way for all of this to go away" she would have taken it gladly. All cnies managers faced with sexual harrassment complaints & who did not wish for it to go away, please raise your hand!

I believe her on this: it was a very difficult situation & she had to be seen to act fairly. Her main concern was not to be seen to show any favour.

not to "get Salmond".

"I unreservedly accept that things went wrong" Can anyone imagine Johnson or any of his ministers say this? For instance in relation to public contracts allocation?

"AS knew about the identity of one complainant because he had apologised to her". He knew the identity of the complainants in one incident because he knew about the incident and on the other hand because of his own investigations"

"my assumptyion was that AS would have known the ID of the complainants" before he was (allegedly) told. "I was not part of that discussion" Clear difference between the accounts of the conversation.

I don't know where the links to the Daily record came from. I can tell you it did not come from me.

I did not want the allegations to come into the public domain. It horrified me" Sounds genuine. She says she did not want to comment publicly on the allegations. Wanting it to be investigated fairly does not mean wanting it in the public domain.

She now address -credibly- in my view a new allegation that the leaks on the AS allegations were given to the Daily Record "to spike" another story against her.

She quotes the letter from the ICO. No evidence it came from a Scottish government official. "I do not know where the leak came from what I can say emphatically is that it did not come from me or from anybody acting on my authority"

Again she says Salmond would have known the ID of the complainant he had to apologise to and the second complainant AS had said he knew through the Scottish governement account

You are talking about personal relationships which go back a long time. I am not here to cast aspersions. She makes the difference between "revealing" and "mentionning" the name.

"The police does not need my authortity to investigate any matter they may wish to investigate"