Nicola Sturgeon vows to focus on elections after being cleared by inquiry
Source: The Guardian
Nicola Sturgeon has vowed to lead Scotland into the crucial May elections after being cleared of breaching the ministerial code over her dealings with Alex Salmond.
James Hamilton, a former Irish prosecutor, has rejected a series of allegations that the first minister deliberately misled Holyrood about when she knew about sexual harassment allegations against her predecessor being investigated by Scottish government civil servants.
Sturgeon said she was “obviously relieved” Hamilton had cleared her, and said she now wanted to focus on winning the May elections. “I’ll be putting myself forward as the candidate for first minister because there’s a big job of work to be done to continue to lead this country through a pandemic,” she said.
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Although Sturgeon is braced for publication of a highly critical report by MSPs into the controversy on Tuesday morning, Hamilton’s decision to clear her of wrongdoing now means she no longer faces losing a no confidence vote in Holyrood later on Tuesday.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/mar/22/nicola-sturgeon-cleared-of-knowingly-breaching-ministerial-code
I don't think there's been much on DU about this, but it had the potential to have a big effect on the SNP remaining as the Scottish governing party (on their own, anyway), and also on the possibility of another independence referendum. It now looks like Sturgeon is safe as SNP leader, and the party may start to regain support that had been ebbing away (they'd lost about 7 percentage points in the last few months ) .
