Tearful Sturgeon tells Covid Inquiry she needs she wasn’t chief throughout disaster

Nicola Sturgeon appeared tearful on the Covid Inquiry as she confronted questions on whether or not she was the appropriate chief for the disaster.

It got here because the ex-First Minister was grilled over her deleted WhatsApp messages and important choices made by the Scottish Government throughout the pandemic.

The former SNP chief informed the Inquiry she agreed Boris Johnson was the improper PM for the disaster, including: “Boris Johnson was the wrong person to be PM, full stop”.

But she appeared emotional when quizzed on whether or not she believed she was the appropriate First Minister for the job. “I was the First Minister when the pandemic struck,” she mentioned. “There’s a large part of me that wishes I wouldn’t have been. But I was and I 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.”

Ms Sturgeon informed the Inquiry she felt “overwhelmed” by the size of what the federal government was grappling with when Covid struck. She mentioned: “At times in those early days, I felt overwhelmed by the scale of what we were dealing with and perhaps more than anything, I felt an overwhelming responsibility to do the best I could.”

The former Scottish First Minister additionally admitted she had deleted WhatsApp messages despatched to officers throughout the disaster. Ms Sturgeon claimed her messages “weren’t retained”. But requested by Inquiry counsel Jamie Dawson KC whether or not she deleted them, the ex-SNP chief replied: “Yes, in the manner I have set out.”

Ms Sturgeon informed the listening to she didn’t use the messaging platform to make authorities choices throughout the disaster, which concerned a “high degree of formality”.

While WhatsApp had change into “too common” a method of communication inside the Scottish Government, Ms Sturgeon mentioned she exchanged WhatsApps with not more than a “handful” of individuals, and was not a member of any teams, with now First Minister Humza Yousaf, and her former chief of employees, Liz Lloyd, the principle folks she communicated with in his means.

Last week it emerged Ms Sturgeon had branded the ex-PM Mr Johnson a “a f****** clown” in WhatsApp messages to her former aide Ms Lloyd. The scathing description got here when the then-PM introduced a second nationwide lockdown on October 31 2020 after weeks of ignoring requires extra stringent restrictions.