Douglas Ross wore the sly grin of a boy who knows that, for once, he has the goods on those in authority who typically patronise him and deprive him of the licence for entertainment he thinks his prerogative. Just Dougie rose to interrogate Humza Yousaf armed with a revelation as delicious as it was fortuitous in its timing.
Why that very morning Jamie Dawson KC, counsel to the UK Covid inquiry, revealed that with just a single, small, exception, “the Scottish government has provided the inquiry with no WhatsApp or other informal messaging material”. This despite numerous assurances — some of which even rose to the level of being promises — that all such material would indeed be provided.
So what, Ross wanted to know, is going on? The first minister moved into blancmange mode, smoothly assuring parliament that there is nothing to see here and not just because messages that might once have been seen have since been deleted. His government “will co-operate fully” and “any potentially relevant information that we hold, be it in WhatsApp, be it in email, be it in any correspondence, we will hand over, have handed over”.
A stickler for propriety in these affairs might observe that it is for the inquiry to determine what is relevant, not the government whose actions are being inquired into. Moreover, that stickler might wonder how “relevant information” can both have been handed over already and yet not been received by the inquiry to which it was supposed to be handed.
Knowing he was onto a good thing here, Ross persisted: “So where are the messages? Where have they gone?” Might they have been, gosh, deleted?
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This was not the point, the first minister said. If the messages were relevant they would have been forwarded to the inquiry. That they have not been demonstrates they cannot have been relevant. And, look: “I didn’t say that there have never been discussions over WhatsApp, what I said is we don’t routinely make decisions over WhatsApp.” This finesse was almost artful and nearly neatly done but note the use of “routinely” there — a stickler might once again intimate that it concedes the game without wishing to do so too obviously.
