A teary-eyed Nicola Sturgeon addressed the UK Covid inquiry earlier today. The former Scottish first minister was keen to rebut the suggestion that she relished the pandemic and the platform it afforded her. ‘The idea that in those horrendous days that I was thinking of a political opportunity… well, it just wasn’t true’, she insisted, as she wiped a tear from her eye.

But it seems the lady doth protest too much. Last week, the UK Covid inquiry heard that Sturgeon’s cabinet had explicitly considered how it could politicise the pandemic to boost support for Scottish independence. No doubt she also hoped to boost Brand Sturgeon, too. After all, as first minister of Scotland, she took every possible opportunity to approach the pandemic differently to England and to UK prime minister Boris Johnson. And this always involved being just that bit more authoritarian than the supposedly feckless English.

[Who were at times more authoritarian than here in the US, especially compared to southern states here that quickly began ending restrictions in the late spring and early summer of 2020. Sturgeon was among the Fauciest of the Fauci Fascists abroad, and just like Fauci himself, now claims that it was all for the benefit of others. But that’s not the end of Sturgeon’s authoritarian legacy. — Ed]