The vote of no confidence was opportunism ahead of the election and an attempt to undermine confidence in our institutions.
We’ve seen equally shameless games being played by some members of a committee that was supposed to be investigating the Government’s mishandling of sexual harassment complaints.
Its work was important because the government admitted it had made serious mistakes.
We should all have been focused on preventing a repeat of those mistakes and giving people confidence that they can bring complaints if they need to.
But members of the committee instead broke the MSPs’ code of conduct to leak private information to the Press, and betrayed the trust of their witnesses.
They have left their report with no credibility, in sharp contrast to the independent investigation which cleared the First Minister of any breach of the ministerial code.
By pursuing this vote of no confidence in defiance of that independent report, the Scottish Conservatives have turned the whole issue into a piece of third-rate political theatre, just as they previously called on the First Minister to resign before she had even been allowed to give evidence.
Much media coverage of this is dominated by one question: “What does this mean for the independence cause?” when we should be asking what this means for the treatment of sexual harassment.
I believe this is the deliberate choice of those who have nothing more positive to offer the people of Scotland.
As a direct result, the women who complained about sexual harassment in the first place had to put out a statement via Rape Crisis Scotland to complain about the violation of their trust.
The Scottish Greens are clear it is those who broke the MSPs’ code of conduct and brought our Parliament into disrepute who should resign.
