What irony if the wounded Queen of Scots becomes the reason the union survives says ANDREW NEIL

A remarkable transformation has suddenly taken place at the very top of Scottish politics. 

Nicola Sturgeon, until recently the unassailable Queen of Scots, mistress of all she surveyed, has morphed into a wounded bear, lashing out in foul and angry mood at any and all who dare to challenge her.

The parliamentary inquiry investigating her government’s lamentable handling of its internal investigation into accusations of sexual harassment against former first minister Alex Salmond is now in her bad books – even though she approved its establishment and vowed to observe its conclusions – because it has had the temerity to contradict her version of events.

She now smears it as ‘partisan’, stacked with people who had ‘pre-judged’ her long before they heard any evidence.

Senior Tory backbencher David Davis, who raised some inconvenient truths about her government in the House of Commons last week, is attacked as a member of the ‘old boys’ club’ and part of an ‘old pals’ act with Salmond. 

It is true Davis is friendly with Salmond. But it would be hard to imagine any Tory MP less likely to be in an old boys’ club.

Salmond himself – recently described by Sturgeon as ‘one of the closest people to me in my life’ – is now dismissed as a male dinosaur who, typical man, always expected to get his way. 

Such words were never uttered, of course, during the many years when she enjoyed his patronage and bathed in his reflected glory.

Even leading Scottish Tory Ruth Davidson, who often bests Sturgeon at First Minister’s Questions in the Holyrood parliament, is not to be taken seriously, according to this newly defensive leader, because she is deserting Scotland for the House of Lords.

Sturgeon is on the ropes and her natural instinct is to strike out at all who assail her. It is not a pretty sight. 

But I would not underestimate her resilience. She is determined to lead the SNP into the crucial Holyrood elections in May, campaigning for an overall majority to reinforce her demand for a second Scottish independence referendum.

Interestingly, even some of those pro-Union politicians publicly calling for her to resign hope privately that she stays in situ. 

They think the fallout from the Salmond-Sturgeon civil war has turned her into a liability who could scupper the SNP’s hopes of an overall majority.

Examine the charge list.

 While Salmond was acquitted of all sexual assault charges when his case went to court, nobody has taken responsibility by resigning, or been punished with the sack, for the egregious and expensive mistakes made in the handling of the Scottish government’s inquiry, which so signally failed the women at the heart of the complaints.

Sturgeon’s evidence to the Holyrood inquiry, it is claimed, was riddled with contradictions and gaps.

There are copious indications that an SNP-Scottish government cabal tried to destroy Salmond.

Many heavy-handed attempts were made to stifle the Scottish media’s attempts to tell the full story. All the above have combined to bring a previously untouchable leader down to earth with a thump. 

As a result, a politician who has always been head and shoulders above all her rivals – inside and outside the SNP – and widely regarded as the party’s biggest asset could now be the politician that stops the SNP from fulfilling its dreams.

The constitutional stakes for the future of the United Kingdom could not be higher. 

It is by no means certain that Boris Johnson would grant Sturgeon a second referendum even if she still managed to win an overall majority.

But it is certain that without such a majority the chances of a second referendum any time soon would be zero, kicking the SNP’s dream of Scottish separation into the long grass and securing the Union for the foreseeable future.

That would be reinforced if the SNP also failed to secure 50 per cent of the vote on a manifesto calling for another referendum. 

Westminster would simply insist that it was not even a matter for negotiation, since a majority of Scots would have voted for pro-Union parties.

There is no question that the long drawn-out Salmond affair, despite its sometimes baffling intricacies, has taken its toll on Sturgeon and the SNP. 

After a long run of opinion polls showing a gradually growing Scottish majority in favour of independence, they’ve suddenly become much more ambiguous, with some even showing a majority for staying in the Union.

Other polls show the SNP now struggling to win the high share of the vote required to win that crucial overall majority. 

It’s unlikely that matters will improve for Sturgeon or the SNP any time soon.

The leak from the parliamentary inquiry, which is expected to officially report its findings next week, concerns Sturgeon’s claim, under oath and in affidavit, that she did not indicate to Salmond, when she first discussed the complaints with him on April 2, 2018, that she would intervene in the internal inquiry.

Salmond testified that she had. 

Crucially, he secured the corroboration of his QC, who in written testimony to the inquiry said he was at the meeting and recorded Sturgeon saying: ‘If it comes to it, I will intervene’. 

This was enough, according to the leak, for the inquiry to conclude that Sturgeon’s evidence was ‘inaccurate’ and therefore a ‘potential’ breach of the ministerial code as it involved misleading parliament, which is normally a resigning matter.

But it is by no means her only problem. 

There are alleged to be a host of other accusations that she misled parliament in her explanations of crucial events in the spring of 2018 and if the inquiry concludes she did indeed mislead parliament on multiple occasions, then her position will be more perilous. 

It will become touch and go whether she survives if a second inquiry comes to the same conclusion.

James Hamilton QC, once Ireland’s top prosecutor, has been tasked with investigating possible breaches of the ministerial code. 

This behind-closed-doors inquiry has always had the potential to be more treacherous for Sturgeon. 

It too reports next week. 

But the expectation in Edinburgh is that Hamilton will fudge it. 

After all, as the Scottish government reminded us this week, Hamilton was Sturgeon’s adviser on the code, he provided her with advice and said it was up to her how to respond.

Unless he explicitly says she knowingly broke the code and misled parliament, Sturgeon will be minded to brazen it out.

Even if all of this denies Sturgeon a majority over all the other parties in parliament, she is still clear favourite – barring a knockout blow from either inquiry – to form another minority government. 

That might seem like a decent consolation prize in the circumstances. It is more likely to be a bed of nails.

Like all parties that have been in power too long (remember the Tories under John Major?) the SNP, once a model of discipline, is now riven with faction-fighting on various fronts, from independence tactics to transgender rights. 

It has also descended into a cesspit of sleaze.

The SNP chief whip in Westminster has had to stand down pending an investigation into accusations of sexual harassment. 

An unnamed female SNP MP has been accused of the same thing. An SNP finance minister had to resign for sending inappropriate texts to a teenager. 

The rural minister is being investigated for bullying civil servants, accusations he denies.

And still the Scottish government hasn’t got its procedures straight. The country’s leading civil service union complains that staff being ‘bullied and harassed by ministers’ have ‘no recourse to justice’ because official procedures are ‘more harrowing than the original incident’.

This is all likely to get much worse with four more years of minority government. With no prospect of a second referendum, party discipline will atrophy further.

 Sturgeon will have no red meat to throw at her fundamentalist wing, for whom independence is all that matters.

The wheels are already coming off the SNP. In the next parliament it could be left sitting on its axles. 

With independence no longer an option, Scots will look more closely at the SNP’s domestic record.

A school system whose underperformance has been masked by removing Scotland from most of the main international comparisons.

A university sector which poor pupils have much less of a chance of getting into than their English equivalents. 

A health service which hardly ever meets its targets.

Loss-making, state-owned industries whose main activity is to gobble up taxpayers’ money. And the worst drug problem in Europe.

I would not be surprised if Sturgeon decided sometime in the next parliament to pack it in and go off to a more pleasant life managing some global quango.

If May’s elections produce a result which secures the Union for the foreseeable future – and those who cherish the Union should start to breathe a little more easily – what would be the point in hanging around?

Andrew Neil is chairman of The Spectator, the magazine that went to court to win the right to publish details of Alex Salmond’s submission to the Holyrood committee