Nicola Sturgeon shows the calibre of real leadership

On a day of apologies, Scotland’s Deputy First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon offered a masterclass in the importance of integrity in politics.

Steady footed, eyed and voiced, she recognised that she had been wrong in asking the Court for clemency for her constituent, Abdul Rauf, a convicted benefits fraudster for whom she had pleaded for an alternative to custody.

She accepted that when she went beyond putting Mr Rauf’s circumstances before the court, to be part of its considerations, she had gone too far.

She apologised with dignity and clarity and without equivocation.

That approach not only spoke for her integrity and her commonsense, it located her flawed action in the context of normal human error.

Her straightforwardness was welcomed with equal grace by Scottish Conservative Leader, Annabel Goldie. It was also refreshing after Alex Salmond had, when the matter came to light, gone over the top with all sirens shrieking in the chamber – claiming that all MSPs had ‘a duty of care’ towards their constituents.

No MSP or MP has ‘a duty of care’ to flagrant law-breakers where that duty of care is exercised to bring about the avoidance of the due consequences of their actions.

Remember the distaste when John Major was scrambling to get two knowing drug runners released from jail in Thailand? There is nothing morally more acceptable in our drug runners as opposed to anyone else’s.

The sight of a British Prime Minister working for leniency for those who consciously broke the law of another country before intending to break the laws of the UK in importing the stuff, was unedifying in the extreme. That was before he succeeded in getting the King of Thailand to intervene – and then celebrated the delinquents’ release.

Ms Sturgeon, rightly, made neither any extravagant plea of ‘duty of care’ nor any attempt to defend the indefensible.

She has been seriously tested, in different ways, in her roles as Deputy First Minister and as Health Secretary. In each case she has been impressive in her competence, cool situation analysis and judgment.

She was the first UK Minister to have to deal with a serious outbreak of Swine Flu and she set the standard in crisis management and in the regular issue of factual public information.

Now she has dealt transparently and judiciously with a firestorm fanned by the Labour group (and with unwarranted interference from David Cameron) in what had all the appearance of a blatant attempt to defenestrate the SNP by taking out its heir apparent.

Today Ms Sturgeon’s behaviour was in sharp contrast to the glutinously cheap apology uttered by Gordon Brown over an action which was nothing to do with him and took place a considerable time ago. This was over the forced expatriation to Australia of British children who were told their parents were dead but who were, in reality deemed unable to look after them. Many of these children were profoundly abused in their new homes.

Unless we’re suffering from a severe attack of deja vue, this was, in fact, a verbatim repeat apology, earlier to camera, today before an emotive audience of those betrayed children, now adults.

So – on the one hand, we had a will-be leader apologising because she saw she had been wrong. On the other, we had a Prime Minister flogging a reheated apology for a historical wrong committed by someone else – while refusing to admit he has bullied his staff and unleashed his political rippers-and-tearers on his own Chancellor, Alistair Darling.