There is a difference between being responsible for a crime and being accountable for a failure.

Nicola Sturgeon would like the first question to settle the second. It does not.

In her latest interview this weekend, Scotland’s former first minister was adamant she should not have to apologise for the crimes of her estranged husband, Peter Murrell.

In one important sense, she is right.

Murrell admitted embezzling more than £400,000 from the SNP. Sturgeon has not been charged.

Unless evidence emerges to the contrary, it is not serious to pretend that partisan suspicion is the same as proof.

Scotland is not served by turning legal innocence into a matter of political taste.

The justice system has done its work. If prosecutors have not concluded that Sturgeon was criminally involved, then her opponents should not imply otherwise.

But, despite Sturgeon’s protestations, that is not the end of the matter.

‘SNP under Nicola Sturgeon treated scrutiny as betrayal’

It is only the beginning of the real one. Sturgeon may not be responsible for Murrell’s crimes, but she is accountable for the culture in which they were able to go undetected for so long.

That is the distinction she is now trying to blur.

Responsibility, in the narrow sense, belongs to the man who stole the money.

Accountability, in the........

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