NikiLeaks

Following Nicola Sturgeon's success in the 2015 leaders' debate, the Lib Dems at the Scotland Office got nervous and leaked a memo describing a conversation between Nicola and the French Ambassador to The Telegraph. In a context in which anyone actually believed what they read in the The Telegraph, this might have been political dynamite, since it contained the following passage:

The Ambassador also had a truncated meeting with the FM (FM running late after a busy Thursday…). Discussion appears to have focused mainly on the political situation, with the FM stating that she wouldn’t want a formal coalition with Labour; that the SNP would almost certainly have a large number of seats; that she had no idea ‘what kind of mischief’ Alex Salmond would get up to; and confessed that she’d rather see David Cameron remain as PM (and didn’t see Ed Miliband as PM material). I have to admit that I’m not sure that the FM’s tongue would be quite so loose on that kind of thing in a meeting like that, so it might well be a case of something being lost in translation. [Emphasis ours]

Naturally, Twitter immediately dubbed the scandal #nikileaks.

Nicola immediately issued a categorical denial that she'd expressed a preference for one prime minister over the other, which was corroborated by the French Ambassador. (Well, she would say that, wouldn't she?) The initial SNP strategy was to deny the memo existed at all and dismiss it as a forgery along the lines of the Zinoviev letter, but they eventually settled for calling for an inquiry into who leaked it and why it recorded comments that were never made.

Labour, who the previous day had been denouncing The Telegraph as a discredited Tory propaganda organ over its rather dubious coverage of Ed Miliband's performance in the debates, immediately began to tweet the story as irrefutable proof of the secret Toryness of the SNP and the evil conspiracy between Nicola and David Cameron they'd been warning everyone about all along.

Cybernats responded by tweeting abuse at Labourites, any reporters who dared to cover the story, English commentators supporting The Telegraph, English commentators supporting Nicola, and basically anyone who didn't have a 45% twibbon. They were so bad that Nicola herself was forced to come charging to the rescue of BBC reporter James Cook, who had conducted an (admittedly pretty bitchy) interview with her about the scandal:

In all this furore approximately zero votes were changed, but the kerfuffle provided further confirmation (as if any were necessary) that post-Referendum politics in Scotland consists entirely of two immovably entrenched warring camps hysterically screaming "Tories!" at each other while the 15% of the population who actually are Tories looks on in bemusement.

The highlight of the scandal was this batshit front page from the Sunday Herald:

Allegedly a broadsheet

A coda to the scandal occurred after the election, when the leak inquiry concluded and it was revealed that former Scottish Secretary Alistair Carmichael, now the sole surviving Liberal Democrat MP in Scotland, had known about and authorised the leak, and then lied about it to the Telegraph and denied all knowledge of the memo. He also lied to the civil service, allowing them to waste thousands of pounds on the leak inquiry rather than coming clean. The SNP immediately began demanding his head on a pike or at least a by-election, on the not unreasonable grounds that he'd only held his seat by a few hundred votes and he might well have lost it had his constituents known about his dirty campaigning a few weeks earlier. Alistair's Lib Dem colleague Malcolm Bruce rushed to defend him, saying, "If you are suggesting every MP who has never quite told the truth or even told a brazen lie, including cabinet ministers, including prime ministers, [should resign], we would clear out the House of Commons very fast." On the whole, this was not a very helpful intervention.