Nicola Sturgeon will be fighting for her political life ... will she survive?

The First Minister’s long-awaited evidence session has been rearranged multiple times while the committee sought to accommodate the legal demands needed to obtain testimony from Alex Salmond.

And the SNP leader is impatient to get in front of MSPs and share her account.

“I have waited a long time now to appear before the committee and I am glad that I will finally have that opportunity,” she told the parliament last week.

Last week she claimed Salmond had created an “alternative reality in which the organs of the state – not just me, the SNP and the civil service and the Crown Office and the police and women who came forward – were all part of some wild conspiracy against him for reasons I can’t explain”.

She added: “Maybe that’s easier than just accepting that at the root of all this might just have been issues in his own behaviour.”

But as many readers quite rightly point out whenever I slip into lazy journalist shorthand and call this the “Salmond inquiry”, it is not the behaviour of the former First Minister that is under scrutiny.

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The remit of the committee is to “consider and report” on how the Government and ministers developed their harassment policy, and how they then implemented that policy when two civil servants made accusations about Salmond.

They’re also looking at both the Government’s challenging of the judicial review and the events that led to Sturgeon referring herself to the independent panel on the ministerial code.

It’s likely questions on the last two will be dominated by last night’s publication of the Government’s legal advice and the letters from Kevin Pringle and Duncan Hamilton QC – detailed elsewhere on these pages.

Perhaps the key question for Sturgeon is when she first knew of the complaints against her one-time friend?

She previously told MSPs that she only became aware of the investigation on April 2, 2018, when Salmond told her at a meeting at her home.

However, Salmond says Sturgeon knew about it on at least March 29, 2018, as it was discussed at a meeting at her Holyrood office with his former chief of staff Geoff Aberdein.

Sturgeon has claimed she “forgot” about the earlier meeting, saying it was opportunistic and casual.

Salmond says this is untenable and that the meeting was formal, and explicitly set up to talk about the investigation.

“The purpose of the meeting was to brief Nicola on what was happening and to make sure the meeting on April 2 was taking place,” he said. “I know that Nicola Sturgeon knew about the complaints process at the meeting on March 29 because I was told so by Geoff Aberdein, who told her at a meeting arranged for that purpose.

“Whether she had any prior knowledge of it I cannot say, but I know she knew about it on March 29.”

In their letters to the committee, Pringle and Hamilton both back this up. It’s one thing to say Salmond is in an alternative reality, it’s another to say that these two men – both stalwarts of the SNP, both friends of the First Minister – are too.

And then there’s the policy itself. It was drawn up in late 2017 in the wake of the MeToo movement, and crucially, it allowed former ministers to be investigated.

Supporters of Salmond say it was designed to “get” him.

Reports earlier this week revealed that Sturgeon held at least one meeting with her government’s permanent secretary to discuss the policy in November.

That meeting took place after two women had contacted Scottish Government officials about Salmond, one just a week before.

Sturgeon will also likely be asked about leaks to the press. Last week Salmond all but pointed the finger at the First Minister’s office.

Last night, Sturgeon’s spokesman said: “The First Minister will address all of the issues raised – and much more besides.”

The committee has set aside five hours to hear from Sturgeon today. There’s no shortage of questions.