One of the most frustrating things about politicians is they often don’t really share how awful things were until they leave office.

They don’t tell us how much they absolutely despised their cabinet colleagues until they sign a deal with a publisher.

Humza Yousaf’s not really getting that distance.

On Thursday, over the best part of three hours, messages he probably never expected to be made public were shared with the world.

What his messages did show was some of the tensions in government during the pandemic.

Not just between the UK and Scottish Governments, but between ministers in the Scottish Government.

We saw one transcript of messages between Mr Yousaf when he was health secretary and Jason Leitch, the National Clinical Director where they expressed unhappiness with Nicola Sturgeon's decision not to go further at the height of the Omicron variant’s spread.

They described her actions as “window dressing".

There was also some fairly frank discussion around the government's ability to take people with it in enforcing the Covid restrictions.

One phrase we saw again and again in the First Minister's messages was "losing the dressing room".

But overshadowing all of his evidence today was the row over the missing WhatsApp messages, particularly Nicola Sturgeon’s decision to wipe of all of her messages.

He started by apologising unreservedly to Lady Hallett, the inquiry and to those who lost a loved one to Covid for the government’s shoddy informal communication policy and its inability to hand over messages.

"There's no excuse for it. We should have done better."

Mr Yousaf initially told the inquiry that he deleted his messages, though he flatly denied that when the Sunday Mail suggested that was the case back in October.

We learned today that it was only because he was able to access them on an old device that so many of them were able to be shared with the inquiry.

His messages and the messages recovered from Liz Lloyd’s phone and shown in the morning session make it clear beyond any doubt that ministers were using WhatsApp to conduct government business.

Any suggestion otherwise is sophistry.

What we're seeing from the inquiry, isn't just the government's response to Covid, but also a real insight into how the Scottish Government works, how Nicola Sturgeon governed, and how Humza Yousaf is governing.