Columnist Brian Wilson, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and Alex Salmond.
The Holyrood committee inquiry into the Scottish Government’s handling of allegations against Alex Salmond is rapidly developing into a trial of how Scotland is run. Let’s hope MSPs have the stomach for the task since, behind the curtains, it is not a pretty sight.
Whether many are paying attention is another question but when the pandemic passes and the daily pulpit put into storage – who now knows which will come first? – the issues laid bare will still be around.
In more normal times, the evidence – as well as efforts to conceal it – would be the stuff of far more prominent headlines, or at least one hopes so. Take yesterday’s revelations about messages allegedly sent by Peter Murrell to an unnamed SNP dignitary in January 2019.
The first stated: “Totally agree folk should be asking the police questions…..report now with the PF on charges which leaves police twiddling their thumbs. So good time to be pressurising them. Would be good to know Met looking at events in London.”
A second message read: “TBH the more fronts he is having to firefight on the better for all complainers. So CPS action would be a good thing.”
Pressuring police! Met looking at events in London! The more fronts he is having to fight on…! This is the language of an enforcer not a bystander. Mr Murrell is no ordinary member of the public. He is chief executive of the SNP, married to the First Minister of Scotland.
The contrast between the blunt, interventionist tone and Mr Murrell’s written statement to the committee could hardly be more dramatic. In that missive, he was the man who knew nothing; part of a couple so attached to propriety that dynamite information, revealed in their own sitting-room, was not shared over a period of four months.
Ms Sturgeon had previously told MSPs she met Mr Salmond in her role as party leader rather than First Minister while Mr Murrell told the committee that while he knew of these meetings and that “something serious was being discussed…Nicola told me she couldn’t discuss the details”. Party leader? Party chief executive?
I am scarcely a member of the Alex Salmond fan club but there is a thing called natural justice and from the emergence of this sorry saga it has been undermined by the self-serving behaviour of his successor and those around her.
Back in August 2018 when details of charges against Mr Salmond were leaked, I wrote that nobody should be subjected to “trial by allegation”. I thought it genuinely odd that Ms Sturgeon was on hand for interviews on a matter which was by then subject to due process and wrote: “As ever, the imperative lay in news management and polishing the First Minister’s shining armour”.
At that time, very few knew anything of what had been going on behind the scenes. Some of that emerged when Mr Salmond successfully sued the Scottish Government and the existence of these meetings became known. I wrote then: “We still know nothing about the content of these discussions, the full dramatis personae or the interactions which ensued. In return for our £500,000 – squandered on the civil court case brought by Salmond – we are now entitled to access every dot, comma, conversation and email leading to this week’s debacle”.
That was the last thing the mightiest in our little land had the slightest intention of permitting. They have had 18 months to put together their blocking tactics. John Swinney, the useful front-man, informed the committee that it would ‘not be in the interests of good government’ to provide them with crucial information they require.
The evidence given by the Permanent Secretary to the Scottish Government in this week’s session was an insult to the Committee and to the Parliament. Lesley Evans could remember nothing. Those who wonder why she was still in a job after the botched court case misunderstand the nature of relationships within Scotland’s ruling cabal. They look after each other.
Since all this began, Mr Salmond has been found not guilty of the charges against him. This is not a retrial of these issues. It is much more narrowly focused and to many, involves too much old detail to make it interesting.
But for anyone who believes that integrity in government and the separation of political, civil service and legal roles is crucial to open and healthy democracy, it matters and MSPs should not let us down. And let us now forget, a man’s liberty was at stake and that should never be a matter of political interference, regardless of who that man is.