NOTEBOOK by BILL HEANEY
McColl attended fine dining sessions at posh venues such as the Royal Bank headquarters in Edinburgh with disgraced Fred (The Shred) Goodwin and world celebrities such as Jackie Stewart and Jack Nicklaus.
His career had taken off like a Russian rocket from earning a modest living by running a kitchen fitting factory in Dumbarton’s humble Broadmeadow industrial estate and a takeover at a couple of factories in Clydebank, including Clyde Blowers.
The “billionaire” McColl was destined for the really big time though, a place in the sun amid the yachts and casinos of Monaco and Monte Carlo and tipped to buy Rangers Football Club.
He was coining in the cash when he caught Nicola Sturgeon’s eye and was appointed as an economic adviser to the basket case SNP government. They needed one badly.
And then the roof fell in, or more accurately the good ship Scottish Government began to take on water, when he bought the Ferguson Marine shipyard across the water at Port Glasgow on the Firth of Clyde and was awarded a government contract to build two new Calmac ferries to serve the Western Isles. The price was just under £100 million but it’s now around £400 million.
It didn’t take long for the Mayday messages to start emanating from the Firth of Clyde, indicating that the financial lifeboats were needed. Needed urgently.
The cost of the ferries, which were running years behind the completion schedule, began to soar out of control.
Shed loads of public money were washed down the Clyde and the finger pointing began as it always dos in politics.
Who was to blame for this debacle which would shame the Sturgeon government and set the country back that cool £400 million?
Sturgeon ducked out of sight and threw pale and pregnant Katie Forbes under a pram when she gave her the stressful task of facing a barrage of questions from BBC Scotland’s persistent political correspondent.
What Katie did was to insist she would not be naming anyone. She wouldn’t be pointing the finger. Anyway, everything about this contract was all above board as Para Handy might say.
If Campbell chose to plough his way through the 100-odd pages he would find all the answers that he sought.
Next day, however, there was a U turn. Lady Sturgeon was all for turning, especially if that would take the heat off her.
That was when it emerged that the disgraced former Finance Secretary Derek Mackay, who ran away from Holyrood the night before he was to deliver the SNP Budget, was the culprit.
Sturgeon’s spin doctors – a motley crew of ex-journalists who have gone over to “the dark side” – set the wheels in motion pointing out words and pictures of Mackay, dressed in a red boiler suit, proudly making the announcement that the ferries would be built at Ferguson Marine and that 300 Scottish jobs would be saved.
Then a flare went up. Mackay, it was plain to see, had in his own quiet, self-effacing way, which is his trademark, claimed all the credit and taken all the kudos.
But, it turned out that it wasn’t the bold Derek, who had signed off the ferry contract with Ferguson Marine. Perhaps a big boy did it and ran away?
Sturgeon was back in even stormier waters. Not even Grace Darling and a fleet of RNLI boats could save her from this debacle.
The Sunday Times had an exclusive interview with Jim McColl, the Man with the Midas Touch but sadly no longer for Sturgeon.
Nippy Nicola was seething with rage, but once again she was not for throwing herself in the direction of any bus or pram and certainly not into the claws of the lions of the Scottish media.
Katie Forbes, Jim McColl and Glenn Campbell with his BBC Scotland colleagues.
Pint-sized Katie – still pale and pregnant and looking distinctly uncomfortable – was trotted out again to tell Glenn Campbell that in his Sunday Times interview Jim McColl was being economical with the truth.
The former owner of Ferguson’s shipyard claimed the award of the contract for the two new ferries was announced so publicly was because the SNP wanted to do that “for political purposes”.
In other words it was a photo call of the kind every politician wants even if they are only opening an envelope never mind launching a boat and saving 300 jobs, but this is the Scotland we live in today.
Amateur night moved swiftly away from the spin doctors into the notebook of one reporter who wrote (sic): “The Finance Secretary blasted Jim McColl, a former economic adviser to the SNP government, saying if it weren’t for the Scottish Government then the yard on the Clyde would have went into administration.”
McColl then suggested that Sturgeon misled parliament last week when she claimed the contracts were signed off by disgraced former minister Derek Mackay — and she had.
Whether she did it knowingly or unknowingly is a matter for the First Minister, but Mackay had come up with the excuse of every politician in trouble: “It wisnae me!”
And then he added that he was on holiday at the time the dastardly deed was done.
Now the Opposition parties at Holyrood want an inquiry to establish why the government dropped a requirement for full repayment guarantees if the billionaire McColl’s Ferguson Marine yard failed to build the ships on time or went bust.
McColl told The Sunday Times that said SNP Ministers acted in haste and against the advice of ferry company CMAL so the contract could be announced with a fanfare at the party’s autumn conference in 2015. It was.
He said the contracts were awarded “for political purposes” and “everything was about the optics and timing of the announcements for political gain.”
The row, like an old Calmac ferry heading out for Mull in a Force 9, rumbled on to the radio.
Forbes told Good Morning Scotland that the delays, which could be up to five years or more, were down to the construction of the vessels.
She added: “The Audit Scotland report said there were no material issues with the procurement process, and in terms of the full refund guarantee mitigations were put in place.
“On that balance of risks, if we pulled the plug on the contract at that point we wouldn’t have proceeded with those two vessels.
“The yard, of course, would probably have gone into administration.
“The root cause of the delays is the construction, it’s not the contractual arrangements. The full refund guarantee is an important issue.”
Reporter Gary Robertson asked: “The other issue is it not that this was actually given the go ahead, that actually the designs hadn’t been fully worked out?”
Forbes replied: “Well, you highlight another important point which comes back to construction. We are focused here on procurement and refund guarantees. The fundamental problem here was the construction process.
“We had a private company that won a contract fairly and squarely and the construction process was inefficient and Audit Scotland unpacks this further.”
Robertson asked: “Was the problem here the rush to announce some good news at your party conference?”
Forbes replied: “I fundamentally disagree with that. Again, I would say if we’re serious about learning the lessons of this whole situation, we’ll base that analysis on facts in the independent Audit Scotland report and not the opinions of somebody with a vested interest in a Sunday newspaper.
“That timetable does not stack up. Ferguson ‘s was publicly announced as the preferred bidder in August 2015.
“I think the conference you’re referring to was sometime in October. The election wasn’t until the following May and this whole process was months if not years in the making.”
Does Katie think we all came up the Clyde in a banana boat? That she really can’t remember when that SNP conference took place?
One person who certainly did is LibDem Willie Rennie, who told The Democrat: “Instead of trashing the reputation of Jim McColl, the Scottish Government should now just confess that they gambled hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money to get them a cheap headline.
“We have heard the repeated denials from Kate Forbes who wasn’t a minister at the time, now we need to hear from SNP politicians who were responsible for this cynical misuse of public funds. John Swinney, Keith Brown and Nicola Sturgeon must give evidence to a public inquiry under oath. Islanders who are angry they don’t have a reliable ferry service deserve answers.”