Most of you will be looking towards the Holyrood election to get a sense of the state of democracy in Scotland. I think you’re looking at the wrong thing. I think the most important indicator of the state of democracy in Scotland will happen next week.
That is when Scotland’s unelected public sector elite will seek to inflict a punishment beating pour encourager les autres. It is running a show trial to make sure that no democratically elected politician in this country gets ideas above their station and starts to think that they can actually hold unelected officials to account.
This is all about expanding the primary doctrine of our era – elite impunity. Every place you look now the elites are creating systems to prevent anyone from ever holding anyone to account. The US has the corrupted Department of Justice and the debased Supreme Court. Our version is the Standards Commission.
The show trial it is holding next week is of Glasgow City Councillor Fiona Higgins. It isn’t actually a trial since the Ethical Standards Commissioner has already ‘established guilt’ and recommended the Commission take action. So this is a public sentencing. I’m now going to talk you through what corruption (I am not using the word lightly) looks like in Scotland in 2026.
In February 2024 Glasgow City Council had to set a budget. This is the responsibility of councillors but they are reliant on accurate information from officials. It is the officials who have all the resources and are in control of all data. The final papers that went to the councillors to approve the budget had a line about education spending with a footnote.
That footnote indicated that the allocation of funding for education would be accompanied by a ‘reform process’. OK, so far so boring. Except that isn’t how the paper concerned started. Initially it had a clear statement in it that what was actually happening was that teacher numbers were being cut. That is clear, unambiguous information councillors should have had.
Instead the Director of Finance edited the paper, took out the reference to the cut in teacher numbers, rephrased it with the ‘reform’ waffle and then took it out of the body of the text and stuck it in a footnote. Clearly, the chances of people understanding what that footnote meant (if they read it, because it was waffle) is zero. No-one concerned had any idea they were cutting teacher numbers.
The Director of Education quite rightly objected and said this was entirely inappropriate – but was overruled. The document with the deliberately removed text which left councillors unaware of what they were doing was all they had to work on. They passed the budget.
Then preparations start being made to cut teacher numbers in Glasgow. No-one who should have known this was happening (i.e. the democratically elected politicians who have sole responsibility for this under constitutional law) knew this was happening. This is where Fiona comes in.
That is how you must think of the Standards Commission – it is a bureaucracy created by unelected public sector officials and staffed by career unelected public sector officials to protect unelected public sector officials
Fiona is a religious education teacher by trade so had a particular interest and felt strongly that something was wrong. So she started a Freedom of Information odyssey as if she was ‘just a random person off the street’. That is how our democracy works – if elected politicians want information on policy work for which they have responsibility and they need to get it from officials, they have to used FoI legislation, which itself is ridiculous.
But pursue it she does. Inevitably this does not take the 28 days mandated in the legislation because the operation of FoI in Scotland has been rendered into a punchline by officials. It took Fiona six months to get to the bottom of things – which is how we know who edited out the relevant information and who objected. This would have vanished into history otherwise, unknown and unknowable.
Of course, the officials concerned were distinctly non-plussed by this. They had other things to do, like organise themselves outrageous golden goodbye bonus payments that they didn’t bother to get approved via any of the officially-required procedures and were the subject of scathing criticism from the accounts commission.
Yup, it is the same people hiding information from councillors and approving themselves illegitimate pay-offs without the necessary oversight from councillors. I’ll come back to this in a second.
At this point Fiona thinks there has been malfeasance. I agree. Everyone involved in hiding this information not only should have known they were doing the wrong thing, they were actually warned they were doing the wrong thing at the time – and did it anyway.
As you will imagine, the internal processes now turn to custard. She had raised all these questions in full council and in the education committee and emailed the officers involved. To give you an example of how Scotland works, Cllr Graham Campbell (a man never knowingly not pursuing self-advancement) suspended the education committee meeting and prevented it being minuted until Fiona stopped asking questions. Hurray for democracy.
There was clearly going to be no mea culpa and no official consequences for those concerned, at least not in time to prevent them taking advantage of their golden goodbyes (the Finance Director has since left Glasgow City Council). So she did what a good democrat does; she made this malfeasance public.
Because you can have all the doubts and concerns about our media you want, you still have to recognise that it is a central part of our democracy, the means through which the governed find out what those governing them are up to. It was patently in the public interest for this to be known.
Yet this is the basis of the complaint to the Standards Commission. Fiona explicitly said that the standards procedures were being used to undermine democratic scrutiny. The Ethical Standards Commissioner was distinctly non-chuffed by that. He accused her of wanting to "undermine the system".
Who created the system? The unelected public officials it protects. Who runs the system? The unelected public officials it protects. What happens if you challenge this as wrong democratically? The system is used to punish you.
That is how you must think of the Standards Commission – it is a bureaucracy created by unelected public sector officials and staffed by career unelected public sector officials to protect unelected public sector officials. That it also penalises bad behaviour by politicians is neither here nor there.
The Ethical Standards Commissioner formally ruled that Fiona discovering malfeasance and making it public was ‘bullying’ of the official concerned. One of the means Scotland’s public sector empires use to ensure personal impunity is data protection. They claim that it is legitimate for politicians to question systems and procedures but not the actions of individuals. They are to be protected.
The Standards Commission claimed that if Fiona had simply made a complaint directly to the group of people she is accusing and left it at that for the group to respond, she would have done nothing wrong. But telling the public? No no no, that will not do.
The entire official mindset of ‘we can do anything we want and you can’t do anything about it’ is a poison infecting Scotland
So she was summarily found guilty and awaits sentencing next week. Just to be clear, Fiona earns £24,000 a year and the officials concerned will be on between five and ten times that salary. There certainly is bullying going on here…
How do I know? Well, apart from all of the above, the head of the Standards Commission recently appeared in front of a Holyrood committee and told them that some of what they’d heard from the accused in ongoing cases was lying. Just for the removal of doubt, Fiona’s is the only case currently ongoing. The person nominally responsible for ensuring justice is calling the person facing justice a liar in public prior to the hearing.
Now a very brief quick-fire round; Fiona faces suspension for up to a year and if it is more than six months there is a bye election (in Scotland unelected officials can unelect elected politicians). The officials at Glasgow City Council responsible face no consequences. More than that, they were actively found to have approved payments to themselves in a manner which was against the rules (the accounts commission called it ‘deeply concerning’) and no action at all was taken against them.
Remember I said the officials have all the resources? That includes lawyers. They sent legal letters to their ‘bosses’ (the officials nominally work for the councillors) warning them that if they asked questions about these ‘deeply concerning’ inappropriate payments they might be sued.
Like former Cllr Michal Breslin in Argyle and Bute who was also punished for trying to find out how senior pay levels were set, or Cllr Tommy Macpherson who is going through this right now or countless other politicians who have discovered since getting elected that they’re just the eye candy.
So let’s just finish off here with the following text taken from the Chief Executive of Argyle and Bute Council to Cllr Macpherson. It encapsulates the sheer scale of embedded official corruption in Scotland:
"Effective scrutiny is vital for ensuring transparency, good governance, and value for money. All scrutiny activity must be carried out in accordance with the National Code of Conduct for Elected Members. I particularly draw your attention to the Code's requirements in relation to respect and courtesy. Further, and again in accordance with the Code, scrutiny should focus on issues not individuals. Statements which can be taken to be public criticism of Officers' conduct, capability, or performance is a breach of the Code; any concerns should be raised through appropriate channels."
That is Pippa Milne, the Chief Executive of Argyle and Bute, warning that anyone who is democratically elected and asks questions about her unacceptable 14 per cent pay rise will be severely punished. The Standards Commission is becoming the heart of corruption in Scotland and the entire official mindset of ‘we can do anything we want and you can’t do anything about it’ is a poison infecting Scotland.
The good news here is that many people in Scotland really have had enough of this now. I’ve been advising Fiona on political strategy, a high-powered PR company is working for her pro-bono and a wealthy funder has her legal costs covered for as far as she wants to go. Which is all the way, because she is flat out accusing them of corruption. That makes this the most important pending democratic issue in Scotland.
Fiona’s hearing is next Thursday, 26 February. It is an open hearing but the Standards Commission really, really hope no-one goes. I’m going to make an effort to be there for that reason alone, and also to offer support for Fiona. If you too would like to come and make a small stand for Scotland’s democracy, the hearing is at Glasgow City Chambers. Be there at 10.30 for 11.