Right, so apparently we can all debate the role of the Lord Advocate but not the Lord Advocate herself. (Where have I heard this recently? Oh yes…) The reason is that she’s a Good Egg and above reproach. I will start taking these kind of comments with more seriousness when members of the establishment start saying ‘oh, such and such is a Bad Egg and crap at their job’.
You just don’t get the ruling elite telling you any other person in the ruling elite is anything other than extremely good at their job and so honest they make George Washington look like a sneaky bastard. I mean, to be clear, all the reason I have been given to assume Dorothy Bain is a ‘good sort’ is precisely the same as the information I was given about Keir Starmer.
No-one but no-one said he was anything other than a scrupulously honest man who obeyed the rules. Well that ain’t what my eyes can see. He was the front man for a campaign of lies, distortion and rule-breaking designed to capture the Labour Party for a given faction. Since then ‘probity’ is not high on my list of descriptors.
So yeah, great, the powerful tell you the powerful are always good. Colour me unimpressed. Now let’s have an actual look. The issue at hand is whether giving detailed information to a politician which will help him manage a party political difficulty with a testing election coming up is normal.
First, I’d really like to know more about this. How many indictments does the Crown Office give the First Minister a month of advance warnings about? Since there were over 90,000 court cases in Scotland last year, let’s assume it isn’t ‘all of them’. Apparently it is only ‘politically sensitive’ ones. But here I want to bring my ‘hold on, what do you mean?’ face to proceedings.
There is an important question – is it ‘politically’ sensitive or is it ‘governmentally’ sensitive? Despite what you might think, ‘politics’ isn’t the realm of government ministers, government is. If an opposition politician was caught doing something illegal, what is the governmental implications that mean one one of their opponents gets to know about this before they do?
Because if it is party political, the answer is ‘zero’. If the police were leaking party political information to a governing politician then yes, that is corruption. Why is the Crown Office doing it? The Judiciary is separate and distinct from the Executive (or meant to be) and it is for good reason. So is there a governmental interest in the prosecution of Peter Murrell?
I don’t think anyone thinks the investigation of Peter Murrell and Nicola Sturgeon and the prosecution of Murrell have unfolded in a normal way
Honestly, I can’t see it. Peter Murrell is not and never has been part of government and this involves no question of government policy. And if you want a thought experiment to see that, imagine Peter Murrell was Chief Executive of the Scottish Labour Party. What then would be the legitimate (SNP) governmental interest? Or reverse it all; if the government of Scotland was Labour and they were getting a month advance notice of information which is clearly politically damaging to the SNP, is it right that they get it?
I can see no aspect of government policy which is related to this in any way whatsoever. By miles the two biggest impacts of this would be that politicians could place pressure to push the hearing back until after the election and they could prepare a party political defence in advance. There is no clear evidence that the former happened, but there wouldn’t be, would there?
In fact at this stage I don’t think anyone thinks the investigation of Peter Murrell and Nicola Sturgeon and the prosecution of Murrell have unfolded in a normal way. It seems assumed in the media that it is ‘OK’ that they are getting special treatment because this is ‘sensitive’. But hold on, show me the legislation which says ‘powerful people should be treated different from everyone else under Scots law if someone thinks it is sensitive’? All pursuit of justice is sensitive to someone.
I think there has been a remarkable degree of commentator tolerance for governmental involvement in this whole affair from the beginning. I don’t care what anyone says, I do not believe Nicola Sturgeon resigned and then happened to be investigated a few days later. She clearly got advance notice. Is this a service open to everyone?
This all seems wrong to me. The law doesn’t bend itself round political convenience – and letting Swinney know in advance about the Murrell charges appears to have no relevance to the operation of government but clearly conveys comparative party political benefit for the ruling administration.
Let’s come back to honesty here. I know people say Dorothy Bain is an honest woman. Fine, let me take that at face value. But that was said about the last two Lord Advocates as well and they presided over an actual full-on malicious prosecution. Not failed, not flawed, malicious. That is an intentional act of dishonesty.
So if this was still going on under Bain we’d know about it? Except Mark Hirst has just been found to have been subject to a malicious prosecution as well (also over the Sturgeon case). A Sheriff dismissed the charges in under five minutes. They were always laughable. Hirst challenged the whole process and it was found to be overwhelmingly wrong – malicious, intentional and against the public interest. This hasn’t;t made the media.
That being the second malicious prosecution in a few years, Dorothy Bain is really concerned and, given her honesty, is doing some soul searching and asking why this keeps happening to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Scotland. Oh, no, she’s not – despite two withering judgements she’s appealing the decisions because it’s your money so what they hey.
I just think that seems like a lot of malicious prosecutions for such a bunch of utterly honest Good Eggs. Of course Bain is also responsible for pursuing Palestine Action supporters but has not acted on Isreal in any way. There is plenty about her conduct about which I have questions which are not assuaged by someone telling me how wonderful she is.
Inconsistency is the human condition and it is why we codify rules to ensure that honesty is not left as a matter of personal opinion
The point isn’t that I think she is corrupt. The point is that corruption isn’t an attribute we carry around with us like ‘tall’ or ‘French’ or ‘good at golf’, it is an action, and it is an action which is not confined to a certain group of people with some genetic failure that makes them the ‘bad eggs’.
Good people do bad things, honest people do dishonest things. Inconsistency is the human condition and it is why we codify rules to ensure that honesty is not left as a matter of personal opinion.
I flat out refuse to believe that anything since the start of the Sturgeon/Salmond affairs is normal. None of it (really, none at all) would have happened outside political circles. One way or another this is political justice, justice operating differently because politicians are involved – and whether you think that means conspiracy or just inconsistency doesn’t change that fact.
Until someone can show me some solid governmental reason why Swinney should have had this information in advance I shall continue to believe he shouldn’t have – and ‘managing PR’ is not a legitimate governmental reason. So the person that provided the information has acted in a manner designed to confer political advantage. And that is, well, corruption.
Yes, it is a corruption that is rooted in the flawed constitutional set-up that means Scotland is clearly in breach of the separation of Executive and Judiciary that we see in every single other developed western democracy. But it is their choice to maintain that.
And it changes nothing anyway. We’re far too used to the powerful both justifying and judging themselves and then letting themselves of the hook anyway. Strip away the noise – the Lord Advocate supplied information to John Swinney which had only the purpose of conferring party political advantage to him and did nothing to pursue the ends of good government.
That is the only question here, and all Dorothy Bain’s pals can write in and tell me what a total cracker of a person she is and I think (metaphorically speaking) ‘that’s a mitigating factor for sentencing – it is irrelevant in making decisions of guilt and innocence’. Show me the evidence, and explain why Swinney needed to know, or accept that this was wrong.