Two weeks ago, when we last checked in on the Alex Salmond affair, we led with the calls for an independent, judge-led inquiry into the whole thing as confidence that the Scottish Parliament could actually hold the Scottish Government to account.
Well readers, it has got much, much worse since then.
Here’s what’s happened. First, the MSPs on the Holyrood inquiry into the Salmond affair voted 5-4 against publishing the former First Minister’s evidence. As a result, he refused to appear. They claimed this was on legal advice, but opponents smelt a rat because the vote was split exactly along independence lines.
As a result the Spectator, which had previously been calling for a judge-led inquiry, went to court to seek a clarification about whether the original judgement precluded the publication of the evidence. In their own words: “Lady Dorrian made it clear that the court had no intention of obstructing a parliamentary inquiry or stopping a free press from doing its job — the Salmond evidence can now be published and the whole story told.”
Yet this is not what happened. Despite the judge’s clarification, the Committee once again voted against publishing Salmond’s submission – again pleading legal advice, although in light of Lady Dorian’s comments it isn’t obvious what this is. Journalists have also pointed out that this second vote was on publishing a revised submission which MSPs haven’t actually seen.
Now the decision has been referred to the Corporate Body of the Scottish Parliament, which meets today. Its membership comprises five MSPs, one from each party (the Independent used to be a Green), plus an SNP chair. If a majority of the ordinary members vote for publication, will the Presiding Officer side with the minority to block it?
Whatever happens today, the saga seems to be turbo-charging a sea-change in attitudes towards the Scottish Parliament. Adam Tomkins, a high-profile Conservative MSP and no devosceptic, has been leading the charge, comparing the state of the SNP administration to that of John Major’s Government in the ‘sleaze’ era.
New SNP logo revealed:— pic.twitter.com/xXoYXo82TY
— Adam Tomkins MSP (@ProfTomkins) February 12, 2021
Meanwhile Mandy Rhodes, the editor of Holyrood magazine, has been if anything even more brutal. In an editorial entitled ‘Something Rotten’, she brutally assesses not just the Salmond inquiry but the litany of broken promises and governance failures we cover so regularly in this column. Rhodes concludes:
“They say that a fish rots from the head down. And something is beginning to reek. The question will be whether by 6 May the electorate is simply prepared to just hold its nose.”
That’s quite a journey for a magazine which marked the advent of Nicola Sturgeon’s first ministership by branding her the ‘Angel of the North’ and running a cover posing the question ‘Can she do no wrong?’. And here’s Alex Massie, another man who’s no devosceptic but finds himself compelled by circumstances to reach for our hymn sheet:
“For this now risks becoming something greater than a mere fiasco. It is fast reaching the point at which it embarrasses all Scotland’s political parties and the institution of parliament itself. Holyrood’s committee structure is plainly incapable of dealing with issues of this kind and Scotland’s political culture has – equally obviously – failed to produce or promote representatives capable of discerning the distinction between party interest and the public interest.”
For his part, Salmond remains keen to testify. The Herald reports that he has ‘cleared his diary’ after submitting the revised version of his evidence. But he continues to insist that its publication is a precondition of his appearing before MSPs, and the Nationalists seem deeply committed to preventing that from happening.
In the meantime, the SNP have suffered from their usual brace of bad-news stories. Jeane Freeman, the Health Secretary, has been forced to deny that officials spent days ‘plotting how to spin’ an official report into care home deaths. Stephen Daisley writes about the Scottish Government’s ‘education stitch-up’, as ministers shunt the publication of an official report into education back until after the upcoming elections – although apparently the courts may yet intervene. Taxpayers apparently face a £100m bill over a bungled prosecution of businessmen involved in a takeover of Glasgow Rangers football club.
And on the party civil war side, we have Kenny MacAskill, a Nationalist MP and critic of Sturgeon, calling for the Scottish independence campaign to be formally separated from the SNP.
But as ever, the question is: will any of this make an impact on the Scottish electorate? There are some signs of a fall in poll support for independence, which is very welcome. But the Nationalists have faced a torrent of awful news stories for months without it knocking them off track to form the next Scottish Government. Clearly the unionists need to up their game – hopefully a slick new attack ad which emerged on Twitter this week is a taste of things to come.
Utterly utterly damning attack ad on Sturgeon and her handling of the pandemic pic.twitter.com/x4TnZ8euzD
— Calgie (@christiancalgie) February 15, 2021
P.S. Writing in the Times, Kenny Farquharson points out that the Government’s mooted ‘Festival of Brexit’ has been captured by the usual suspects and acquired a new working title: ‘Festival UK* 2022’. We humbly submit that if Ministers are serious about waging the ‘culture war’, they can start by making sure that a festival celebrating this country doesn’t feel the need to qualify the name of the country. Honestly.