If it turns out to be true that the Scottish
Government paid £55,000 pounds to coach civil servants before they gave
testimony to the Salmond Inquiry and if it also turns out to be true that these
same civil servants met each other prior to testifying, then it will be
impossible to avoid the conclusion that the whole system of Government in
Scotland has a problem.
I have no sources. If there is a deep throat telling
journalists secrets, he is not telling them to me. I don’t therefore know any
more than anyone else in Scotland about what has really been happening for
these past few years. But it looks from the steady drip of information coming
to the papers that there is someone who knows a lot and that someone is willing
to tell.
There may be a rather surprising Bob Wingsward helping
to attack a leader he must once have loved for the sake of a leader he loves
better. The attacks coming from members of the independence movement are quite
astonishing. Is it their disappointment that Sturgeon has not delivered a
second referendum or rather their despair that she never will that is behind
this? I like to think however that they too are genuinely shocked at what has
happened to Sturgeon’s Scotland.
But it wasn’t of course Sturgeon who build the present
Scotland. It was Alex Salmond. From the moment Salmond became First Minister
Scotland changed.
There has always in Britain been a distinction between
the civil service and the Government. The former would advise and help, but it
would never become the Government. It was this that changed in Scotland
especially when the SNP gained a majority and began to push for the
independence referendum in 2014.
It gradually became clear that anyone in public life
who depended on the Scottish Government in any way had to be careful not to
disagree. The Scottish Government White Paper “Scotland’s Future” was written
by civil servants, but it read as if it was written by independence supporters,
because it was.
This was something quite new in British political
life. No one could suggest that the civil service in London since the European
Referendum has been filled exclusively with Brexiteers let alone Tories. Quite
the reverse.
But in Scotland in order to reach the top of the civil
service, the police, various public bodies, universities etc, it became
necessary to at the very least not disagree publicly with the SNP.
This process has accelerated since the referendum in
2014. Not merely does Sturgeon identify Scotland with the Scottish Government
and the SNP, it has become obvious that criticism of both Sturgeon and SNP
policies will have a detrimental affect on someone’s career.
Suddenly we find that an American academic follows the
SNP line. Why? It is unlikely such a person would even have heard of the SNP
prior to coming to Scotland. On the other hand, another academic expert on
viruses is frozen out because he is known to oppose the SNP.
Scotland has become centralised and with the
centralisation dissent has become harder still. It has meant that there have
been few insiders willing to go public with what they know about the inner
workings of the Scottish establishment.
If the Scottish Government wants something there is a
phone call or a meeting and a promise is made of something good that might
happen and an implied threat of something bad that might happen and it is
usually enough to get the required opinion to be said.
It is this context that is behind the stories of civil
servant witnesses being coached and working together to get their stories
straight. Such behaviour is unimaginable in London, because if a civil servant
felt pressured to do this, he would leak it to the Guardian. But in Scotland
who can you leak such a story to and feel safe? The story might reach the
paper, but you’d still have to face the wrath of the SNP on Monday morning. If
you were lucky you would be sent to Unst to count fish in the sea and be
grateful you weren’t swimming with them.
If civil servants have been coached to be good
witnesses and if they have shared notes, we are left with the intriguing
possibility that this happened during the Salmond trial too. Were these
witnesses coached and did they share notes? Were consultants paid to help them
testify. If you are willing to tamper with witnesses for the Salmond Inquiry,
why not the Salmond trial?
We are left to wonder why these witnesses came forward
in the first place with their testimony about what Salmond allegedly did all
those years earlier. Did it just happen spontaneously? But an organisation that
is careful to make witnesses say the right thing and indeed journalists and
academics, might not leave there being witnesses to mere spontaneity. Promises
might be made, with the alternative suggested.
The problem goes to the heart of the independence
movement. It is not accidental that the complete identification of the civil
service with the Scottish Government occurred during the SNP’s power. It hasn’t
happened in London, nor did it happen before the SNP in Edinburgh. It happened
because for Scottish nationalists independence is a goal that transcends
everything else.
The fervour of the disappointment of losing in 2014
has distorted the characters and warped the morality of some leading
independence supporters. We were so close; couldn’t we bend a rule so that we
might win next time. We mustn’t have too many scruples when the goal is so
worth it. So, a reward was promised a threat made, but once you go down that
path it becomes easier to go a little further.
Something rotten has been happening in Scotland worse
I believe than the scandal that brought down Richard Nixon. It is getting very
close to Sturgeon now.
Some independence supporters must realise that what
they are doing to bring Sturgeon down will have a negative consequence for the
prospects of independence. Without Sturgeon, the SNP could not mount a
successful independence campaign at least in the short term.
But independence supporters even those who see
Sturgeon for what she has become, must also take responsibility for why she
became it. The failure to accept defeat and the excessive disappointment and
determination to reverse that defeat as quickly as possible is the cause of the
corruption that has taken over the Scottish Government and the SNP. It is this
that led to the Sturgeon personality cult that meant she began to believe that
she could do no wrong, and which I suspect led her to take one more step than
was sensible, which looks now so close to bringing her down.
Politics in Scotland since 2014 has become not merely
divided but excessive. It is this that perhaps has led to a conspiracy at the
heart of Scottish Government to send a man to jail for a crime he did not
commit.
To have the civil service and Government and perhaps
police working together to convict you is a fearsome position to be in. It’s
the sort of thing that used to happened in Eastern Europe.
There must be an independent public inquiry into the
Scottish Civil Service. That inquiry must be formed from people from outside
Scotland it must have the power change the Scottish Civil Service utterly.
We don’t yet know quite what the motivation is for witnesses
colluding with each other and being coached, but it fits in with the secretive
workings of Sturgeon and the SNP Government. It fits in with how the SNP used
to be a party of unity with no one dissenting and everyone singing from the
same hymn sheet. But there are discordant voices now and right at the centre of
the first circle is Sturgeon fighting a battle on multiple fronts, desperate to
hide something because otherwise witnesses would merely need to be told to tell
the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.