Alex Salmond was acquitted one year ago. At the time I
was astonished that a jury could fail to believe nine women witnesses. It is
always difficult to prove what happened in private some years ago, but if it is
not possible to convict a man of sexual assault in Scotland when there are nine
witnesses, we might as well give up prosecuting such cases entirely. Like many people
with no inside knowledge of how the Scottish Government and the SNP work I was
left baffled. I thought Mr Salmond was extremely lucky. Judging from the evidence
I had read in the newspapers I would have convicted him.
I now believe that if Mr Salmond had been convicted
there would have been a monstrous miscarriage of justice. It has become clear during
the past year, that there was a conspiracy against him. Far from being perverse,
the jury were unusually perceptive. Their decision to acquit Mr Salmond was not
supposed to have happened. If Mr Salmond had been jailed, we would have
discovered nothing about the conspiracy. Whatever mistakes the Scottish Government
might have made in its investigation of a former minister would have been justified
by the result that nine women had achieved justice.
We discovered yesterday that Nicola Sturgeon too has
been acquitted of breaking the ministerial code, but the evidence against her
has been building up for the past year. It has become like the rock that Sisyphus
had to drag up a hill. At any moment it is liable to fling her to the bottom of
the hill. The hill is her dream of Scottish independence. She has now become
the burden that the SNP bears. For a year she has appeared on TV every day and
it has been enough to convert many to the cause, but now when she appears viewers
are reminded of the woman who didn’t know, couldn’t remember and wasn’t there.
The Scottish Government promised to be forthcoming and
helpful to the Alex Salmond Inquiry, but it wasn’t. It did everything it could
to prevent the Committee seeing the evidence. It required a vote of no
confidence in John Swinney to get legal information released. If the Scottish
Government has nothing to hide, why did it hide?
But gradually the evidence emerged anyway. A policy
was changed so that former ministers could be investigated and then lo and
behold Alex Salmond was investigated, but Nicola Sturgeon knew nothing about it
and hadn’t authorised close colleagues of hers to do anything. We are supposed
to believe that Sturgeon who is on TV because she can’t bear to delegate was not
in charge and not involved as her chief of staff and husband wrote messages and
the whole SNP party machine was trying to find evidence against Mr Salmond.
It is not so much any one piece of evidence that shows
Sturgeon’s involvement. It may also be possible to think that one text message
was innocent even if it appeared to be guilty. But just as other things being
equal we ought to be believe nine women if they claim they were sexually
assaulted, so as each piece of evidence of a conspiracy came to light it
eventually became impossible to believe that all was innocent in the Scottish
Government. It is clear merely from the tone of various messages that senior
people close to Sturgeon were at least hostile to Mr Salmond and that they hoped
that he would be convicted. Yet we are supposed to believe that she was not hostile.
To read about disappointment that someone had failed
to deliver witnesses against Mr Salmond, or that someone else was wavering about
testifying but was then keen to see him convicted, is to have a view inside the
SNP and the Scottish Government that is sinister and frightening. If even Alex
Salmond could have all these people trying to put him in jail, what would
happen to an ordinary citizen who made important people in the SNP angry. It’s like
poisoning someone with Novichok to demonstrate that if you betray Putin, he
will find a way to get you. If Alex Salmond had been jailed no one would have dared
to disagree with Nicola Sturgeon.
If I had been on the jury a year ago, with the
information given to me by the BBC and others I would have convicted. I knew
nothing about any conspiracy. I knew nothing about the behind the scenes manoeuvring
against Alex Salmond. But it was not the mainstream media that knew
the truth then. It was people like Craig Murray who have done most to tell the
rest of us what really happened. Now it looks as if he may be convicted of
contempt of court and perhaps sent to jail. It would be a warning to everyone
else to keep silent. Mr Murray is a political opponent, but he also a human
being who has tried to do good. We should all wish him well.
It would be ironic if someone who tried to tell the
truth were to be jailed, while someone who tried to evade telling the truth
were to be acquitted. The weight of evidence of a conspiracy against Alex
Salmond is now overwhelming. The evidence we have discovered in the past year
only makes sense if there was a conspiracy. It is also the only reasonable
explanation for why nine women were not believed by the jury.
Sturgeon will not resign. She would not have resigned
even if she had been found to break the ministerial code. But what matters now
is that Scots of all political views join together to get rid of the corruption
that has taken over the Scottish Government and the SNP. What is the point of
gaining independence if you end up with a Government that can conspire against Alex
Salmond? If it can conspire against him, it can conspire against you. Anyone
who thinks that we could get rid of Sturgeon after independence might as well
suppose that the Russian people can get rid of Putin.
If we can deprive the SNP and the Greens of a
majority, it might just be possible to investigate further, delve deeper. Imagine
what evidence a full public inquiry into the Scottish Government would reveal. It
would show that Sturgeon has not merely broken the ministerial code, but much
else besides. At that point she will lie at the bottom of the hill crushed by
the weight of evidence.
Thanks to @Cartoonsbyjosh http://cartoonsbyjosh.co.uk
