Wings Over Scotland

Ten years ago this month I was in a pub called The Porter in Bath with my girlfriend and her family, buying everyone whiskies and gabbling deliriously (I’d been up for over 40 hours at that point) about the significance of what had just happened.

Alex Salmond’s SNP had just broken the Scottish electoral system, winning an absolute majority of seats in a Parliament designed expressly to stop that from ever happening. A total of 72 pro-independence MSPs had been elected, and it was already clear that an independence referendum was going to happen despite the Labour Party’s best efforts. It was impossibly exciting.

This month I sat and watched 72 ostensibly pro-indy MSPs be elected again, but this time with my heart breaking, knowing that they would achieve nothing and indeed had no real intention to even try.

And I’ve had enough of feeling that way.

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The election’s over and the votes have been counted. It wasn’t to be for Alba this time, but the fight goes on.

Whilst there’s disappointment, there’s also vindication. SNP list votes were even greater than in 2016 and yet produced even fewer list MSPs.

There’s an irony in the SNP suffering from unionist tactical voting, having traduced Alba for allegedly gaming the system. In the end it was perfidious Albion not Alba as Labour and the Tories gave each other hauners – when will the SNP ever learn that the British can’t be trusted? They may write the rules but they sure don’t play by them.

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Misogynist racist midget Patrick Harvie is furious this week, which is always nice.

It seems he really doesn’t like it up ‘im.

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Craig Murray was today sentenced to eight months in prison for the crime of “jigsaw identification” of one or more of the complainers in the trial of Alex Salmond, despite the supposed existence in Scotland of a presumption against prison sentences for any crimes attracting a penalty of less than 12 months.

We believe he is the first person ever to be convicted of this extremely vaguely-defined crime, and certainly the first ever sentenced to imprisonment for it.

In her judgement Lady Dorrian cited a number of factors, one of which was that the case was an extremely high-profile one which had attracted a great deal of media attention. This was of course in large part due to the actions of an “unknown” person within the Scottish Government or Scottish civil service who illegally leaked the story to David Clegg, then of the Daily Record and now editor of The Courier.

In reality everyone in Scottish politics knows who this person was and whose orders they were acting under, but even though they’re not the subject of any current court case we cannot say their names or we too would face prosecution and imprisonment. (As ever, DO NOT speculate or hint about their identities in comments. Any such comments will be deleted and the commenter banned.)

In sentencing Murray to incarceration rather than the fine which is almost always used for contempt charges, Lady Dorrian emphasised the danger of dissuading victims of crime, and especially sexual assaults, from reporting the offence if they thought they might be identified publicly.

But it must be noted that NONE of the complainers against Mr Salmond were victims of any crime. The jury heard their evidence and the defence evidence – the latter of which went almost entirely unreported except by Craig Murray – and concluded that none of them had in fact been assaulted in any way whatsoever.

Several of the complainers gave evidence which in the light of the verdict suggested a strong case for charges of perjury, but no prosecutions (or, as far as we’re aware, even investigations) have followed.

At least 10 Scottish newspaper journalists have also published information which by any empirical measure enables the identification of complainers. Two separate independently-conducted opinion polls have found that far more people claim to have identified complainers via these newspaper publications than from Craig Murray’s blog. All the articles in question remain online, yet none of their authors have even been questioned or warned by the Crown Office or police, let alone prosecuted.

(The Crown Office has for over a year refused to tell this site whether we’re allowed to quote those articles or not.)

Craig Murray is only one of a long list of people supportive of Alex Salmond to have been prosecuted in connection with his trial – others, including this site, have been threatened – while absolutely nobody hostile to Mr Salmond has faced any criminal action. The official in charge of prosecutions in Scotland, the Lord Advocate James Wolffe, is a minister of the Scottish Government directly answerable to the First Minister. We are sure these matters are unconnected.

We understand, though we have not confirmed, that Craig Murray remains at liberty for now, pending a request for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court. He is an elderly man of previously impeccable character with a number of serious health conditions which could create a severe risk to his life in prison, and who clearly poses absolutely no sort of danger to society. His appeal fund is linked at the bottom of this post.