Wings Over Scotland

…simply don’t ask the question.

And the problem will magically go away.

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…appear to be about to roll over Leslie Evans.

Which in itself raises some extremely serious questions about the judgement of the First Minister who extended Evans’ contract by two years in January 2020, long after she’d known about the series of disastrous and costly blunders Evans had made in the Salmond investigation.

But that’s not even the real story.

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Someone forwarded a Freedom Of Information response to us today. It’s frighteningly illustrative of the kind of Scotland that the SNP are bringing into being.

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We’re sure most alert readers will by now have seen the purported “leak” of the actual results of the SNP’s mystery-shrouded regional list selections. While the figures are highly believable, we haven’t yet been able to obtain any corroboration for them being anything other than a plausible hoax.

The SNP has of course denied them, but they also denied our recent leak from the party’s draft manifesto and we know for sure that that was real. The trouble with lying all the time is that nobody believes you even if you occasionally tell the the truth.

Of course, there would be an easy way to prove the numbers were a fake – release the real ones, which is in any case the most fundamental element of transparency in a democratic election. And whatever they are could hardly be any more embarrassing than the rumours, which have candidates topping the list (and likely to get seats) on a shocking 2.4% of the vote.

Heavens, even Annie Wells managed 8.6%.

But there’s a much more important reason the SNP will never release the real results.

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There’s a strange new affliction affecting the SNP: fear of figures.

Now, we should say that we don’t believe for even a second that the SNP has actually had 10,000 new members in the last two days. It’s ridiculous to the point of insulting. But purely for the sake of argument, let’s imagine it was true.

Why would you say it like that?

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Like an old man getting up for the fourth time in the middle of the night, the Scottish Government has squeezed out another little dribble of its legal advice in respect of the conduct of its shambolic investigation into false allegations against Alex Salmond.

And to push that gross analogy to its outermost limit, it must have found releasing one of the documents in particular as painful as passing a rather large kidney stone.

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We’re only two-thirds of the way through Nicola Sturgeon’s evidence to the Fabiani inquiry, and there’s probably not much point in expressing our opinion on it because you could almost certainly have guessed what it was going to be. The First Minister has been disingenuous, evasive, defensive and at times outright dishonest.

But although we were expecting all of that, this truly shocked us:

That’s the First Minister flatly stating, under oath, that even now she doesn’t know who all the complainers are. And readers can make their own minds up about how credible a claim that is. But I can tell you this:

I know who they all are.

Craig Murray knows who they all are.

Every journalist who covered the trial knows who they all are.

(And we can reasonably assume their editors also know who they all are.)

In fact pretty much everyone who’s in any way connected to Scottish politics knows the identity of every single one of these women. If you’re willing to believe that we all do but Nicola Sturgeon doesn’t, well, fair enough. But also, I’m a Nigerian prince and I’d like to pass several million pounds through your bank account. Please get in touch.

We just put up a post, readers, but we’ve pulled it again because this has happened:

Because of this:

More as we get it, but this would seem to be an extraordinary move from the Tories if they weren’t pretty confident they had the backing of the other opposition parties. At a minimum it’s quite the scene-setter for tomorrow’s appearance of the First Minister in front of the Fabiani committee. We presume we don’t need to tell you to stay tuned.

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We’ll say one thing for Police Scotland – when it comes to Freedom Of Information requests, dealing with them compared to the Scottish Government or Crown Office is a breath of fresh air. Responses tend to be reasonably swift and you actually get some straight answers, like these.

And in this case they’re pretty remarkable answers.

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Just a couple of hours now.

From 12.30 this afternoon, Alex Salmond will attempt to tell the people of Scotland the truth about what happened to him in the last two years – a grave injustice which saw an innocent man have his reputation dragged through the gutter, be placed under incredible personal stress, be left greatly impoverished by proving his innocence, and then have the jury’s verdict endlessly traduced by the media and a gang of criminal conspirators protected from the consequences of their lies by lifelong anonymity.

His job will be a difficult one. Every single person in the room will be bitterly hostile to him – the four Unionist committee members because he’s Alex Salmond, and the others because he represents a deadly threat to the First Minister.

The inquiry’s convener – a woman sacked by Salmond years ago – will attempt to prevent him from presenting large swathes of evidence, despite having made him swear to tell “the whole truth”. The SNP members will try to run down the four-hour session with questions designed to only deflect from the real issue – the actions and behaviour of the Scottish Government. Andy Wightman will probably just cry.

We’ll be extremely surprised if there aren’t some attempts to slyly re-try Mr Salmond and paint him as a guilty man who cheated justice, and to drag up salacious details of the allegations in an effort to smear him in front of the cameras.

We believe Alex Salmond will be more than equal to the task.

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When the Faculty Of Advocates – the most senior body of lawyers/QCs in the country – is handing out barely-veiled smackdowns like this to the First Minister, then you know you’re in some pretty uncharted jungle.

Nicola Sturgeon’s Scotland is a rogue state.

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I was until this week a member of the SNP’s Conferences Committee. After being elected last November I sought to fulfil my “manifesto” pledge — that is, to attempt to restore the power of the membership, which has been systematically eroded by the party leadership over the last two years, through conference, the proper constitutional vehicle for all internal party democracy and governance.

I had hoped that Stewart Stevenson, the new National Secretary and convener of the Conferences Committee, would be similarly inclined.

In summary, my endeavours have been ignored.

In the three months since our election (supposedly more than halfway towards a spring conference), and despite repeated emails, documents and requests for meetings, the Conferences Committee has never been convened.

As a result I have resigned from both the committee and the SNP, and the reasons for my doing so are outlined below.

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