Ruth Wishart: Holyrood is no match for sleaze and scandal of Westminster

This interesting detail somehow failed to find its way into the cv he offered up to those nice folks who appointed him to lead a watchdog operation overseeing, er, ­business appointments of former ­ministers and civil servants. In his defence, Eric ­Pickles has made it clear that this particular watchdog lacks any teeth; a sizeable canine handicap.

Meanwhile former PM David Cameron emerged from his glamping shepherd’s hut to advise us that there was nothing of ­interest to see, and would we please be good enough to move on. By then even those with the dodgiest eyesight had ­spotted that Lex Greensill, founder of the ­eponymous, failed finance company, had somehow manoeuvred himself into a desk in the cabinet office, from whence he was able to flash a business card as special adviser to the top man. You don’t have to possess an ­enhanced sense of smell to get the undeniable whiff of corruption from all this.

But hold hard. It seems Mr Cameron’s post-premier enterprises have a broader scope than we knew. It turns out that he is also a paid adviser to a US healthcare ­company Illumina which has picked up a tidy £123 million contract from Dave’s pal Matt ­Hancock, AKA the current health minister and erstwhile sharer of ­afterwork swallies with his old boss and our chum, Lex Greensills. That tidy sum came ­Illumina’s way a week after Cameron and Hancock shared a platform at a geonomics conference.

Indeed little Matt himself has come under scrutiny after another health contract went to a company where his sister is ­allegedly a director and he and his extended family are all shareholders.

So the Lord Pickles did not exaggerate when he talked of no boundaries; he might have added that there were, instead, well trodden two-way streets between ­Whitehall and lucrative jobs, sometimes, as in the not so strange case of Bill ­Crothers, two of these at once. Crothers, a civil service secondee from the private ­sector, managed to work as a government overseer of procurement, and a ­director of Greensills simultaneously. Nice, ­extremely well paid, work if you can get it.

I therefore have to concede that in the matter of ministerial sleaze and scandal Holyrood has proved pretty second rate. The legislation passed in 2016 and ­enacted two years later does make its ­register of lobbying a matter of law, ­unlike Westminster’s more casual ­expectations (though, in fairness, it’s not without ­loopholes.) Yet over the last two decades our ­“scandals” have proved ­relatively small beer.

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Henry McLeish quit as First Minister barely a year into the job after failing to register that his constituency office had been sublet. It was, he famously observed, a muddle rather than a fiddle. Wendy ­Alexander, Labour leader after the SNP went into government, had to leave the stage when a Jersey-based donor was found to have popped a £950 donation into her campaign kitty. The sort of sum which some of Mr Cameron’s friends and neighbours set aside for their bubbly bills.

Scottish Tory leader David McLetchie came a well publicised cropper when it turned out he’d used parliament funded cabs for private assignations with his ­dentist. Apparently he burned through some £11,500 in five years in this manner. The kind of sum for which Boris wouldn’t get out of his bed. Or anyone else’s.

And former First Minister Jack ­McConnell, who had worked alongside John Reid’s son in a Scottish lobbying and PR outfit, quit when he first became a Holyrood candidate saying he wouldn’t want to contemplate a potential conflict of interest.

It’s true that further down the political pecking order there have been what we might charitably call lapses of judgement. Mike Watson, by then another lately ­developed Lord, tried out a potential new career as a pyromaniac after setting fire to hotel curtains. As they used to observe in Glasgow courtroom dramas – “alcohol was a factor”. It did not end well for his Lordship, who was obliged to spend some months at Her Majesty’s pleasure – one of life’s great misnomers.

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Then there was the Sheridan saga where Tommy, the people’s tribune, was judged in court to have been a ­little ­economical with the actualite in the ­matter of ­recalling some of his leisure pursuits.

But, you know, amateur stuff compared with passing around fat government contracts to personal pals and party donors, or texting cabinet secretaries on their private mobile numbers asking them to look favourably on a company in whose success you have a major financial interest.

AS the Scottish party leaders take to the airwaves to sell their electoral wares, it’s not easy to visualise any of them ankle deep in political sleaze. The voters may or may not like the cut of their assorted jibs, but I doubt any electors are putting their cross against a name destined to feature in shaming headlines about their extra mural financial activities.

Admittedly Tory leader Douglas Ross has been found to have been Awol at politically sensitive moments on account of preferring to run up and down the side of football pitches in little black shorts. However it can be not so exclusively ­revealed that the fee for that sporting life is hardly wealth beyond the dreams of avarice.

NO, the charges which are easier to make of our elected leaders in Scotland relate to hypocrisy rather than nest ­feathering. The Trident issue is a case in point. London Labour continues to back its ­retention whilst Labour in Scotland voted to scrap it. As have the Greens. ­Nevertheless Anas Sarwar has chosen to go with the Starmer flow rather than ­accept his own party’s posture in ­Scotland.

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My own current MSP, takes the same pro Trident view; not unconnected with Faslane being in her constituency. It’s a constituency where gaming the system has long been an electoral hobby. Jackie Balllie’s wafer-thin majority comes courtesy of a large number of natural Tories giving her their vote as their preferred means of dishing the Nats.

There’s Willie Rennie, once the loudest cheerleader for Europe, now content to leave any thought of rejoining till he can persuade the PM to reverse Brexit. And is that an ice floe I spot in Hell? Whilst ­publishing yet another text extolling the joys of a federalist Britain which is ­endlessly promoted in opposition circles and somehow never delivered.

Or Douglas Ross, utterly refusing to concede how the Brexit vote he ­supported skewered the fishing ­industry in his own backyard. Punting his ­Westminster troops as fighting for Scotland as they vote against her interests at every ­available turn. Tying himself in verbal knots ­trying to explain how Holryood ­Tories ­unanimously voted for incorporating the United Nations Convention on Children’s Rights whilst the Westminster nodding dogs backed the Prime Minister taking our parliament to the Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, observing the fray from her enviable position at the top of the polling, the First Minister urges us to recapture the spirit of 2014. We stand ready to do just that – but it was built on the back of a vibrant campaign. You don’t have to chap doors to cheer for independence.