AT times this week it seemed as if the proper business of politics – the resolution of genuine and sometimes profound difference through civilised discourse - no longer exists. The pressure of the pandemic, the polarisation that is the curse of our times and the amplification of both by social media mean that debate quickly becomes denunciation and fair argument is replaced by furious factional anger even though we saw in the US Capitol exactly where such things lead.
Of course individuals shouldn’t hide what they believe so I am sure it is a bit of a relief for all of us to have revealed – finally – the true contemptuous opinion of journalists like Andrew Neil and Fraser Nelson about Scotland and its government, though perhaps BBC management might like to reflect on whether they should have noticed a bit sooner something of an edge to Mr Neil’s take on those matters.
Anyway, now we know and they are absolutely entitled to their view though I would suggest to Mr Neil – speaking as someone who has done a fair bit more out-in-the-open politics – that he does little for his reputation or his cause by calling those who do the difficult work of maintaining justice in Scotland the “Clown Office”. The joke is actually on him.
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However, what is worse is the attempt to denigrate and delegitimise that same institution by some Scottish politicians in the hope that they might pluck temporary electoral advantage from the wreckage of a vital part of our society.
It is regrettable yet typical that Ruth Davidson should be caught doing so but Jackie Baillie’s performance was utterly shocking. She should have known better.
Last Wednesday, I was sitting in the chamber between her and the Lord Advocate when he answered her urgent question.
James Wolffe is a decent man and a brilliant lawyer. What he isn’t is a politician. He was crystal clear that he had no involvement in the decision by the Crown Office about Parliament’s possible contempt of court but instead of accepting that Jackie continued to mutter during his entire contribution, criticising his answers.
No one in their right mind who knows James would believe for a moment that he would be susceptible to, let alone complicit in, any attempt to interfere with his function as the fully and completely independent head of the prosecution service.
Lord Advocates are of course also the Scottish Government’s chief legal advisers but they perform that role entirely and utterly separately from their other roles and always have done even when they were also working politicians.
The last elected member in the role was Ronnie King-Murray the Labour MP for Leith but Peter Fraser was a Tory MP before becoming Lord Advocate and Colin Boyd had been an active Labour Party member. None of those was accused of even blurring the line between political loyalty and independent professional duty.
It was in fact Jack McConnell (above) who in his appointment of Elish Angiolini started to move away from the political link, and her retention in the first SNP Administration by Alex Salmond confirmed that policy for Scotland.
The situation is far more political south of the border of course. For example the much criticised Suella Braverman, the Attorney General (the equivalent UK Government post to the Lord Advocate) is currently the sitting Tory MP for Fareham whilst her predecessor Geoffrey Cox (the Tory MP for Torridge and West Devon) was so much a party politician that he was chosen to laud Brexit and Teresa May from the platform of the 2018 Tory Party Conference.
In his answers in the Scottish Parliament on Wednesday James Wolffe reminded his former trainee, the Tory MSP Donald Cameron, that the Lord Advocate’s job is to “uphold the rule of law and the administration of justice in Scotland” and added that “it is a safeguard for the rule of law that there are senior lawyers in the Government appointed on a non-party basis (that is the Lord Advocate and Solictor General) whose fundamental responsibility it is to protect the integrity of the administration of justice in Scotland”.
That is what James Wolffe and all his modern predecessors have done and it is deeply destructive to the well being of our whole society if their impeccable work is assailed and undermined for party political reasons without a scintilla of evidence.
Journalists who have become partisans in the fray, fulminating from the south of France, may not know enough to understand the danger.
But working Scottish politicians certainly do.
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