Now is the time for our politicians to get serious

Published on Sunday 23 August 2009 22:38

TODAY'S Holyrood debate on Megrahi's release should be a pivotal moment for Scotland. It should allow us to hear MSPs at their most thoughtful and forceful as they tackle a decision with moral, political, economic and social consequences.

It should contain argument, eloquence, feeling and logic. It should contain surprises as MSPs from all sides buck "party lines" to express their own individually held beliefs. It should depart from the same high point reached in the near-ubiquitous public debate on Megrahi and MacAskill over recent days. It should understand that words like compassion and forgiveness have flown down from Scotland's pulpits to be applied and argued over by people of all religions and none.

Today should witness a great leap forward in the maturing of Scottish democracy. But in all probability, it won't. And that's a tragically wasted opportunity.

Against all the odds, an act of world leadership occurred last week in Scotland – and quite evidently no-one quite remembers when that last happened.

Shielding voters from the real world with false assurances about our collective clout, credit-worthiness, competitiveness, health and happiness, UK politicians have treated the public like teething babies, disturbed by anything tougher to digest than a Farleys rusk.

We've been so cushioned from complex realities that a tough, important, reasoned argument actually sounds strange. British domestic and foreign policy has been second-guessing Daily Mail editorials so long, it's unsettling to witness leadership.

But that's what happened. Whether you agree or disagree with the decision made by Kenny MacAskill, an act of leadership occurred. The ball was passed to a position slightly ahead of the Scottish public, not to our feet – as if we might be capable of finally moving from fixed positions, engrained attitudes towards right and wrong, certainties about us and them – all the rigid thinking that has characterised a judgmental society going nowhere fast. And the move has caught almost everyone wrong-footed.

The result has been synthetic fury. Headlines full of it.

The Mirror reported fury over Colonel Gaddafi dragging the Queen, Prince Andrew and Gordon Brown into the row over the release of the Lockerbie bomber after the Libyan leader thanked them for "encouraging" the Scottish government to free the terminally ill Megrahi. This is not fury-making but laughable. Who among Mirror readers believes the Queen or Prince Andrew intervened?

So where is the fury? Not in the Mirror itself. Its own editorial observes: "Yesterday's humane ruling was justice tempered by compassion, a decision proving we as a civilised society are superior to the terrorists."

Is there fury that Gordon Brown cannot control the opinions and actions of another world leader? Fury that Scottish flags can be bought and waved by Libyans? What kind of infantile fury is this – this behaviour is beyond our control.

Gaddafi may be cunningly mixing it, clumsily grateful, or may believe the British state works like his one (where the head of state decides everything). None of these possibilities justifies fury.

Clearly it will be almost impossible for opposition politicians to create light, not heat, in today's debate, which will therefore fall very far short of the intelligent, detailed conversations I think Scots have been having with one another all weekend.

After a Book Festival event I spoke with a Swedish member of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee who lost his best friend in the Pan Am 103 bombing. He had read the entire transcript of MacAskill's 25-minute statement before forming the opinion that compassionate release was probably the best thing in the circumstances. There was no triumph or fury in his words. Just sadness.

A 16-year-old asked if the Americans have a provision for compassionate release because their reaction to the release seems so completely different from ours. According to US criminal law professor Douglas Berman, there is, but its application is "notoriously stingy".

He observes that "the reactions of the White House to Scotland's decision spotlights that the concept of compassionate release is still not seriously embraced in the United States". The vitriolic letter this weekend from the director of the FBI, Robert Mueller, bears this out.

Quite simply, Kenny MacAskill's Lockerbie decision was a case of the tail wagging the dog and this has upset an international pecking order of status, hegemony, power and control. Scotland ignored America. Libya ignored Gordon Brown.

The small country and the "guilty" country acted like the superpowers they are not and American public opinion has been outraged.

It would have been one thing to ignore George W – though indeed Tony Blair jumped to his bidding – but now that America has taken the courageous step of electing a progressive, black, Euro-friendly leader, how come Obama is being ignored?

It must be hard for Americans to realise that their particular world view ends at their borders, no matter how appealing their advocate or threatening their Defence Secretary.

Surely this life lesson is long overdue?

Scotland, in the shape of Kenny MacAskill, begged to differ with the USA over the importance of compassion – a legal concept apparently common to both. The hurt, clout and culture of the American relatives has neither been ignored nor placed centre-stage.

And in Scotland, an opportunity has been created to ditch sterile, histrionic debate into something meaningful. Can our politicians walk away from the debris of the old politics and astonish us with their insights and wisdom?

The Scottish public will be listening hard to everyone today. Not just the SNP.