Leader: Double standards

Published on 17/06/2012 00:00

VOTERS like politicians to be consistent. They like politicians to be as good as their word. What they do not like is when politicians take a principled position one moment, only to ditch it the next if it happens to become politically inconvenient.

For this reason the charge of “double standards” is one of the most wounding that can be levelled at a politician, especially one in government. It is, however, hard to avoid the conclusion that First Minister Alex Salmond is guilty of double standards in his dealings with the Leveson Inquiry into abuse of power by the press. As the inquiry was in the process of being set up, Salmond had no hesitation in occupying the moral ground. The First Minister urged Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt to ensure any suggestion of criminal acts in a Scottish jurisdiction that emerged during the Inquiry should be, as a matter of course, investigated by the Scottish authorities. In a letter which has only now come to light, Salmond said: “I would like to make it clear that the Scottish Government believes it is important that any issues uncovered [in the Inquiry] which present a matter for consideration under Scots Law and the Scottish justice system should be handed over as soon as possible to the appropriate Scottish authorities for investigation.” Salmond was entirely right to say this. He underlined the point last week when he appeared before Leveson himself, and was critical of the Metropolitan Police for allegedly holding on to evidence that could have been useful to Strathclyde Police in their investigation into hacking in Scotland. It was, said Salmond, “remarkable and very unsatisfactory” that “information which might have led the prosecution authorities to the conclusion that criminal law had been breached in Scotland” was not passed to Scottish detectives. Again, the First Minister was entirely justified in his comments.

What, then, are we to make of the First Minister’s position this weekend? Salmond’s appearance before Leveson had been eagerly anticipated by his political foes, who believed it would shine an unflattering light on the First Minister’s dealings with the Murdoch family. But, in what was hailed as a masterstroke of media manipulation, Salmond ensured the headline story from his appearance would be very different. The juicy bone he threw reporters to get them off his trail was the revelation that he had been told by a former Observer journalist that the London-based quality Sunday newspaper had hacked into his bank account. This was an extraordinary revelation. In Scottish terms it was the most dramatic allegation to date of criminal acts by Scottish newspaper reporters. And yet, following his evidence to Leveson, Salmond declined to pass on what he knew about this alleged crime to the team of detectives in Strathclyde Police who, as part of Operation Rubicon, are examining phone hacking and “breaches of data protection in Scotland”. His reason? He said he would rather not reveal his source. Whatever happened to the belief that “any issues uncovered [in the Inquiry] which present a matter for consideration under Scots Law and the Scottish justice system should be handed over as soon as possible to the appropriate Scottish authorities for investigation”? Whatever happened to the righteous anger that information about alleged criminality was being withheld from Strathclyde Police? The First Minister has indeed left himself open to the accusation of being guilty of double standards. In fact, his actions might be characterised as “remarkable and very unsatisfactory”. Salmond may now find that a stratagem devised as a clever piece of media manipulation might not have been so clever after all.

Celebrating Martha

HARD to believe, but someone in Argyll and Bute council must have thought they were doing the right thing when they banned nine-year-old Martha Payne from taking photos of her school lunches at Lochgilphead Primary and uploading them online in her one-girl protest about their quality. Well, whoever that official was, they know now. This was a woefully awful failure of judgment. If Martha was an internet sensation pre-ban, then look at her now. Her blog on the meals has attracted nearly five million views in the past six weeks, a number that will rapidly escalate following Martha’s heart-warming appearance in newspapers not just in the UK but around the world this weekend. The council – which said it had acted to calm the fears of its dinner ladies that they would lose their jobs – back-pedalled on Friday, saying that, on reflection, it would have no role in censorship.

The council will not come well out of the affair but as ever there is a silver lining. Its actions have given a massive boost to the purpose of Martha’s blog – raising funds for Mary’s Meals, which sets up school feeding projects in developing countries. The total raised pushed through the £60,000 mark yesterday – so three cheers for the bungling bureaucrats. But most of all, let us take a moment to celebrate the enterprising spirit of a deeply inspiring young Scot.