Alex Salmond inquiry shows Nicola Sturgeon's government is no longer subject to democratic checks and balances – Brian Wilson

Imagine you stumbled upon a major scandal involving the Scottish government or one of its agencies? Who would you go to with confidence it would be properly investigated?

Alex Salmond may not give evidence at the MSPs' committee investigating the Scottish government's botched handling of complaints made against him (Picture: Andy Buchanan/AFP via Getty Images)

To the politicians? Obviously not. To senior civil servants? You’re joking. To the Crown Office? Certainly not on current form. To the national police force, now answerable directly to the same politicians? Not with any great faith.

It is not a happy state of affairs in any society when checks and balances which safeguard the separation of powers, within government and the law, are cast aside. The ease with which this has happened in Scotland is remarkable.

Over the next weeks, one way or another, the Holyrood committee investigating the Scottish government’s handling of harassment complaints will peter out. However, it will long stand as testimonial to the power which now resides within St Andrew’s House to obstruct any inconvenient process demanding transparency and natural justice.

What we are seeing is the tip of a very large iceberg, albeit one that was never meant to be exposed. Below the surface, everything is subject to the same guiding philosophy – one nation, one party, one leader and don’t get in the way of it.

It could and should have been straightforward – how and why did ministers, notably the First Minister, pursue a case they were bound to lose to its ignominious death, regardless of cost, reputational damage or the interests of anonymous complainers.

The obvious key to that objective was (and remains) the legal advice provided to ministers at every stage by external counsel, hired only to tell them the truth. In spite of the Scottish Parliament twice instructing otherwise, that information remains concealed. How in any democracy is that defensible?

SNP chief executive Peter Murrell is sworn in before giving evidence to the Salmond inquiry committee (Picture: Andy Buchanan/pool/Getty Images)

Mr Salmond, understandably aggrieved by what he perceived as a concerted attempt to put him behind bars for a prolonged period, saw the inquiry as an opportunity to tell his story about the Scottish government’s mishandled investigation.

It was that process which was found in the Court of Session to have been “tainted by apparent bias”. At any other time, this in itself would have been a damning phrase; utterly extraordinary that such a sensitive matter should have been corrupted throughout by “bias”.

Yet such is the arrogance and mutual back-covering modus operandi of the New Scotland at its highest levels that nobody has been held accountable for the Court of Session’s findings. When a government is run like this, bias is a qualification, not a sackable offence.

In the brass-neck stakes, our First Minister will never be outbid. At Holyrood this week, she complained about Peter Murrell being “dragged into a process he had no part in” for political reasons. Like much else that springs from Ms Sturgeon’s lips, that scarcely accords with the facts.

In a message we were never meant to see, Mr Murrell advised another SNP figure it was “a good time to be pressurising the police” to pursue Mr Salmond – ie Police Scotland, for which his wife has political responsibility. That is not a man who has been “dragged” anywhere but considers himself, quite rightly, to be at the centre of events.

Mr Murrell’s appearances before the Holyrood committee have been openly contemptuous of the idea he is obliged to tell them anything that does not take his fancy. When a man feels untouchable, this is how he behaves. And who is empowered to disturb that assumption – the committee, the Crown Office, Police Scotland…? I very much doubt it and so, more importantly, does he.

On top of all the "corrected" testimony under oath, disputation has raged for weeks about who and what can be heard – for reasons that remain entirely obscure to the public at large and also, possibly, to Lady Dorrian in the Court of Session.

But who cares about the public at large? They have more urgent things to worry about, like a pandemic. Natural justice and democratic safeguards are intangibles that you don’t really notice till they are gone. At least, that’s the calculation.

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