Bill Jamieson: Ethics, idealism and a minister who got it right

BY MOST accounts, the SNP administration should now be in its death throes. "Election threat over Lockerbie scandal" screamed a tabloid paper headline on Monday, "Salmond facing Holyrood revolt as backlash spreads". "Will the bomber topple Salmond?" queried another.

On the BBC, the decision by justice secretary Kenny MacAskill to free the bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was treated with a tone of shocked incredulity. Here was a crisis that would surely shatter a shaky and insubstantial devolution experiment. An interview on BBC Newsnight in London seemed to treat MacAskill ("a name no-one knew until now") as a cross between a town council simpleton and a deranged religious lunatic.

On BBC Radio Scotland, a trailer for an early morning phone-in programme invited "the silent majority" to phone in and oppose Megrahi's release. Shereen Nanjiani, introducing the programme, let fall that the calls received by the BBC in Scotland to that point had been decisively in favour of the minister's decision. Oh, dear. That would never do. There's still a programme to fill.

The Labour opposition in Holyrood lost no time with a denunciation both of the decision to release and of the actions of the justice secretary leading up to it. The Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats joined in with attacks of their own.

"Scotland's shame!" cried Labour. "Not in our name," was the soundbite from Annabel Goldie.

As this first reaction reached a crescendo, I was beginning to wonder whether there was anyone left in Scotland who felt we should have our own legal system at all, still less one that required a decision to be made outwith a calculus of geopolitical advantage. Some of the commentary outside Scotland seemed not to recognise that we had a separate legal system long before devolution.

More disconcerting was the initial reaction within Scotland. This, I felt, quite misread the public mood, both on the decision and the terms in which the justice secretary explained it. I certainly felt that, far from being repelled, the ethical setting struck a deep chord with the feelings of many Scots.

And it has been instructive to watch how opinion has moved on from that first scornful reaction. By Tuesday, leading churchmen had come out in support of MacAskill. In the Holyrood debate on Tuesday, when there was a growing sense of a pulling-away from a motion of no confidence, the opposition attacks came to sound overwrought and out of touch with the changing mood.

Arguably the most memorable and certainly most dignified contribution came from Labour MSP and former minister Malcolm Chisholm, who spoke in defence of MacAskill. Contrast that with the line from Labour's Ian Gray, who came out with what I thought was by far the funniest line in the Edinburgh Comedy Festival: "If I were First Minister…"

At The Scotsman, our readers' letters swung decisively through the week in favour of MacAskill's decision to release, while our own online poll went from a very narrow majority opposing his decision to 57 per cent in favour by yesterday afternoon.

That, some will argue, will have been countered by a YouGov poll that the Daily Mail used to support a front-page story yesterday headed "Salmond Rocked by Lockerbie Backlash". "Support for Scottish independence," the report began, "has slumped…" It was not until well into the story we were told that in the poll of 1,078 the percentage opposed to MacAskill's decision was just above 50 per cent. The numbers participating in The Scotsman poll were more than three times that for YouGov, with twice as many votes cast in favour of MacAskill (2,182) than participated in the whole YouGov poll. That does not put the justice secretary well in the clear. But "Salmond Rocked"?

I doubt if Salmond was much "rocked" either by the midweek entry into the fray of Lord Fraser of Carmylie, QC, leading Crown Office prosecutor, later a Conservative MP and solicitor general for Scotland. Surely Lord Fraser would come in swinging against the SNP justice secretary? On the contrary. He believed his decision was correct, though he should have flown to Washington to explain it. I can only assume Lord Fraser had an accident on the way to the studios. The moment the justice secretary stepped on a plane for Washington, he would have been pounced upon by Westminster for overstepping the mark, breaching the Scotland Act and crossing into international diplomatic matters – a reserved area. That truly would have turned a drama into a crisis.

Criticism has now moved to the ghoulish calculus over how soon Megrahi will die, medical opinion not being as cut and dried as some would wish. If he lives on past 20 November, does that invalidate the release? How can anyone know for sure when exactly someone with advanced prostate cancer will die?

And once we enter the realm of hypothetical counter-factuals, how about this one: Saltires being burned on the streets of Tripoli had the justice secretary ruled the other way and Megrahi had died in Greenock prison. The words "judicial murder" would have sprung to a thousand lips, with angry questions fired in Holyrood and beyond as to why our judicial system could not have shown compassion.

Having seen so many adopt the position of instantaneous attack and how opinion has moved from that initial reaction, I cannot but agree with that savvy observer, the writer Kenneth Roy, who said: "There is a growing sense that the media and the political opposition may have misjudged the mood and spirit of a considerable number of thinking Scots." MacAskill articulated, if clumsily, a sense of ethics and even idealism. When the row dies down, we owe it to ourselves to remember this.