The 'Lack Of Respect' Agenda

Westminster and Whitehall are built to be imposing places - deliberately so. Constructed on a mud flat and a crumbling river bank they may be, but the offices from where an empire covering a third of the globe was run weren’t built to accommodate people who harboured the slightest doubt about their place or importance in the world.

Some of that sense of destiny, however delusional it may seem to outsiders, lives on today in the British political class. Surrounded by untrustworthy Europeans and treacherous Celts with their troubling notions of self-government, the thought that ‘we still matter’, is one which comforts. ‘We punch above our weight, they say; ‘we’re like a bridge across the Atlantic’. Say it often enough, and it almost begins to sound plausible.

About the only thing which ruffles this outward display of confidence is the ritual flap about the state of the ‘Special Relationship’ with the US, particularly when a new President or PM takes office. Every aspect of their every interaction is poured over, from the cordiality of the first phone call to the minutiae of the first visit. No detail, from the gifts that are exchanged to spousal body-language, is thought too trivial when trying to diagnose the state of the partnership.

Say what you like about Gordon Brown, but at least in his anguished attempts to gain some reflected glory from President Obama, he never managed to abase himself in quite the supine, oleaginous manner as did David Cameron on his recent trip to Washington. Not content with describing his country as the ‘junior partner’ in WWII, he then went on to highlight his ‘violent agreement’ with President Obama that Scotland was wrong to release the only man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing.

Admittedly, the oil spill in the Gulf and the resultant BP-bashing made it a difficult trip for Cameron anyway, even before the US Senate decided to investigate allegations relating to BP and Megrahi’s release. However, for Cameron to publicly criticise the decision of the Scottish Government, safe from instant contradiction, simply demonstrated his desperation to curry favour in Washington, and exposed his ‘respect’ agenda back in Scotland as being purest wind. 

But enough of the ‘boy blunder’. What of the Senators and their (now postponed) inquiry? The case ran something like this: BP lobbied Westminster for a PTA to help its interests in Libya; Megrahi was released from prison in Scotland; therefore, the Scottish Government must have done a dirty deal. QED. And using similar Senatorial logic, since my dog has four legs and my cat has four legs, my dog is also my cat.

Some points worth noting:

• Firstly, the difference between the Westminster and Scottish Governments should have been easy for the lawmakers of a federal country to grasp. The Senators’ confusion over UK and Scottish responsibilities in this matter did nothing to enhance either their personal credibility or that of their enquiry.

• Regardless as to the lobbying of the UK Government which BP may have undertaken regarding the PTA, compassionate release meant there was *no prisoner to transfer*. Given the UK Government’s refusal to confirm what undertakings, if any, had been given previously to the US families and authorities that Megrahi would serve the entirety of his sentence in Scotland beyond there being ‘no legal impediment’ to using the PTA, compassionate release ensured that any commitment which may have been made in this regard was honoured.  

• Professor Sikora, the cancer expert quoted luridly to the effect that Megrahi could live for another 10 years, in fact estimated the chance of this happening as being less than 1%. In any case, his report was not considered by the Scottish Government at any point as part of the medical evidence forming the application for compassionate release.

• Since Scottish Ministers had no involvement with BP, they therefore had nothing to add in this regard. As such, they were quite right to decline to attend in person, and to co-operate instead by trying to aid Senators’ understanding of the issues at hand, and by drawing their attention to the wealth of information which was already in the public domain.

• Finally, much has been made of the commercial advantages which BP may have obtained in Libya from the introduction of the unused PTA. It’s worth noting that back in May 2010, the Office of the United States Trade Representative – an executive office of the US President - signed a Trade and Investment Framework Agreement with the Libyans, designed to “provide a forum to address trade issues”, and to “help build trade and investment relations between the United States and Libya.”

• One of the organisations which welcomed the deal was the US/Libya Business Association.  Based just a few blocks away from the Capitol, on Washington’s ‘K’ street, US oil firms ConocoPhillips, Chevron and Occidental sit alongside BP on the ‘Executive Advisorial Committee’ of this body.

Throughout, Senators have exhibited all the elegance and finesse of a herd of elephants trying to tapdance on ball bearings. BP may be the number one corporate hate figure right now in the USA, and the chance to try and tie it to the Lockerbie case must have seemed irresistible. However, there was never the slightest substance to the accusations being thrown about by Senators. Frankly, if they really wanted to find out more about the genesis of the PTA, then they should have rooted back through the recycling bin to find that invitation drafted but never sent to Tony Blair.

Did Cameron and Obama not realise when they called for ‘full disclosure’ – a call that has gone eerily quiet over the last few days - that the obstacle to this was the previous refusal of their own governments to publish the remaining documents? Given we now know that the view of the US Government at the time was that “conditional release on compassionate grounds would be a far preferable alternative to prisoner transfer”, perhaps now the fury of US lawmakers can be put into some kind of perspective.

On both sides of the Atlantic, the contradictory views have been advanced that Scottish Ministers were naive, yet still playing a murky game of geopolitics; always picking fights with London but somehow suckered into doing London’s bidding; grandstanding on the world stage, yet ‘running scared’ of wider scrutiny. Every attempt to stand up a new conspiracy theory has fallen flat on its face. The only explanation still standing is that a terminally ill man was released on compassionate grounds, in accordance with the due processes of Scots Law, and that Scottish Ministers played it completely straight throughout.

Perhaps the final word, however, should be left to former Foreign Secretary David Milliband, who said in Parliament last year that:

“Although the decision was not one for the UK Government, British interests, including those of UK nationals, British businesses and possibly security cooperation would be damaged... if Megrahi were to die in a Scottish prison.”

Milliband has since, of course, altered his position. Nothing at all, I’m sure, to do with his attempt to win his party’s leadership election, any more than the Senators’ cack-handed attempts to revisit this issue will have been motivated by their own pending electoral contests.

My good public reputation was tarnished irreparably a few weeks ago by a newspaper which made an unwarranted and vile slander against me. Frankly, I don't know if I'll ever be able to hold my head up in polite company again. If I had any money at all I'd see the blighters in court.

What was this vile calumny perpetrated against me? I'm outraged to say that in a recent report on a talk I'd given to a community group in Aberdeenshire, the Press and Journal described me not as a former SNP candidate, but as a former Conservative candidate. Since then, my world has collapsed.

I now get stared at in shops. Neighbours cross the street to avoid me, and already the hate mail has started to arrive, some of it recognisably from my own family. Even my cat has taken to shunning me, except, of course, when there's the prospect of food on offer.

Joking aside, there's no doubt that even if the label 'Conservative' is no longer as politically toxic as it was in the 1980's and 90's, the party is still going nowhere in Scotland. Even when on course to win South of the Border at the recent General Election and with the resulting positive media coverage, Cameron's Caledonian brethren struggled to make it above 17% in the polls, and were lucky to hang on to their single Scottish seat.

There's no doubt that a relentlessly negative campaign by the Labour Party entrenched Scottish voters into a 'Stop the Tories' mindset, despite the fact that not even a clean sweep in Scotland for Labour would have kept Cameron from Downing St, given Labour's refusal to work with any other parties in Government. As such, we have a Tory Prime Minister elected on the back of English votes, and with it, some uncomfortable questions for the Scottish Tories from their southern colleagues about their effectiveness.

Already, the recriminations have started. An independent commission has been set up to examine the party in Scotland. At least one key staff member has been shown the door. There are whispers of a purge of the candidate list; that Annabel Goldie's days are numbered as leader; that the party may be given new autonomy from London, and that it might even change its name in a bid to find new appeal amongst Scottish voters.

All well and good. But who, might we ask, is the individual being tasked with dragging the Scottish Tories kicking and screaming into the 21st century? Why, none other than septuagenarian peer Lord Russell Sanderson - a Scottish Office Minister at the height of Margaret Thatcher's unpopularity. There's nothing like having the right man in place for a job like this, and let's face it, he's nothing like the right man for a job like this.

From an outsider's perspective, a cleansing of the MSP stables and a change of leader might be no bad thing, provided, of course, that what they plan to replace them with represents an improvement. Similarly, a name change might help dull antagonistic associations with the party, although you also have to be changing something more fundamental than the name if it's to be credible. Without a change of substance, renaming the 'Scottish Conservatives' as 'Scottish Reform' or whatever seems little better than rebranding Windscale as Sellafield.

While the bit about greater party autonomy has got people interested, no-one seems to have harked back to a report which was compiled by Lord Strathclyde for the party back in 1997, following the Tory wipeout earlier that year. As a consequence of that report, the Scottish Tories became the most internally devolved of all the unionist parties in Scotland. Since then, the party has, constitutionally at least, enjoyed almost complete policy freedom. The point is that it has failed to use it.

Why? Simply, the problem, ironically for a party which used to hector others about the need to stand on their own two feet, is that it suffers from a complete intellectual and financial dependence on its London HQ. Lord Strathclyde threw open the door to the cage over a decade ago. Since then, the Scottish Party has cowered away at the back, lacking the confidence to embark on a route which might not come pre-approved from London.

Ultimately, the problem isn't structures, or finances, or what the Tories call themselves. Their problem is institutional, being too dull to say anything of interest to eachother, let alone the wider public. Financially and organisationally wedded to London, the idea that a Scotland could exist which paid its own way and set its own priorities, represents a conceptual leap well beyond all but perhaps a couple of their current MSP group.

I have a friend who is fond of pointing out that the opposite of love, in his view, is not hate but indifference. I think that captures a large part of the Tories' problem - it's not that people particularly dislike them any more, its just that they are largely irrelevant, and in consequence, people are now indifferent. They have little of interest to say, and don't look or sound like they represent modern Scotland.

Maybe an organisational revamp, a clearout of high heidyins too long in situ and a requirement to live within its means based on Scottish donations might provide the bracing does of reality needed to bring the Tories back to life. Losing the kneejerk unionism by fully embracing fiscal autonomy and an Independence referendum, even if not independence itself, would also show a confidence in Scotland which might just encourage Scots to show some confidence once again in the Tories. It would certainly throw down the gauntlet to a Labour Party which in Scotland, is even less able to stand on its own two feet than the Tories in their current state.

Make yourselves relevant and stop giving people reasons not to vote for you is a decent rule of thumb for any party. It's something Scotland's Tories would be well advised to remember, regardless as to what this commission may or more likely, may not come up with. Frankly, right now, it would no more occur to most Scots to vote Tory than it would for them to start walking around on their hands in public with a sparkler placed unconventionally.