A very bad decision.

 

The appeal should never have been withdrawn. But it was. (For that matter, he should have been tried by a jury. But he wasn’t.)  So he is legally guilty of 270 murders. People have died in prison, including of horrible conditions, while legally guilty of an awful lot less than that. The Scottish Justice Secretary has now called significantly into question the integrity and reliability of the Scottish justice system. That hardly seems like anything that a Scottish Nationalist should wish to do. It is certainly not anything that a citizen of the United Kingdom, within the fundamental documents of which Scots Law is specifically protected, should wish to do.

 

Kenny McAskill, and with him necessarily his boss Alex Salmond, has gone feral, doing something like this merely because he can. Downing Street’s view on this matter of the utmost international sensitivity was made perfectly apparent when several of the Prime Minister’s closest American allies signed that letter. That view has been wholly disregarded. Merely because it can be.

 

Well, two can play that game. There are legion ways in which Whitehall and Westminster, never mind elements broadly classifiable under the Departments of State most directly concerned with this matter, can tread on Holyrood’s toes, if they are so minded. Which, as of this afternoon, they most definitely will be.