On Planet Staines, John McTernan going off on one about the SNP constitutes a "smoking gun"

Paul Staines, aka Guido Fawkes, has triumphantly produced an email written by John McTernan (Labour media tart and recreational Nat-basher, but at that point special adviser to the Scottish Secretary), claiming that it is the long-awaited "smoking gun" that the SNP did a deal to release Megrahi. The story also appears in the Mail on Sunday, whose headline hysterically screams "Scottish Ministers offered to free Lockerbie bomber in secret deal to end 'slop bucket' payments to prisoners". Now, I'd gently suggest to Staines that it might have been an idea to keep the email to himself, because although his near orgasmic excitement is clearly blinding him to this fact, the gap between what is contained in the actual text and the ludicrous claims that are being made on the basis of it is several light-years wide. Let's run through some of the problems thrown up by the rather creative "interpretation" of this fragment of correspondence, shall we?

1) The Date. McTernan's email is dated 9th November 2007. Megrahi was released on compassionate grounds because he was dying - or, if you're Paul Staines, that was the "pretext" for releasing him. So if a deal was being done to facilitate that process, you'd think it might just have happened after Megrahi's illness had actually been diagnosed, which didn't occur until well into 2008. If we're instead expected to believe that the SNP were preparing the ground to release him on an entirely different basis (presumably prisoner transfer, which wouldn't strictly speaking have been a "release" at all) then they had an awfully funny way of going about it. At that point they were volubly demanding that Megrahi be excluded from the Prisoner Transfer Agreement altogether, which would have ruled out even the theoretical possibility of his release from a Scottish jail unless his conviction had been quashed. Even purely from a PR point of view, it seems somewhat implausible that they were contemplating moving from that highly popular public position of principled and total opposition to one of "actually, guys, on second thoughts we might as well release him, because we've got some concessions on airguns and slopping out".

2) What was the "deal" actually supposed to be about? From the way the Mail and Staines report the story, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the email spells out that the alleged deal concerned the release of Megrahi. It does no such thing. Indeed, the only clue about what McTernan was getting at points overwhelmingly to the completely opposite conclusion -

"Jack should be aware that MacAskill may well want to portray this as him negotiating with the UK government on an international treaty - though we know that putting a statement of fact into the PTA, to the effect that Scottish Ministers have final say on prisoners in Scottish jails, does not require final say from the Scottish Executive".

So the discussions seemed to be merely aimed at reaching a public agreement over toughening up the language of the PTA, not at reaching a deal over what the SNP would then go on to do if the PTA was enacted, ie. whether Megrahi would be released. The best evidence that it had nothing to do with the latter is that McTernan and the UK government seem to be rebuffing MacAskill's alleged suggestions on the grounds that they don't actually need his permission to conclude the PTA on any basis they see fit. But they certainly would have needed his cooperation (and far more than that) if the purpose of the discussion had been to actively secure Megrahi's release.

3) Second-hand information. It's quite clear from McTernan's own words that he hadn't been present at the "discussion with MacAskill" - he is simply relaying second-hand information based on what officials have told him. And even that information seems startlingly vague -

"but that he [MacAskill] indicated he wanted to do a 'deal'".

Why is the word "deal" in inverted commas here? There could be many reasons, but my guess is that it was intended to convey that it was merely the officials' impression that a deal was being sought, and wasn't something that had actually been stated - that would be consistent with the very careful use of the word "indicated".

4) The name "John McTernan". To coin a phrase, we might wish for more reliable witnesses, especially when something as dramatic as a "smoking gun" is being claimed. Ideally, a document from a Scottish government source, but at the very least from a more sober Whitehall official. It may seem incredible that McTernan would bother with his trademark spinning against the SNP when corresponding privately with another Labour special adviser, but his final paragraph leaves little room for doubt that is exactly what he is doing -

"On Somerville, our law officer believes that Scottish Ministers are having a laugh. They could have ended slopping out by building private prisons but did not have the courage...they lost fair and square - the solution is for them not to screw up again in future."

So let's sum up what this "evidence" amounts to. Well, first and foremost it suggests that one of Labour's Nat-bashers liked to do a spot of Nat-bashing in his spare time. There's a shocker. It also suggests that this completely objective source of information had claimed that his officials' perception was that MacAskill wanted a "deal" of some kind - but as he hadn't been in the room at the time, he was in no position to judge if that perception was remotely justified. Most importantly of all, we know nothing about what the alleged proposal of a "deal" related to, but what little evidence there is in the email points to it being something completely different to that claimed by the Mail and Staines - ie. nothing whatever to do with the release of Megrahi.

And we're supposed to be impressed by that little lot? Dream on, Paul.

The moving question

Interesting to read via Better Nation of the stooshie over the plan to move the production of Question Time from London to Glasgow - and could there be a more deliciously ironic choice of location given the notorious events of a few months ago? Of course this is merely about a - slightly - fairer geographical division of resources and jobs behind the scenes, and needn't automatically lead to any reversal of the Neanderthal on-screen presumption that the "UK agenda" is whatever looks important to people living in London. However, the departure of the programme's editor may be the first sign that this move has at least a chance of leading indirectly to positive change - ie. the sort of person who can actually bear to work in Glasgow (regardless of where in the UK they come from originally) may also be the sort of person more likely to recognise the legitimacy of broader perspectives. I won't be holding my breath, mind.

One thing that made me laugh in the Guardian news story that Jeff Breslin links to is this comment about The Review Show, which made a similar move to Glasgow not so long ago -

"It emerged last year many guests were being flown from London to Glasgow at huge cost to licence-fee payers."

Tell me, does no "expert" on the arts that might realistically appear on a show like that live anywhere other than London? Was nobody ever flown down from Scotland or the north of England at "huge cost to licence fee payers" during the programme's former life - or was the attitude that if people were silly enough to live several hundred miles away from the acknowledged centre of the universe, they were by definition ruling themselves out of any possibility of appearing on "national" television?

It's the eternal question : 'What Would Iain Do?'

Back at the height of the controversy over the release of the convicted (if unlikely to be the actual) Lockerbie bomber, Iain "the Snarl" Gray informed the Scottish Parliament that if he had been First Minister, Megrahi would still be behind bars. The only possible interpretation that could be put on those words is that Gray would have issued binding instructions to that effect to whoever had been his Justice Secretary - an utterly extraordinary admission, given that the legal position is that decisions on compassionate release must be taken by the Justice Secretary alone, and indeed on a quasi-judicial basis, free from political considerations.

All the same, given Gray's refreshing keenness to share with us how he would act in a variety of hypothetical scenarios, I wonder if he'd now care to tell us what he would have done if he'd been...oooh, I don't know, a junior Labour minister in the Foreign Office just after Megrahi's illness was diagnosed? Would Mr Gray have helpfully advised the Libyans on how to apply for compassionate release as the actual Labour junior Foreign Office minister Bill Rammell did at the time, or wouldn't he? Come on, Iain, you don't even have to - hypothetically - contravene the law in answering this one...

Six Nations prediction

For the third year in a row, I've filled out a Six Nations sweepstake form for a member of my family, who seems to be labouring under the misapprehension that I know something about rugby. To be fair to myself, we did somehow win two years ago, although on the other hand we finished second-bottom for the 2007 World Cup! Anyway, this is what I came up with, mainly just by following the overall championship betting (with the exception of Ireland's two home games) -

Weekend 1 :

England to beat Wales by less than 10
Ireland to beat Italy by 10 or more
France to beat Scotland by 10 or more

Weekend 2 :

England to beat Italy by 10 or more
Wales to beat Scotland by less than 10
Ireland to beat France by less than 10

Weekend 3 :

Wales to beat Italy by 10 or more
England to beat France by less than 10
Ireland to beat Scotland by less than 10

Weekend 4 :

France to beat Italy by 10 or more
Ireland to beat Wales by less than 10
England to beat Scotland by 10 or more

Weekend 5 :

Scotland to beat Italy by less than 10
Ireland to beat England by less than 10
France to beat Wales by 10 or more

It wasn't until I'd finished that I noticed I had Ireland down for another Grand Slam, which doesn't seem quite right somehow, but who knows? The results in Dublin could certainly make or break the season for both England and France. As for Scotland, I always try to err on the side of pessimism to counter the peril of wishful thinking - but afterwards I always wonder...am I being pessimistic enough?