Right now, everyone has political advantage on the brain with an election looming.<\/p>\n
Swinney suggested it was “desperation” which drove his opponents to make such serious claims.<\/p>\n
The first minister was genuinely angry about Russell Findlay’s position.<\/p>\n
And the lord advocate was clearly upset too, as can be seen from the letter she sent to Anas Sarwar warning that his claims risked undermining the rule of law.<\/p>\n
This is a dangerous moment for institutions, and not just in Scotland.<\/p>\n
Trust is at rock bottom, and many seem to be of the opinion that systems need to be shaken up if not torn up entirely.<\/p>\n
And MSPs are playing into this fevered atmosphere, while blaming each other for it.<\/p>\n
Labour and the Tories insist the government is endangering the neutrality of the legal system, while the SNP hits back that they are trashing the rule of law itself.<\/p>\n
Is there a political advantage for any of them here?<\/p>\n
This seems like a debate which might chiefly benefit other, more anti-establishment movements.<\/p>\n
But it’s just the latest point in a long curve of enmity and partisanship in Scottish politics.<\/p>\n
It’s not just that people don’t trust politicians any more – politicians don’t trust each other.<\/p>\n
Some of them don’t even trust the word of the head of the prosecution service.<\/p>\n
What does that say to the public about who they should trust?<\/p>\n
Politics has of course always had a mucky and brutal side to it, as well as one of public service which works earnestly to improve people’s lives.<\/p>\n
But at a time when people increasingly feel alienated from politics, the rush to agree with them rather than change their minds creates a vicious cycle.<\/p>\n
Politicians across the piece should be careful when sowing seeds of distrust that ultimately have to be harvested by all of them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Right now, everyone has political advantage on the brain with an election looming. Swinney suggested it was “desperation”…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":437397,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-437396","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=437396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437396\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/437397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=437396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=437396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=437396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}