The Fear is Literally Dripping Off Nicola Sturgeon; Conservative MP David Davis makes an extraordinary speech in the House of Commons using parliamentary privilege to expose alleged corruption of the SNP and the SNP Government, Sturgeon now knows she is living on borrowed time, and she must surely know SNP chief operating officer Sue Ruddick and Scottish Government employee Judith McKinnon, are the weakest links if there is a UK Government investigation into her, and the practices of her government, when will the police investigation start?

Dear All 

We all know that the SNP Government was used in an attempt to 'stitch up' an innocent man (Alex Salmond) using a 'rigged' process. When Alex Salmond took the SNP Government to Court, we found that out and in part the extent that Scottish Government employees would go as they acted illegally. The questions are how did this happen and who was responsible, we know that Scottish government acts under the direction of one person. That person is the First Minister of Scotland. The First Minister is Nicola Sturgeon, so why did she allow a procedure she knew was illegal to enter government procedures, Sturgeon unlike many people is a trained lawyer. Not only was the procedure illegal, she was also told it was illegal. One thing that people will recognise without even legal training is that an investigator of a complaint cannot have prior knowledge of the complaint, or know any of the people involved who made it beforehand. The SNP Government put in place a woman who had previous contact with complainers, and it has been alleged, she was "encouraging them" to complain. Everyone would recognise that this type of situation is seriously wrong and defective. 

A judicial review in January 2019, showed the whole stinking 'stitch up' process had been “tainted by apparent bias”. So, why did the investigator fail to recognise what she was doing, she has no defence of poor education, she has no defence of being stupid, and she has no defence of failing to understand basic investigatory procedure. Everyone know, even little kids that an investigator who investigates a case cannot be biased. Civil servant, the investigator Judith McKinnon has serious questions to answer, and she is a person whose employment must be terminated. The only thing the people of Scotland need from Judith McKinnon is her part in this scandal, and who she was working under direction from, she is a cog. 

As we know from watching the Salmond Inquiry, the SNP have deliberately attempted to suppress the inquiry on multiple occasions, someone place the numbers of obstructions at around 60 attempts. The Salmond Inquiry has 4 SNP MSPs and the Chair is SNP MSP Linda Fabiani, who don't appear to be able to ask critical questions compared to other MSPs who sit on the panel. The Salmond Inquiry will be a whitewash to clear SNP Leader Nicola Sturgeon as having broken the Ministerial code. The SNP Government and the Crown Office have done everything possible to stop the truth coming out. The SNP Government is corrupt, the Crown Office is corrupt, and we, the people of Scotland live in a failed State. And we all know that the Crown Office has repeatedly threatened MSPs if they go anywhere near the truth. They are doing so under the guise of "protecting" complainers, which some people have assigned a new name to, they call them 'plotters'. 

The most vicious of the plotters, the women who attempted to destroy Alex Salmond's career, reputation and to send him to prison for crimes which he did not commit. The identity of plotters are known to many, but they hide behind a legal court order. They do so, so that the full extent of their activities is concealed for the wider Scottish public, while they remain in plain view. Just as in the Tommy Sheridan civil case, there should be a police investigation into not just them, but also the role of certain people within the Scottish Government and the Scottish National Party. The women termed the 'alphabet women' aren't victims, the criminal trial and jury proved that point better than anyone else.  

The sheer scale of how the SNP have sought to destroy any attempt at scrutiny is utterly mind blowing. And all of this was done with one single objective, that was to keep SNP Leader Nicola Sturgeon in power. If Alex Salmond had returned to the SNP as an elected politician there would have been calls for her to step down as leader. So, not only was Sturgeon's position threatened by a Salmond return, so too where the people surrounding Sturgeon, and yes, we are talking about them losing status, and possibly losing jobs. Although Sturgeon says there was no motive to 'take out' Alex Salmond, there was, there was motives, means and opportunity. The problem was to do so, meant acting illegally, so let's run through a list of what they did, and see if you think this equals motive? 

The SNP deliberately chose create an entirely new procedure, focusing exclusively on previous Ministers. They did this despite there being a framework in place called the Fairness at Work procedures. These procedures had been in place for years, and had been tried and tested with input from other sources. When creating the new procedure, the SNP Government completely ignored Whitehall’s Head of Propriety and Ethics’ concerns about developing a procedure to specifically applying to previous ministers only. In fact, when they red flag their concerns, the SNP didn't engage back with Whitehall. The trail of corruption deepened when it was decided to ignore Police Scotland advice that the civil service were not qualified to investigate matters of potential criminality. Something quite telling also happened when the SNP Government ignored police advice, the police said possible criminal activity should be signposted to trained and specialist advocacy and support services rather than handled internally. 

So, why did the SNP Government want to handle all aspects of their Salmond investigation internally, and not use third party advocacy? Was it as some suspect because third party advocacy services would have left a documented trail? Was it because they couldn't disclose their full plan thereby making their plot weak and insecure? Was it because they couldn't ask for documentation to be destroyed? Police Scotland apparently gave very sound advice which was ignored such as the criminal investigation into Salmond’s behaviour public. Why did they do this, was it to stir up public opinion against Salmond prior to any criminal trial so the sheer volume of publicity would help with any possible conviction? 

The possible biggest wrongness in a procedural sense was the appointing of an Investigating Officer and Deciding Officer who had met with complainants to discuss their concerns before complaints had even been made. When the SNP Government possibly sensed their illegal process was going to fail, they upped their game and ignored the wishes of the complainants who did not want matters to be escalated to the Police. Does this fit in with a theory that having acted illegally there was a cover up to buy them, and hope a jury trial would solve their problems. We also know that the SNP Government withheld relevant documentation to the Court of Session during the Judicial Review. Not lost, not misplaced, not fell down the back of a cupboard but actually withheld documents. Not only could the SNP Government not be trusted to be honest but their own counsel found out they were withheld relevant documentation, they acted on information which they believed made their case stateable, only to find out, other withheld documents showed it wasn't. This part of the scandal only came out when it was uncovered by the Commission and Diligence hearing caused by the withholding of documentation. After adopted a siege mentality the SNP Government subsequently ignored their Counsel’s advice that the ‘least worst’ option was to concede the Judicial Review. The only logical explanation which makes sense to me, is having acted illegally, a decision was made successful to escalate matters into a criminal trial. If Salmond had been convicted of even one charge this would have been enough for the stitch up and cover up to be buried, and those involved shielded forever. 

During the Salmond Inquiry, we have seen that the SNP Government under the direction of SNP MSP John Swinney has withheld documentation from a Parliamentary Committee relevant to its remit on numerous occasions. We learned that government witnesses had been coached at a staggering expense to the public purse, those 'coached' were highly paid, senior Civil Servants how to handle questions from the Committee. You don't need coached to tell the truth, but you do need coached to not answer questions properly, this act is another very significant red flag in the Salmond scandal. Despite meaningless and it is meaningless promises from Nicola Sturgeon that there would be full cooperation and that the Committee would get any material that they needed to do their job properly this turned out to be a fake promise designed to hoodwink the general public. The SNP Government has interfered with the ability of the Committee to call witnesses and publish evidence freely obtained by it in pursuit of its remit. We have seen the Crown Office threaten the Committee and witnesses with prosecution for telling the truth and disclosing or considering certain evidence which was already in the public domain elsewhere. The final point of this timeline of abuse of public office was the SNP Government refusal to comply with Committee’s request to see legal advice despite being instructed to do so twice by Parliament itself. Reading all of this, you simply cannot be taken in that everything done was sheer incompetence or everything has been above board. 

This is corruption! 

This corruption needs a serious criminal investigation into people who surround SNP Leader Nicola Sturgeon. This lunacy could have been avoid entirely, but instead, like a machine which has too many moving parts, it was doomed from the conception. In order for their scheme to work, it needed too many steps, too many people and all of it had to happen within a bubble. All the SNP had to do to shut Alex Salmond out of political office to keep him being a threat to Nicola Sturgeon was to simply rig their own internal selection panels. That only takes a few people to do that and to do that very easily. A panel could have simply used any excuse such as Salmond's RT show to disqualify, because selections are based on subjective opinion and not rules. Instead, the SNP and the Scottish Government chose a vast unworkable and highly dangerous series plan which blew up in their faces. As the SNP and the SNP Government kept doing from failure to failure, they didn't have the in depth knowledge to drag them out of the hole they had dug themselves into too. Now, criminal investigation and charges of those involved must be the new debate in the Salmond scandal. 

I believe that we could see a situation where criminal investigation and charges of those involved could take place. This course of action is needed, but I have the feeling that other problems are about to head in Nicola Sturgeon's direction over the Salmond scandal. I see the intervention of the Westminster coming down the tracks, at present, what that intervention will look like is hard to say. But this is a feeling hard to shake off. One clue to this theory happened last night in Westminster, Conservative MP David Davis has used parliamentary privilege to reveal “whistleblower” evidence about the Alex Salmond affair and claim Nicola Sturgeon misled Holyrood. It isn't just David Davis who has red flag a problem in Scotland, it has been trailed also by MP Liam Fox as well. Last night David Davis said the First Minister knew Mr Salmond was being investigated by her officials for alleged sexual misconduct well before the date she gave to MSPs. In an explosive speech in the House of Commons, protected by parliamentary privilege Davis also alleged Ms Sturgeon’s chief of staff had been “interfering” in the process. The name Liz Lloyd is someone of significant interest in the Alex salmond scandal, her name comes up time and time again in the timeline and in the detailed history of this matter. People are looking more closely at Nicola Sturgeon's Chief of Staff Liz Lloyd than ever before. She has played the most crucial part in this whole affair, she is undoubtedly the lynch pin which brings all the strands together.

In his speech, David Davis also highlighted that evidence given under oath by Ms Sturgeon’s husband, SNP chief executive Peter Murrell, was “hard to reconcile” with the leaked material he had seen. Many people believe that Murrell should be under police investigation and charges filed against him after his appearances at the Salmond Inquiry. David Davis while giving his speech was interrupted by the SNP MP Owen Thompson who attempted to shut down Davis citing Scottish court orders, but in Westminster parliamentary privilege take precedent. You could see the visible shock on Owen Thompson's face as he knew finally his party was being exposed in Westminster. As Davis got back to his feet, he said that there had been a 'concerted effort by senior members of the SNP to encourage complaints'. We got an insight into this as he raised the activities of  SNP chief operating officer Sue Ruddick and SNP Compliance Officer Ian McCann. 

David Davis said in relation to these two and Murrell: 

“For example, these texts show that there is a concerted effort by senior members of the SNP to encourage complaints. The messages suggest that SNP chief executive Peter Murrell co-ordinated Ruddick and Ian McCann, the SNP’s compliance officer, in the handling of specific complainants. On 28 September [2018], a month after the police had started their investigation of the criminal case, McCann expressed great disappointment to Ruddick that someone who had promised to deliver five complainants to him by the end of that week had come up empty, or ‘overreached’, as he put it. One of the complainants said to Ruddick that she was ‘feeling pressurised by the whole thing rather than supported’. The day following the Scottish Government’s collapse in a judicial review in January 2019, Ruddick expressed to McCann the hope that one of the complainants would be ‘sickened enough to get back in the game’. Later that month, she confirmed to Murrell that the complainant was now ‘up for the fight’ and ‘keen to see him go to jail’. Ruddick herself, in one of her texts, expressed nervousness about ‘what happens when my name comes out as [redacted] fishing for others to come forward’.” 

Here we have Murrell, Ruddick and McCann all named for their involvement, and it should be noted at the time they were doing this, the police investigation had already started. Do you think that Alex Salmond is right when he claims the messages show a concerted and malicious effort by senior SNP and Scottish Government figures close to Sturgeon to ruin and even imprison him? This begs the question why would Peter Murrell do this? What is his motive? Why would Murrell allegedly co-ordinated Ruddick and Ian McCann, the SNP’s compliance officer? Why did Ruddick and McCann go along with this, who gave them the orders to seek out witnesses to be used Alex Salmond? This isn't part of their job surely? David Davis speech was highly significant because he is saying what many people in Scotland think. Essentially he accusing the Scottish Government and the SNP of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice in the Salmond case. This is why a serious criminal investigation should be mounted, and I think given some of the mental weakness of those involved, the first port of call should be SNP chief operating officer Sue Ruddick. She to me is the weakest link in the interview chain, and I suspect when push comes to shove, she will spill her guts. Murrell and McCann to my mind are the type to go down with the sinking ship, however the closer the ship get to going under the waves just at the end, I would put a bet on McCann putting family before party. 

One recurring theme in the Salmond scandal is when did Nicola Sturgeon know? David Davis has a view on that matter, when he said in the House of Commons:

“It is clearly in the public interest to see this evidence. I have it on good authority that there exists from 6 February 2018 an exchange of messages between civil servants Judith McKinnon and Barbara Allison suggesting that the First Minister’s chief of staff is interfering in the complaints process against Alex Salmond. The investigating officer complained, ‘Liz interference v. bad’. I assume that that means very bad. If true, this suggests that the chief of staff had knowledge of the Salmond case in February, not in April. The First Minister tied herself to that April date in both parliamentary and legal statements. She was, of course, aware earlier than that. The question is just how aware and how much earlier.” 

The reason that David Davis was able to make his remarkable speech was due to the efforts of a 'whistleblower'. 

Davis said: 

“Now Alex Salmond has asserted that there has been, and I quote ‘a malicious and concerted attempt to remove me from public life in Scotland by a range of individuals within the Scottish government and the SNP’ who set out to damage his reputation, even to the extent of having him imprisoned. These are incredibly grave charges, the whistleblower clearly agrees with those charges. He or she starts their communication with the assertion that the evidence provided, and I quote, ‘point to collusion, perjury, up to criminal conspiracy’.” 

Mr Davis told MPs the messages presented a case “which demands serious investigation, by which I mean at the very least a thorough review of all the emails and other electronic records for the relevant personnel at all the relevant times”. 

Finally, I feel we are witness to the start of the beginning of a new attitude being developed at Westminster. As I mentioned Liam Fox MP has highlighted that the matters in Scotland need dealt with, and I see that as the precursor of change. In overstepping the mark, the SNP and Scottish Government have left themselves open to intervention by higher authorities. Nicola Sturgeon is living on borrowed time, once Westminster turns up on the doorstep, she wouldn't be able to invoke her power, her corrupt Crown Office won't be able to invoke their power, they will sitting waiting to be interviewed to explain themselves. Assuming they don't have any prior engagements with Police Scotland as 'persons of interest'. Although the Salmond Inquiry will be a whitewash, it only buys Nicola Sturgeon time. Sturgeon doesn't have much left, so it appears neither does Peter Murrell, Sue Ruddick, Ian McCann, Judith McKinnon and the Scottish Government permanent Secretary Leslie Evans. When people start talking about 'collusion, perjury, up to criminal conspiracy’, you get a sense, maybe someone or some group of people will end up in prison. It's too late for a cover up, and if I was Ruddick and McKinnon, I would be putting serious consideration into having a plan B.

Yours sincerely 

George Laird                                                                                                                                The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University