Nationalist laws of diminishing returns
WHEN I interviewed Nicola Sturgeon for the Mail shortly before the last Holyrood election, we talked about her decision to abandon a career in law for a life in politics.
She confessed that despite everything she had achieved, it still annoyed her mum that she had ‘wasted’ her degree.
Her former tutor agrees, if in a different sense. In a brutal article this week, Alistair Bonnington, former Honorary Professor of Law at Glasgow University, laid into the First Minister for forcing out the independent chair of the inquiry into child sex abuse.
‘Each arm of the state – the executive, legislative and judicial bodies – must act without interference from the others,’ wrote Mr Bonnington.
‘But this elementary first-year law school rule seems to have escaped the SNP. SNP politicians… slavishly follow what they are instructed to do.
‘Dissent is not allowed. This results in Scotland producing the lowest-quality legislation in Europe.’
He went on: ‘I taught Nicola Sturgeon at Glasgow University. I seem to have failed to instill in her the most basic rules of how the institutions of government work in the free world.’
Her mammy won’t be happy.