SNP’s silky advocate and a rough stitch-up

THE SNP’s Joanna Cherry and Jeane Freeman appointed themselves fact-checkers before Sunday’s Scottish leaders’ debate on BBC TV, ready to leap into action ‘when the Tories dodge scrutiny’.

A nurse who appeared on the show was then subject to a smear suggesting she was married to a Tory (not much of a smear, I know, but that’s the petty way the separatists roll) and therefore could not be taken at face value.

The claim was false. Miss Cherry apologised to Claire Austin and Nicola Sturgeon declared it all an ‘honest mistake’.

So had she been married to a Tory, then a senior SNP figure digging the dirt – and useful idiots on social media launching a monstering – would have been acceptable?

This is jaw-dropping stuff. A QC boasts of being an honest broker but then embarks on a mission to nail a member of the public for political gain. When she gets it horribly wrong – well hey, it’s OK because she’s sorry and we all make mistakes.

NOT good enough. Nationalist attack dogs were unleashed on a member of the public, a private citizen and not a politician for whom such rough-house treatment is part of the job.

The truth of Miss Austin’s claims about having to resort to a food bank are irrelevant. The public can make up their own mind about her, having seen her rock Miss Sturgeon back on her dainty Size Three heels with home truths about how badly the NHS is faring under vapid Health Secretary Shona Robison.

Miss Cherry, who flailed like a beached guppy when asked on Question Time what currency an independent Scotland would use, made a mistake all right. Her mistake was to set out to besmirch someone.

Bitter experience has taught us to expect little by way of standards from our politicians. Fiddled expenses; drunken brawls; philandering – it seems for every commitment politician there are three chancers and the rot is spread across all the parties.

But Miss Cherry has ‘taken silk’ as Queen’s Counsel and the Faculty of Advocates is a professional body with clear rules of conduct and a disciplinary code for those who transgress.

Miss Cherry is officially a non-practising advocate, so why she is still allowed to bandy ‘QC’ – she even uses it on her Twitter handle – is beyond me.

Using the initials QC, storied with learning, respected for centuries, invites the man in the street to treat you in a certain way. You are different; special; a cut above.

Practising or non-practising? The public can’t make the distinction based on just the initials. You’re ‘a silk’ – simple.

But even non-practising advocates, say the rules, ‘must bear in mind that his conduct may reflect upon public confidence in the Faculty and the legal profession’.

Miss Cherry has embarrassed both before.

Speaker John Bercow reprimanded her in the Commons: ‘Miss Cherry, this is very unseemly heckling. You are a distinguished QC. You wouldn’t behave like that in the Scottish courts. You’d be chucked out!’

The Dean of the Faculty of Advocates is Gordon Jackson, a man who successfully paralleled a legal career with one as an MSP.

Does my learned friend agree with me that Miss Cherry has sullied the reputation of advocates by indulging in political skulduggery and should face sanction?

Further, will he back my call for only practising QCs getting to use the title and only then under the full weight of the Faculty’s code of conduct?