Honeyed tones and empty promises
When cajoling and cudgelling don’t prevail, humza Yousaf, a ruthless political tactician, turns on his silky charm and purrs a gentler, more seductive tune.
So it was at holyrood yesterday when his hate Crime Bill came up for debate thanks to the Scottish Conservatives. Gone was the partisan snarl.
‘I don’t doubt their sincerity’ he hummed of his political rivals. Indeed, they weren’t even rivals: ‘The Scottish Government will work tirelessly to engage with colleagues across the chamber.’
Colleagues? Why, it was almost as if the Justice Secretary’s Bill had drawn such a battalion of critics that he had to rescue it somehow. And what more drastic tactic for an SnP minister than treating MSPs as equals, rather than a collective clapometer for the executive’s every whim. Anyone unfamiliar with this Government’s back catalogue might even have been swayed by his warm blather about safeguarding freedom of speech. he almost – almost – takes you in.
his strategy was matched by that of Liam Kerr, someone the Tories rather optimistically bill ‘the Shadow Cabinet Secretary for Justice’. he sought to strike a conciliatory tone, too, hoping that he could persuade the Government to return to the drawing board. he lacks Yousaf ’s suave self-assurance or the force of presence to command the chamber. his logic was sound but doubtful it was heard.
Yousaf ’s wooing went so far as to describe the debate as ‘very illuminating’, which had to have stuck in his craw. There are oil lamps that give off more wattage that yesterday’s proceedings.
Rhoda Grant, for Scottish Labour, gave a speech of such unremarkability that she may revel in the Bill or may revile it, but for the life of me I couldn’t determine which.
The gist was that hate speech was bad but the Bill wasn’t necessarily good, and while some hate speech should be proscribed, other hate speech should not.
Plus, lots of laboured reading from a prepared script.
The Greens’ John Finnie prayed in aid the european Convention on human Rights in defence of the legislation. This was hardly surprising in that the eChR has one of the weaker free expression provisions of the world’s leading charters of rights. The separatists’ determination to erase all things British from Scottish public life now seems to include ancient British liberties.
The Bill fails to make sex a protected characteristic, something its defenders scramble to move past quickly, though the Greens’ justice spokesperson did at least acknowledge the absence. ‘Toxic masculinity must be addressed,’ he proclaimed.
Mr Finnie, a man whose certainty is matched only by his pomposity, dismissed concerns that there was not enough time to review the legislation. ‘I have every confidence in our system of parliamentary scrutiny and I hope Mr Kerr will eventually,’ he sniffed.
The Lib Dems’ Liam McArthur gave a half-decent, if partial, defence of free, but he thought the Tory motion too ‘intemperate’. Leave it to the Lib Dems to stake out a middle ground between liberalism and illiberalism.
MURDO Fraser produced a speech of depressing quality. Depressing, because in making a cogent and passionate case in unshowy terms, it drew attention to how many of those clogging up the holyrood benches cannot manage even that. Mr Fraser reminded the chamber of the 2015 terrorist attack on French satirical magazine Charlie hebdo after it published cartoons of Mohammed.
Five years ago, he reminded MSPs, all good liberals united to say ‘je suis Charlie’ and to defend free expression – even of the most profane, insulting and hate-filled kind. Yet here they were contemplating a law that would say ‘tu est lifted’ to a similar magazine published in Scotland. The hate Crime Bill may repeal the old offence of blasphemy, he observed, but it did so while introducing a new crime of blasphemy ‘in another guise’.
At least someone wasn’t taken in by the Justice Secretary’s honey tones and empty promises.