A legal stench that deepens by the day

WHETHER it was by conspiracy or blunder, something went horribly wrong in the case of MP Michelle Thomson, who has stepped away from her SNP frontbench business spokesman’s position and the party as a police probe into her property dealings begins.

We have seen since an unedifying series of buck-passing, bullet-dodging denials and obfuscations designed, it seems, to save face and avoid blame.

Now the public can only scratch their heads and wonder why all the key information was not rapidly passed over to the Crown Office.

Two informal meetings between the Crown and the Law Society of Scotland seem to have taken place without the pivotal details being provided to prosecutors.

A shambolic Law Society press conference yesterday served only to muddy the murky waters still further.

When it was finally in possession of all the facts, it took the Crown Office only six days to order a police probe – but that was in July, by which time Mrs Thomson had been elected MP for Edinburgh West.

The public will also look askance at First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, famous for her command of detail as head of a party often accused of control-freakery.

She maintains she knew nothing of Mrs Thomson’s business dealings, yet senior Cabinet figures, including Angela Constance and Fiona Hyslop, were happy to praise Mrs Thomson’s business acumen in SNP literature.

Will they too now claim they knew nothing – thereby admitting that their pre-election e n dor s e ments were mere hollow electioneering?

The public too will mark the SNP’s pedantic reluctance to comment on an ongoing case. It stands in complete contrast to its rush to act as judge, jury and executioner when Liberal Democrat Alistair Carmichael faced legal questions over his suitability for elected office.

The stench surrounding the deeply troubling Thomson affair worsens by the day and Scots can only hope public scrutiny will see the swamp drained and answers revealed.