Humza was as sour as a month old pint of milk
EvER since his outing as Scotland’s unlikeliest outlaw, Murdo Fraser has been the talk of the Holyrood steamie. Earlier this week, the Perthshire Bandit revealed himself to be the subject of a non-crime hate incident report after committing a statement of biology on Twitter. Apparently such things are now considered a matter for the police. As DCI Taggart didn’t quite say: ‘There’s been a Murdo.’
Naturally, the Tories are incensed at the polis investigating an opposition politician, though in fairness to the cops, they’re already investigating all the SNP politicians.
Douglas Ross rose at First Minister’s Questions in the manner of a defence brief there to plead for his client. Unfortunately for him, on the bench was Humza Yousaf. When it comes to the dreaded Hate Monster, Yousaf boasts the demeanour of a hanging judge. He doesn’t have a black cap so much as a rainbow one.
PIOUS, impatient and sourer than a month-old pint of semiskimmed, the First Minister displayed not an ounce of regret over an elected representative having his lawfully expressed opinions logged by the Old Bill as a ‘hate incident’.
Yousaf, Scotland’s Hatefinder General, robotically buzzed through all the familiar patter. Police Scotland was now ‘reviewing’ how hate incidents are recorded with ‘cognisance’ of new guidance in England and Wales.
Echoing Yousaf’s call for a ‘zero tolerance’ stance on hate crime, the Conservative leader posed a straightforward question: ‘Should innocent people have a police record when they have done nothing wrong?’ The First Minister’s considered answer: ‘I’m not entirely sure that when you take money from a racist misogynist and refuse to give it back that that is zero tolerance’.
Called upon to rise to the occasion, the First Minister can’t even reach beyond schoolyard whataboutery.
The Association of Scottish Police Superintendents had warned of the new Hate Crime Act being ‘weaponised’ by fringe activists. Yousaf demanded Ross tell him which minorities ‘aren’t deserving of protection in law’.
We could all use some protection in law from control freak politicians and their regular banning sprees.
Ross posited that a police force tied up investigating tweets would struggle to do its job of protecting the public. He prayed in aid the warning of Joanna Cherry, KC, that ‘process will become the punishment’ if activists begin inundating police with vexatious complaints against their political opponents.
‘Police should not be dispatched to people’s doors to check their thinking,’ Ross said. That is a sentence that had to be said at Holyrood, one that represents a minority view inside that building.
The First Minister was a monument to smugness and complacency. There were protections for freedom of speech and the rozzers would separate out the nonsense from the genuine complaints. He trotted out the deathless talking point that the Hate Crime Act mostly just restates laws already on the books elsewhere.
YOU see, this urgently needed change in the law doesn’t really change the law all that much. It’s Schrödinger’s Act. A mention in dispatches for Labour MSP Paul Sweeney, who gave me one of the heartiest chuckles in some time. He urged the First Minister to spearhead rebuilding of Glasgow School of Art ‘like the French president has with Notre Dame’.
I feel confident in saying this is the first time Yousaf has ever been compared to Emmanuel Macron. Macron swept to power under the slogan ‘on the move’.
If all the colleagues briefing against him are anything to go by, Yousaf will be on the move soon enough.