Beware being shot at if you’re the messenger

THANK god for Liz Truss is all I can say. If she hadn’t thrown her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng under the bus I’m sure I’d have been the subject of even more headlines this week.

But I know you want to know what was in my head when I was sent out for Nicola’s messages, to go to the shops that is the Supreme Court in London and say, “I’d like a large slice of Scottish independence referendum, please?”

Well, as a lawyer who is employed by the Scottish Government as Lord Advocate and a member of the government, you will appreciate I’m sure that I can’t offer a straight answer. However, I can say that my postman dad often warned me that when you take a message, sometimes a dog will bite you.

Anyway, you know I had already said to the First Minister that I felt that the chances of another referendum on Scottish independence being lawful without Westminster consent were as likely as Liz lasting beyond Christmas.

I also told her that I didn’t have the necessary degree of confidence that it would be within the competence of the Scottish parliament.

So, then I’m having to say to the Supreme Court: “Give us the vote, because it won’t necessarily lead to independence. Please. And Nicola has told me to tell you that it would just be advisory, and the law would not trigger any particular outcome.”

The next time the First Minister asks me to go a message I’ll just say, ‘I’m busy’

And that’s when they laughed at me. “Are you having a laugh, Dorothy? Nicola will take Scotland out of the Union faster than her fitba team’s left the Champions League,” Sir James Eadie’s eyes seemed to be saying to me, even if his actual words said worse: “Procedural incoherence.” Oh dear.

That’s why I did sound emotional. And no, you didn’t hear me mutter the line from Elvis Costello’s Oliver’s Army, “And I would rather be anywhere else, but here today”, although between you and me I may have been thinking that.

What I did say, several times, was “This is so unfair.”

Now, you can interpret that as you like.

Was I saying I thought James Eadie’s argument was unfair, even though I admit it made a lot of sense – or was my subconscious talking about how I had been placed in an invidious position in the first place by the Scottish Government?

But then, I knew I was in for a tough time. I knew this was most likely a lost cause, that the

Supreme Court will take months to decide and then determine that Scotland already is a sovereign democracy – then issue a finding saying, essentially, that we are on to plums.

Which may – or may not – be actually what Nicola hopes to hear – which can then give her the chance to go all de facto at the next General Election.

Anyway, I’m glad that it’s all over now. And the next time the First Minister asks me to go a message I’ll just say, “I’m busy.”