Salmond squirms when confronted by Willie Rennie over Murdoch

The story so far....

Rupert Murdoch tweets on 20 February that he supports Scottish independence.

Alex Salmond plays down Murdoch role in Leveson Enquiry in a letter in the Sun on Sunday on 26 February - whose launch he described as good news..

This week Andrew Neil tweets that Murdoch says that he supports independence as revenge against the UK for Leveson.

We all know that there would be no Leveson without the revelations that News of the World journalists hacked the phone of Milly Dowler after she went missing causing huge distress, after false hope, to her family.

But this series of events looks quite compromising for the First Minister. Willie Rennie is furious about it.

Today at First Minister's Questions, he asked:

In the first edition of the Sun on Sunday the FM played down the role of the Sun, the News of the World and News International in the phone hacking scandal. Using a defence "it wasn't just them, others did it too" the First Minister lent his support to Rupert Murdoch yet was silent on the victims of phone hacking. Does the First Minister believe that hundreds of victims will be satisfied with his failure to stand up to News International?

The First Minister replied:

I don't know if Willie Rennie managed to attend this Chamber last week  (that was a wee dig that Willie doesn't get to ask a question every week) when I reiterated and made it absolutely clear of my full support for police investigations north and south of the border and the Leveson Enquiry but I do think Willie Rennie should take on board since the then Government did nothing about it of Operation Motorman. I promised that would be placed in SPICE  in case the identification by the Information Commissioner of potential criminality in data protection hadn't been fully understood by this Chamber.  He'll find it extends across the London press, very few Scottish examples but every single part of that should be analysed and looked at in terms of phone hacking. I hope Willie Rennie will accept our total commitment in seeing that the law is upheld.


So far so much barely relevant waffle and so little mention of sympathy for the victims of phone hacking. Willie Rennie continued with his line of questioning:

He prefers to cosy up than stand up to Rupert Murdoch. Earlier this week he was caught bragging about Murdoch's support for independence and then we discovered that Murdoch wanted to break up Britain in revenge for the Leveson phone hacking enquiry and our First Minister is only to happy to leap on that and ignore the victims. That was the trade, wasn't it? I'll scratch your back, you'll scrap mine. It's not the column in the Sun on Sunday that's the problem, it's not the cosy fireside chats with Rupert, it's not even the free tickets to tgeh golf.  My problem is rather than stand up to Rupert, he's defended him. HE's put his interests above those of the victims Is the First Minister not ashamed of this grubby deal?


You could tell how uncomfortable Salmond was. We've become accustomed to him assuredly swatting away questioners like they were vaguely annoying flies. Not so this time. His fist was clenched, he could barely look up, he started scratching his nose. He was the personification of shiftiness. It took him a good minute to basically reiterate what he'd said to the first question. Then he said how he was going to start talking about the Liberal Democrats and Michael Brown. He was falling all over his words, though until he reached into the recesses of his brain for a decent insult and came up with the line that the Liberal Democrats had put the moan into sanctimony.

Not a single word again about phone hacking victims. He didn't deny that he had done a grubby little deal with Murdoch. The contrast between the cool, crisp, calm Willie Rennie and the flailing Salmond was quite a revelation. Willie has definitely found an Achilles Heel.

But do you know what? I didn't enjoy it. I don't want to have a First Minister who compromises himself like Salmond has done with Murdoch and Trump before him. You expect more from someone who holds that office. I'm actually quite angry with Salmond that when confronted with the reality of his dealings with Murdoch, he didn't have an answer. He was literally lost.

I wanted to see Salmond express sympathy for News International's victims, to say something about the culpability of the Murdoch empire. He might go back to his office, throw a tantrum and fashion a slick line for the future, but it'll be too late. When confronted with the realities of his actions, he could not find the words to justify them.

Better Nation's Jeff Breslin is no friend of the Liberal Democrats, so I took it as high praise indeed to see these tweets from him today:

Willie Rennie really made the First Minister squirm today. It had to be done - but it wasn't a pretty sight.

Stephen Fry returns to the fray

I was amused earlier this week to be touted as the poster girl of the intolerant left by Jeff over at Better Nation because of what I wrote about Stephen Fry's reported comments on sexuality

It's quite ironic that I've been singled out for criticism when I as a Liberal Democrat have been the recipient of hyperbolic, hysterical bile, mainly from Labour on Twitter on many occasions. I at least do try to be fair in what I write and I hope I've been consistent in sticking up for people in other parties if I think it's merited. I tend to take the view that most people who get involved in politics are good people who are trying to make people's lives better and I assume that's the case until it's proved otherwise.

What happened on Sunday is that Stephen Fry was reported to have made a comment which I considered to be preposterous and I said so. That doesn't mean I don't like him, just that he's said something I don't agree with. I said at the time that I wanted him to engage in the debate and tell us what he had actually said and how he's been misquoted.

Thankfully he's now resurfaced on Twitter to post a link to a post on his blog explaining his side of the story. It's a long post, but as with everything he writes, it's worth reading. He concludes:

Sometimes I have to pinch myself. I am sitting on an aeroplane writing a blog which tries to reassure the world that I am quite aware that women enjoy sex. No one can say my life isn’t unpredictable, interesting and … well, Fryish…

He expresses disappointment in those of us who believed that he could have said such a thing. Well, when you see what's reported as a direct quote in one of the more reputable newspapers in the UK, you do tend to take it seriously.

If you're going to express opinions publicly, you're going to get people disagreeing with you. Most of the time that criticism will be of reasonable quality, raising legitimate points. At other times it will just be nasty, insulting bile.  My way of dealing with it is to relish the former and ignore the latter. It works for me, at least. I am more hurt by criticism from those I respect and I'm more likely to take it seriously, than that from sensationalist strangers.

The online world in general and Twitter in particular can be a heated place from time to time - that high running passion can be a force for good as well as for bad. Remember how #trafigura ensured that our democratic processes were not subverted by legal procedural malarkey? Remember how #iranelection got news out from Iran of the protests and unacceptable actions of the authorities?

Anyway, I'm glad that Stephen Fry is back amongst us. Even if the comments reported last week were accurate,  his book would be near the top of my letter to Santa this year.

My mixed feelings on the Pope's visit

Malc and Jeff are having their first inter blog stooshie on the subject of the Pope's visit. The debate on there is brilliant. Jeff says that we should leave Benedict alone:

The Pope may be a flawed leader of a flawed religion and there is of course no convincing reason for anyone to necessarily take his word as Bible but, amid the hustle and bustle of our post-recession lives, amid the attention-shortening gogglebox garbage that we all guiltily tune in to week after week and amid the community-loosening dispersal of increasingly individual lives, there is value in reflecting on what a man steeped in faith and well versed in Scripture has to say to us.

Malc, on the other hand, thinks the whole thing is an outrage:

Preaching against the use of contraceptives is a sure fire way of encouraging unsafe sex – and thus the spread of the disease.  Now obviously people are responsible for their own actions (the Nuremberg trials taught us that) but when a figure as powerful as the Pope is advocating unsafe sex, he is at the very least complicit in the suffering of an entire continent.

I thought I'd copy my contribution on here. Typical liberal, I can see the good points in both of their arguments but I also add that the country we all love is on show tomorrow - we need to give a good account of ourselves.

Because I refer to Stephen's post, it makes sense to post it here. But please view the debate at the original site and the other 55 comments:

I’m going to maybe going to throw a cat among the pigeons and say that both Jeff and Malc have made valid points, indeed it was something I blogged about yesterday.

The Popes visits has two parts the secular/state occasion and the religious/pastoral. As a gay man I’m of course upset about some of the proclamations made by the Pope and his Bishops over a range of issues, gay rights, birth control, child abuse being most prevelant. However, I do have a number of gay Catholic friends some of whom are attending some of the masses.

Just as I a gay Presbyterian (by upbringing) have had to make points for my own case from within the church so to those gay men from within the Catholic Church. Heck if took me one individual a decade to come to terms with just me, I’m expecting the churches to take some time about it.

Bizarrely the Pope is head of State and Head of a Religion, of course he is not alone, our own Queen being another. Therefore there is the Dichotomy was head of State for his prounouncements quite rightly we should be protesting him, and our civic leaders who will have audiences with him should be emphasising issues that they feel he needs to retract or U-turn on.

However, such protest should not infringe on those who want to attend the religious elements of his visit.

And my response:

I tend to agree with Stephen. As a woman I find many of the Pope’s views on things like contraception and abortion utterly objectionable. That he holds as equally bad the ordination of a woman and the covering up of child abuse in the Church is appalling. As a liberal, I find his attitude to gay rights dangerous. His teachings cost lives. End of story. Again as a liberal, I’m prepared to let him have his say, however much I disagree with it, but as an atheist I reserve the right to respectfully tell him that I think he’s wrong when he gets his mates to tell me that my view of the world is somehow deficient.

Having said that, many of my friends will derive a great deal of pleasure and spiritual inspiration from the Pope’s visit, from seeing the leader of their Church in person. Most of them don’t agree with what he says, but he symbolises their faith. I don’t get it, but they do and that’s all that matters to them.

I think it’s important to respect the feelings of those who want to attend the masses tomorrow regardless of the Pope’s dismissal of who I am. It’s all part of that be the change you want to see ethos that is very dear to me.

I don’t think the Pope should be insulated from the very real concerns and outrage his views cause, though – let him see the LGBT groups peacefully protesting against his teachings. We all need to learn to live together.

On the question of the State visit, of course there are things that I’d rather see my taxes go on. We’re where we are, though. It’s done and dusted. And although I endorse the views expressed by Stephen Fry et al in their letter, that it’s wrong to grant him a State visit, there’s not a lot I can do about it now.

I think we also need to consider some other factors – it’s not just that we’ve played host to people like the Chinese leader and the King of Saudi Arabia. The British state has committed some real atrocities in its time. Sending children to Australia to lives of abuse and misery and taking decades to even try to make amends is one of them. In the case of the Catholic Church, the way it dealt with the child abuse carried out by its own clergy is something that we must never see again. I’m far from convinced that they truly understand how they added to the trauma suffered by the victims.

In the spirit of live and let live, I think of the children who can’t get to sleep tonight because they are so excited at taking part in the Papal parade or one of the Masses, of those who have travelled from the ends of the country for a once in a generation opportunity.

The other thing we should remember is that our beautiful country is on show tomorrow. The pictures of the Pope touching down and travelling through the streets of Edinburgh and Glasgow will be broadcast all over the world. I want that world to see our respectful, tolerant, liberal, diverse Scotland.

I might fundamentally disagree with the man on practically everything but, thankfully, in this country, his views are not law, nor will they ever be.

I guess what I’m saying in rambling fashion is that I can see where both Jeff and Malc are coming from, but I think we just have to accept it. When he does say something illiberal, as he’s bound to, you can bet your life I’ll be on his case, as is my right.

Whatever, you can bet your life that tomorrow, I'll be watching his every move like the news junkie I am. I can't control this visit or what the Pope says, but I'll be giving my opinion, spreading a little liberalism, whenever I can.