A liar but not a crook; Alistair Carmichael is good enough for parliament

This morning a pair of judges in Edinburgh dismissed a petition seeking to overturn the result of the general election in Orkney and Shetland. Alistair Carmichael is not guilty of breaking the Representation of the People Act (1983) and may remain a Member of Parliament. There will be no by-election in the northern isles.

Obviously this was an outrage and not just because everything in Scotland these days is an outrage. It was a disgrace. A whitewash and an establishment stitch-up. A stitch-up slathered with whitewash. All across Scotland you could hear the screeching as nationalist fury chimps rattled the bars of their cages. A dirty protest of the mind will doubtless follow.

Carmichael had been taken to court by four of his constituents who argued that he breached electoral law by lying about his involvement in the leaking of a civil service memo minuting a meeting between Nicola Sturgeon and the French Ambassador in which it was claimed, or so the minute asserted, that the First Minister had suggested she would prefer the general election be won by David Cameron and not by Ed Miliband.