Lockerbie: Why Did the SNP Do It?

Party discipline can be a troublesome thing. Especially when insisting upon it actually works against you. Yesterday’s votes in the Scottish parliament criticising Kenny MacAskill and the decision to release the Lockerbie Bomber on compassionate grounds would have had a much greater impact if members had voted their consciences, not the party line.

That’s why Con Coughlin is wrong to argue that the 73-50 vote against the SNP “heaps yet further humiliation” upon the Nationalists. That a minority administration loses a vote can hardly be thought shocking. But a proper free vote – as, actually, a matter such as this should be – would actually have been of some use since it would, for once, have given a picture of the parliament’s true feelings. And the truth would be more powerful than the contrived fakery of a vote that split, with one exception, down party lines.

That exception was Malcolm Chisholm, the Labour MSP for Edinburgh North and Leith, who voted with the nationalists.