For perhaps the first time ever, I find myself on the same side of an argument as Scotland’s Nationalist administration. It is not a comfortable place to be. But despite the fact that I shuddered – like the rest of the civilised world – at the hero’s welcome afforded to Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi in Tripoli, I still believe the SNP when they say that they took the decision to free the Lockerbie bomber on compassionate grounds, with no strings attached.
Compassion is an act of faith, and like faith is almost impossible to justify intellectually, especially in the face of such ferocious opposition. But while Kenny MacAskill, the Scottish justice minister, is in the dock of world opinion with the rest of his SNP colleagues, it is questions about the role of Gordon Brown’s government in London that are becoming all the more pertinent this morning.
There is simply nothing to be gained for the SNP, politically or diplomatically, in cocking a snook at the rest of the world. On the contrary, they have become pariahs – certainly in the eyes of many of the families of the American victims of the bombing – for releasing the man convicted of murdering no fewer than 270 people.
But it increasingly appears as if Prime Minister Brown and Foreign Secretary David Miliband are content to allow the SNP administration to take the flak over this issue as part of a greater game to help secure British and American access to the Libyan oil and gas fields. Miliband has attacked this suggestion as a “slur”, but aren’t his words just so much hot air? Saif Gaddafi, the Libyan dictator’s son, has said that a trade agreement with Britain was part of the deal done to secure Megrahi’s release, and this newspaper reveals today that relations between Saif and Lord Mandelson are much closer than the Business Secretary has admitted.
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