Political figures should face real consequences for covering up abuse

The picture on standards in public life as evidenced by the daily news is one of a moral decline that few people would have been predicted as being as normalised as it has become. In the last few days we hear of a Labour politician being extremely drunk at a nuclear facility and insulting and sexually harassing staff and an SNP candidate suspended yesterday afternoon for covering up another SNP figure who was last week found guilty of serious sexual abuse.

The former is certainly eye-catching, involving apparent romantic entanglement with two separate captains of nuclear submarines by a woman whose husband has been arrested for spying for China, yet the Jordan Linden case and its most recent revelations today are potentially even worse.

Multiple credible allegations were made about a decade-long track record of serious sexual abuse. These allegations were made in the correct way and directed to the correct people. The only action that was taken was to punish and victimise the complainants and then to reward the people who carried out the cover-up.

This is all happening as we await the seismic shock to Scottish politics which will come one way or another from the trial of Peter Murrell on embezzlement charges. Whether guilt is found or not, it remains the case that multiple serious warnings of concern were raised by people in the party and these were not only not acted on but aggressively silenced from the top of the party.

Listing the range of UK politicians currently or recently caught up in scandals would take too much space here, but not all are protected. Some who are accused are summarily suspended. So what is the difference? Simply put, Joani Reid was a close contact of Morgan McSweeney who orchestrated the purge of the left in the Labour Party and their replacement with close allies of his (including his wife, who serves as MP for Hamilton and Lanark).

Jordan Linden was a leadership-approved rising star, Peter Murrell is married to the party leader. The pattern is simple; those who are closely allied with the people who run a party are protected, those who are not (or, even more so, if they are internal opponents) are quickly sacrificed. Political leaders are clearly much more interested in their own political gain than in the suffering of victims.

There is no fundamental difference between what has happened here and what happened with Jeffery Epstein. It is all about power and the ability of powerful people to suppress evidence of abuse or malpractice which it is in their interests not to be revealed.

Even now there is only limited justice. It has been ten years since the first allegations of abuse against Linden, four years since the significant internal complaints were made public (after being ignored internally) and three years since the police investigation began. Linden has been found guilty and so justice has come for him. But Linden could not have undertaken this campaign of abuse if it was not for enablers.

So how can this problem be solved? An immediate reaction would be 'regulator' or 'beefed up Standards Commission'. Unfortunately, regulators are appointed by and answer to senior politicians. Sometimes you get someone as independently-minded and tenacious as the current Information Commissioner – but politicians seek to minimise those appointments in favour of people more pliable.

The most effective solution to this is deterrence through jeopardy. In the current context it has been made very clear through repeated practice that those involved in covering up abuse, corruption or bad behaviour will face no consequence so long as their role is to be negligent as opposed to actively participating. Plausible deniability is sufficient to insulate people from consequence.

This is a moral hazard. To be in a position of power, having knowledge of abuse and intentionally failing to act on that knowledge, knowing you have the ability to protect those being abused but instead protecting political self interest, is not a neutral act. There should always be a presumption of action on the part of those who should act, and if it is not taken that should be taken to be collusion – and a criminal matter.

It should be for a jury to decide if that failure to act amounts to wilful negligence with the goal of protecting someone accused of crime, based on whether a person had the power to act and a reasonable expectation on them that they should have acted. That doesn’t just mean the official with technical responsibility for complaints; if senior politicians are informed of what is happening and do not ensure action has been taken, they could be liable as well.

That would potentially have put a number of SNP officials and politicians on trial straight after Linden. The goal is not to have political figures in prison; the goal is to remove the reality of impunity for immoral actions and to alter their decision-making process when faced with allegations of abuse.

As it stands it looks like Scotland's senior political figures and the bureaucracies that serve them will have to see one of their own serving time in prison before they understand that their political self-interest does not supersede a duty to act on abuse.