Bullshit 1, Justice 0

Although the future is unknowable, I can offer Whining Willie Rennie at least one guarantee: he and his morally vacuous mince-cluster of Lib Dems will be given a comprehensive seeing-to at the 2016 Holyrood elections.  That apart, it remains to be seen exactly what the fallout from today’s “he’s a lying scumbag, but that’s actually legal, so shut it, Nats” Carmichael court decision will be.  But what the heck, let’s give it a go.

As BBC Cringeland marks the outcome with its traditional parade of whey-faced Unionist chortlers, and the rest of us are left resisting the temptation to go out and uproot lamp-posts with our teeth, the immediate priority is clear.  We must support the Orkney Four, monstered at the start of proceedings as vexatious politically motivated agitators, and now facing the prospect of the same tedious spittle-gauntlet again.  As if Carmichael’s smear, and his subsequent lie, weren’t “politically motivated”, and the “political” nature of that lie wasn’t the essence of his beetroot-faced defence!

More pressingly, stupendous as the Four’s crowd-funding total may look, if Carmichael is awarded costs they still stand to lose everything, including in one case the ability to pursue a career.  That justice is denied to ordinary folk by being so far out of their price range that it’s visible only to the Hubble telescope is a disgrace, and a reminder that after independence the hard work will just be starting.  For now, whatever it takes, even the equivalent of two Wings crowd-funders in one outrageous go, we simply can’t allow the Four to go under.

Moral victories may be as much fun as a rub-down with caustic soda, but the quartet really do need to be commended for having the initiative to bring this case, and the fortitude, staying power and downright cojones to see it through.  As sages such as Lallands Peat Worrier always warned, the legal task they faced was equivalent to attempting the world pole vault record using a garden rake.

In the event, they established, officially and on the record, that Carmichael lied.  They forced him to display, for all the world to see, what a mediocre, evasive, self-serving scrote he is.  That the world will doubtless turn a blind eye simply illustrates how pin-headed that world can be, and that they failed only to prove that lying was an offence under the Representation of the People Act just shows that the law couldn’t be more of an ass if it were offering rides on Millport Beach.

If this were fitba’, it would be like leading 2-0 after playing the other team off the park for 89 minutes, only to have both goals chalked off and a last-minute penalty awarded against you because of an arcane FIFA rule about half-time pies being insufficiently hot.  It may not be an Establishment fix, but it’s a brain-contorting legal travesty.

Justice may yet be served by a Parliamentary Standards enquiry, in the sense that my nine-year-old niece may one day be the first woman on Mars.  But it shouldn’t even come to that.  If Carmichael were a sensitive human being instead of a self-important fart cushion, he’d unobtrusively take the Chiltern Hundreds and bog off to Patagonia for five years’ rehabilitation as a goat-herder. 

No such luck.  As long as he doesn’t make the mistake of standing in another election, he’s all set to hop back aboard that well-known choo-choo, gravy-guzzling pail in hand and smug how-jammy-am-I-mammy grin on his face.  Could there be a nice furry cloak in his future, even though sane people wouldn’t even recommend him for membership of the Tufty Club?  In a world where Alistair Darling and Gordon Brown, the Laurel and Hardy of the indyref campaign, slide effortlessly into sinecures in the high-powered financial shafting sector, and wee Dougie Alexander becomes Bono’s personal sanctimony adviser, surely anything is possible.

In the meantime, any chance of a teaspoonful of contrition from Carmichael amongst the Desmond-style inundation of self-exculpatory guff?  Nope, thanks for asking, folks, but hard luck.

“I’ve been vindicated,” orates the puffball, when the word he should have used is “vindictive”.  “It was all a plot by the Nationalists,” he asserts, as if he’s on the shortlist for an Iain Duncan Smith Victim-Blaming Mendacity Award. “Scottish politics since the referendum has been so polarised,” he whines, when he’s the one who made a pole arise, somewhat forcefully, up the back passage of democracy.

But, hey, what do you expect now that smearing and lying has been enshrined in law as acceptable behaviour?  Enjoy the temporary gloat, Unionist scoffers who made a meal out of our “grumpiness” this morning.  One day very soon, one of these bastards will be doing the same to you.

If you'd like to donate to the Orkney Four fund-raiser, you can access it here.