IN those televised leadership debates which have lately become a nailed-on part of the modern UK election, a curious first-past-the-post form of engagement is in operation. In this the main focus of the candidates isn’t to command their own policies and pick holes in their opponents’ but to post a pre-packaged assortment of aphorisms which will resonate quickly with the audience.

If these lead to applause followed by laughter (and you can fire out more of them than your opponent) then you will carry the day.

A trusty crowd-pleaser is any apercu that features the theme of “the voters know best”. Sometimes it will be “you can’t fool the electorate” or “the voters aren’t daft”. The trick is to spot a suitable opening before delivering your sage locution with a suitably conspiratorial look to the audience that tells them you are one of them.

That you fully intend, if elected, to duly treat the electorate like dafties is the next part of this confidence trick: how to disguise it. This usually involves keeping a few skittles in the air at once and at Holyrood the SNP have been its most adept practitioners. If any are in danger of dropping they simply point south where Boris Johnson often appears to be encountering issues with his basic motor functions.

During the entire political circus which is the investigation and trial of Alex Salmond and its aftermath the main problem for Nicola Sturgeon hasn’t been whether or not she misled Parliament but a dawning realisation that she and her most senior advisers actually do believe the voters are fools.

There may not be a nailed down conspiracy – the deliberate and concerted effort to achieve an intended purpose by stealth and deception – but the public know when we’re deep into conspiracy territory. Why was the Crown Office and an assortment of ministers and their advisors so keen to prevent scrutiny of key documents? Why is Peter Murrell seeking to become the UK champion at Blind Man’s Bluff?

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And while there may not be any prima facie evidence that the Crown Prosecution has been reduced to the status of the First Minister’s private consigliere the public know when something looks shifty. And especially when the Lord Advocate is reduced to touring the country’s main media centres like a GDR commissar threatening them with the pokey if they dare to publish information germane to the investigation, especially if it puts his boss in the frame. This has become less about who knew what and when than how much the public are happy to be taken for fools.

Right now, the SNP’s most senior grandees have a decision to make. What will be least damaging: salvaging Nicola Sturgeon or removing her? And let’s speak plainly here: if you think the referendum factor will feature in their thinking then behave yourself. Compared with maintaining ongoing, superannuated, index-linked, all-expenses-paid power in the devolved arrangements literally no-one in the SNP gives a fig about the knock-on effect on the prospects of independence.

It’s all about the women, say the First Minister and her friends. She also said that no one individual, no matter how powerful or important, can be considered above the law. She could have been writing her own resignation letter. If it was all about the women and ensuring their voices are heard then why has her administration failed to investigate the numerous complaints of misogynistic threats and intimidation made by women who are considered to be on the wrong side of the gender debate? And if it was all about ensuring the rules apply to everyone why are only some party miscreants defenestrated and others not? The slogan that will come to be most associated with Ms Sturgeon’s tenure will be “What did you know and when did you know it?”

At the start of this process the public might well not have known why the difference of four days in her recollection of when she first knew of complaints against her predecessor was important, but they know now.

And they most definitely know now why it’s not a good idea for the country’s chief prosecutor to occupy a seat in the cabinet. Voters tend to inform themselves pretty quickly on matters which they sense have an impact of what they consider to be their expectations of honesty and integrity. They aren’t stupid; all politicians know that, don’t they?

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The public might not know who leaked details of the police action against Mr Salmond but they know broadly who stood to gain from it and why. There’s another problem for those in the SNP who think this is all just too arcane for the public to be dragged away from their soaps and their cookery shows. Even those with only a transitory interest in these high matters of state now also know that the initial investigation was botched by the sort of basic incompetence that would cost most of them their own jobs.

And while they may not have initially known why this has cost them £500k they now know it was because the government chose to ignore all independent legal advice entreating them to desist. And they know that this too was born of arrogance and entitlement. And that it springs from a mind-set which – quite literally – has come to believe it can do no wrong and that there is no agency in the land to hold them accountable higher than them.

So, there may not be a smoking gun and silver bullet and no prima facie evidence of corruption. Yet what we are left with is something far worse. For, these aren’t merely the behaviours of an administration that’s grown too accustomed to power. They point to a government that looks like and operates like a cartel and that assumes it’s no longer subject to checks and balances and that has instead begun to impose their own and for their own self-serving purposes. The public know this too because it’s been rubbed in their faces each day of the Alex Salmond Inquiry.

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