Would you give Derek Mackay another chance? Would you be open to the disgraced minister coming back to public life in some way? I’m guessing by the remarks made by readers in the Herald comments section that the answer to the question is probably no. But I think that’s a pity. Derek Mackay deserves a second chance.

I say this not because of any sympathy for Mr Mackay or because I know him or like him – I don’t. What he did while a minister in persistently contacting a 16-year-old boy – calling him “cute”, inviting him to dinner, you know the details – was also disgraceful and stupid and deserved to be punished.

In fact, I would go further than that and say that Mr Mackay deserved to be punished more severely than he was. The finance secretary resigned as a minister and was suspended by the SNP when the scandal broke, but he continued as an independent for several months without turning up to Holyrood. He also took his £64,700 salary, as well as £11,945 for “loss of ministerial office” and £53,725 when he left Holyrood for good.

The fact that Mr Mackay had the gall to behave in this way sticks in my craw, it really does, and if I had a vote, I would support the Tory proposal that an MSP should be sacked if they don’t take part in Holyrood for more than six months without a valid reason. The fact Mr Mackay was able to effectively stop doing his job and still take the cash was appalling and reflects badly on the system and on Mr Mackay as a politician and a person.

I have to say that the way in which some people reacted to Mr Mackay’s behaviour also reflects badly on the state of Scottish politics more generally. When the scandal first emerged, there were nationalists prepared to explain it away. One SNP councillor said it was probably a honey trap set by the British establishment. There were also some who questioned the motives of the boy’s family in the same way they questioned the motives of the women who accused Alex Salmond. Such are the stories people are prepared to tell themselves in the name of the cause.

Some nationalists went even further, pointing out that 16 is the age of consent and suggesting that the connections between Mr Mackay and the boy was a “relationship”. I also remember thinking at the time that there was more than a hint of homophobia in the attempts to portray Mr Mackay as just your normal good-time gay guy with an eye for young men. In the end, the fact people were prepared to apologise for him in this way, or attempt to explain him, reflects the fact nationalists have nowhere else to go other than the SNP, scandal after scandal after scandal.

But here’s where I draw the line. Derek Mackay was obviously not the victim of a British honey trap or anything of that sort – the apologists’ claims are ridiculous – and in the end he deserved to lose his job. But the question is: where does the punishment stop? You probably saw the other day that Mr Mackay has set up a consultancy firm now that he’s out of Holyrood and the reaction among many was that it was a further insult to voters that allowed a shamed MSP to continue to make money by exploiting his contacts and friends in the Scottish government.

However, I have to say that, troubled as I was by the Mackay apologists, I’m just as troubled by the Mackay haters who appear to believe he should be denied the chance to move on. He has lost his job, albeit with some pretty generous financial compensation. He has also lost his reputation; there was a time that he was spoken of as a future First Minister but when the scandal broke, Nicola Sturgeon said her putative successor’s conduct had fallen seriously below the standard required of a minister. She couldn’t have said anything else. But still: that’s gotta hurt.

My point is that, disgraceful and appalling as Mr Mackay’s behaviour was, punishment has to be proportionate. The principle of a justice system – or any system that seeks to dish out punishment of any sort – is that if a person is judged to have committed an offence or behaved badly, they should be punished in an appropriate way and then, once the sentence has been served, given the chance to move on – indeed, helped to move on. The idea that someone should be subjected to some kind of rolling punishment that never ends is fundamentally unfair.

This, I think, is the situation that now applies to Mr Mackay. Although he did nothing criminal, he was (eventually) punished by losing his public office and in that sense he has served his punishment and now deserves the chance of rehabilitation. Apart from anything else, he’s going to have to earn some money somehow, unless we believe that an inability to make a living should be added to his punishments and humiliations, which I think would be extremely unfair.

There are some nonetheless who seem to think that’s how it should roll – that Mr Mackay should in some way be denied the chance to try to recover. Sadly, there are also those who think his consultancy firm reflects a wider malaise and that politicians are “all the same”. I think that’s a shame because, disgraceful as Mr Mackay’s behaviour was, it is still the exception. Bad politicians are generally caught in one of two ways – with their hands in the till, or their hands in something else – but most of them are just getting on with things and working openly and fairly.

We should also be cautious about coming down with Biblical fury on Derek Mackay and others like him. He shouldn’t have behaved in the way he did. He shouldn’t have been able to stay on at Holyrood once he was found out. He shouldn’t have been able to claim all the money he did. But he should be able to try to rebuild some sort of career for himself now he’s out of parliament. A justice system, and a political system, should be based on the principle of consequences for bad behaviour. But in any fair world, punishment cannot go on forever.

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