This morning, lawyers are acting on my request to prepare a counsel’s opinion on the legality of publishing those of Stewart McDonald’s emails which are in the public interest to be revealed.

This may take a day or two.

Emails of dubious provenance are published all the time. Emails about Partygate brought down Boris Johnson. Nobody got imprisoned for the Paul Mason, Richard Dearlove or Integrity Initiative troves. Nobody argued the Guardian could not publish their (tendentious) selection from the Panama Papers. The law did not stop publication of the stolen UEA emails on climate change.

But this is Scotland, where a politician can phone the chief constable at 6pm and by 9pm they are in the home of a journalist on an intimidation mission.

(NB I have no complaint at all about the behaviour of the individual officers last Saturday, they were very friendly).

If you get burgled Police Scotland will be with you within 48 hours, if at all. But threaten exposure of the political establishment and senior plain clothes officers can be mobilised straight away.

Sturgeon’s repeated use of both police and prosecutors to pursue private vendettas cannot be safely ignored, so forgive me if I proceed soberly. Kindly be patient.

I was not involved in obtaining the emails and of course it follows I am not the only one with access to them. Others are safely outside the UK. So they may get published elsewhere.

I have set out the very restrained way I intended to judge which are in the public interest. If the Sturgeon goon squad succeeds in removing me from the process, that may well not be the win they think it is.

Finally, legality and morality are not the same. There is a great deal of outrage toward me from the do nothing wing of the SNP about “publishing private emails”.

Well, post Snowden nobody has an excuse for not understanding that the British security services look continually at the private emails of hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens, myself included.

Stewart McDonald is not only an MP, he is one of the biggest fanboys and cheerleaders for the British security services. I have never seen anything from him remotely critical on the security services’ mass surveillance.

Amazing how these establishment figures squeal when the boot is on the other foot and citizens push back a little.

Secondly, to anybody who has paid attention, it is simply extraordinary that an ardent British nationalist like Stewart McDonald is in the SNP at all, let alone in a senior position.

McDonald is an enthusiastic proponent of British neo-imperialist foreign policy and also of the Israeli Defence Force and the Zionist state.

McDonald, even after Independence, wants Scotland to keep hosting British nuclear weapons at Faslane and allow Scottish regiments in the British Armed Forces.

McDonald has always supported every blockage to Independence. He is currently proposing there should be no plebiscite election at all, and the Scottish Government should do nothing except continue to ask Westminster for permission to hold a referendum. That is the amendment McDonald is proposing to the SNP “special conference” on the way forward.

I am not sure that those who obtained the emails specifically targeted McDonald. I think it more probable McDonald self-selected as the only MP stupid enough to enter his email login details and password in reply to a phishing email.

But I am delighted it is him.
 
 
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