I warned that the security services will turn to false flag events to discredit the SNP. I said this in my talk to Edinburgh SNP Club on 6 March, and repeated it on this blog last week. Well, it is starting.

The reporting specifically blames nationalists. There is something delightfully old fashioned about MI5. Is spraying Q for Quisling not rather an obscure reference to today’s generation?

[UPDATE: I had not taken on board that the racist comments made allegedly by an unidentified SNP supporter to Faisal Islam of Sky News occurred in the same town on the same day. That indicates to me a coordinated security service plan was in progress, and gives some idea how they are operating, probably in a mobile team. That two such improbable and unusual “nationalist outrages” should occur the same day and the same place confounds belief.]

A sweeping SNP victory on May 7 is considered enough of a threat to the United Kingdom for the security services to use up some assets. Long term sleepers within the SNP will now be activated, so expect to find one or two such events traced to apparent bona fide SNP members.

More importantly, a major thrust will be agent provocateur activity. Security service agents within the SNP will be trying to initiate and to egg on (yes, that is a deliberate and relevant Jim Murphy reference, think about it) impressionable members to vandalism or violence. Be very, very wary of such people and do not be tempted.

There are, 100% for certain, MI5 agents online posing as “cybernats” who will be quoted in the media saying outlandishly unpleasant and threatening things. We will also see more incidents like the Murphy eggs or the complete set-up of the “mob” jostling Miliband in the St James Centre, which by chance I witnessed.

The ridiculous “violent nationalist” meme worked well for the unionists in the referendum campaign, and influenced some older voters who trust the BBC and corporate media. So they will play it again for all it is worth. The worry is of course that some manufactured incident will go wrong and somebody will get hurt. The still bigger worry is that, as the security services get increasingly desperate as polling day approaches, they will manufacture a false flag incident in which people deliberately get hurt.

The best defence against that is for ordinary people to be wise to how the real world works. Social media is key. Tweet, facebook, blog, instagram or whatever else you can do to spread this.

The BBC is now joining in the propaganda for tactical voting against the SNP, quoting an Andrew Skinner from United Against Separation as saying: “They won’t say it publicly, but be it a Labour or a Tory area they are happy to vote the other way to keep the SNP out.” Err, you just did say it publicly, Mr Skinner, and thank you for the confirmation that the Red and Blue Tories are all in it together.

It is hardly a coincidence that the BBC did this piece to promote unionist tactical voting centred on Dundee West, just after the Guardian did exactly the same thing , not only promoting Labour/Tory tactical voting, but about the same constituency. The unionist media really are absolutely determined to try to keep my friend Chris Law out, aren’t they? No chance.

Tactical voting is not all on the unionist side. Tommy Sheridan, Carolyn Leckie and Pat Kane are among the diverse figures, not SNP members, who have called on supporters of independence to vote SNP in this FPTP election. All of those are much more substantial figures than Andrew Skinner. Yet strangely the BBC and Guardian have felt no urge to interview any of them, or discuss pro-independence tactical voting. The shameless bias of the unionist media appears to have no limits.

Michael Fallon’s comments on Miliband and Trident this week also brought a welcome reminder that the Red/Blue Tories are no different, as the Labour Party hastened to affirm their love for weapons of mass destruction and their earnest desire to spend unlimited sums on ever greater potential to destroy mankind. Thanks for the clarification.

I should however like to see clarification from the SNP. Labour and Tory can of course combine to vote Trident replacement through. If that happens with Labour in office, the SNP should make plain that would mean the withdrawal of support for that government. For the SNP to allow Labour to push Trident through with Tory support, and then the SNP revert to supporting the Labour government in office, would be a betrayal of the Scottish people. To me, there has not been absolute clarity in our response on this issue. It must be given.

A UKIP candidate has been obliged to report to the police for breaking the law on “treating” for providing sausage rolls at an event. Yet Jack Straw at elections in 2005 and 2010 held rallies for the Muslim community in Blackburn at which the Labour Party provided hundreds of voters with full sit down meals, free of charge, and Police refused to take any action – indeed they were protecting the event. This is yet another example of the political elite being above the law.

This is what I posted on this blog seven years ago:

On 24 April 2005, in an election rally in Jack Straw’s Blackburn Constituency, over one hundred Blackburn electors were given a full free meal by the Labour party, with Jack Straw present, having just made an election speech to the lucky partakers of this generosity.

Every reader involved in electoral politics will know that this is a criminal offence under the Representation of the People Act, formally known as “Treating” – the provision of free food and drink to electors in an attempt to influence their vote. Conviction leads to forfeiture of the election, banning from public office and a prison sentence of up to two years.

It is also an offence of strict liability – a candidate is liable even if it was organised by someone else on his behalf. A candidate is viewed in law as responsible for his campaign. But in this instance, Jack Straw was actually present.

There was no shortage of witnesses – protestors were ringing the hall. The police were actually providing protection for this criminal event, and showed no interest in the fact that the proceeding was illegal. Jack Straw runs Blackburn as a personal fiefdom.

I therefore went to a police station and made a formal complaint. This obliged the police to investigate, and to do them justice, the detectives of Lancashire Police did a very good job, establishing the facts of the incident. They then sent a file to the Crown Prosecution Service.

The Crown Prosecution Service returned the file to Lancashire Police, saying that the offence was “Trivial” and there would be no prosecution. As this was one of the worst examples of large scale electoral treating since it was made a criminal offence in 1832, presumably this means the CPS has decided that the law on treating has fallen into desuetude, and candidates may now provide food and drink to electors.

Or only New Labour ministers?

I have no sympathy for UKIP. But if action is taken against UKIP where none was taken against Jack Straw for an absolutely blatant example, on a far greater scale, of the same offence, then that would be sickening, and yet a further example of the fact that the law is in no sense applied equally in the UK.

The Guardian has published an open appeal to Tory and Lib Dem voters to vote Labour in Dundee West. I think that tells you all you need to know about the Red Tories and their priorities. It is also a new low in journalism even for the fanatic and increasingly desperate Severin Carrell, who is a total disgrace to his profession. The costs of publishing the Guardian ought to be counted against Marra’s election expenses: this is not journalism in any sense, merely a puff piece for a candidate.

The five million questions project was a Labour front headed by Marra and merely one of numerous fake “independent” bodies set up to provide the corporate media with disguised sources of unionist propaganda during the election campaign. It was based in the University of Dundee. It is seven years ago that I published a piece headed Dundee University – A Tool For New Labour. The hosting of the fake five million questions “research” for the Tory-friendly Labour candidate for the University seat is yet further evidence. This Labour/Dundee University scheme linked in to the Daily Record. Dundee University administration have a close relationship with this rag. When I stood for election as Rector against the administration’s candidate, fervent Unionist Andy Nicol, the University administration arranged for the Daily Record in Dundee to come out on election day with a full front cover picture of Andy Nicol and the single banner headline “I Was Born to Lead Dundee Students”.

Naturally, I beat the conniving bastards anyway.

I can today reveal from an inside university source that it was Dundee University Principal Pete Downes who fed Alistair Darling with the nonsense about loss of funding for medical research, which Darling used against Salmond in televised debate. All of which fires my determination to stand for Rector of the University again next year and put a stop to these shenanigans.

My good friend Chris Law is an excellent candidate and a truly interesting and dynamic individual with a quick, analytic brain. He is very much his own man. I am happy to say that despite Severin Carrell, Labour have as much chance of stopping Chris Law’s election as they have of turning back the River Tay.

It feels its like the referendum all over again. The STV debate had a very peculiar audience, where the Labour and Tory all join together warmly to applaud unionist points, and Jim Murphy got an enthusiastic round of applause before he even started speaking.

I wondered how on earth they got an audience so completely unrepresentative of Scottish opinion, and the answer was not hard to find. The audience has been selected “based both on current opinion polls and the last general election result.”

Not the Holyrood election, not the referendum, but an election five years ago where about 75% of the electorate voted for the Unionist parties, and where the Labour Party was polling twice as well as it is now. On top of which, STV do not reveal what relative weighting they have given to the last general election and to recent opinion polls. It certainly looks like the greatest weight was placed on the last election result.

So we have a stitch-up where Nicola is responding to an audience completely unrepresentative of Scottish opinion today, and where unionism, Labour and the Lib Dems are all vastly over-represented. Do not think this is accidental.

I spent a few hours with Julian today in the Ecuador Embassy. It was the first time I had seen him since moving back to Scotland, so it was good to catch up and a great deal to talk about.

We had some good ideas for future projects, on which you will be seeing more as things develop. You will be pleased to hear that Julian himself is optimistic and very sharp, with sense of humour surviving, although obviously this close confinement, with no access to fresh air and exercise whatsoever, is becoming very wearing. It seems to me impossible to argue that the response to Julian is not disproportionate, especially the ludicrous waste of money paying so many policemen to stand around doing nothing 24 hours a day. How would it hurt the British government to agree to a protocol for daily exercise? Their position is vindictive and inhumane in the extreme.

I had not realised that Julian had so much Scottish ancestry or quite so recently. After independence, he will definitely be entitled to a Scottish passport!

The Guardian reports that today Blair “did not pretend to be Miliband’s biggest fan, and he was notably more enthusiastic about Jim Murphy, the Blairite whom he described as the “great new leader of the Scottish Labour party”.”

How the right wing shill Murphy – a man well to the right of Thatcher on both economic and foreign policy – came to be chosen as Scottish labour leader will be a fascinating chapter in historians’ discussions on the strange death of that party.

I gatecrashed Murphy’s acceptance speech on becoming leader, at Surgeons Hall in Edinburgh, a few months ago. I discovered that his entire audience were paid apparatchiks of the Labour Party. I interviewed several as a journalist (I am an NUJ member – and none recognised me). Of the eleven I spoke to, not a single one had ever heard of the Henry Jackson Society. Which says something about the level of political education of Labour functionaries.

It also explains how we came to the remarkable situation that the result from Eastwood on May 7 will be awaited with much more anxiety in CIA HQ in Virginia and Mossad HQ in Tel Aviv, than it will anywhere in Scotland. That says something very remarkable about what has happened to the Labour Party.

I see that in “journalists” questioning Blair, nobody asked the obvious question, which is who was paying for this particular speech. Hitachi, my guess. He was asked why he is not sharing a platform with Miliband in this election. The answer is of course that not even Miliband is quite that stupid.

It is peculiar timing for the unionist rag The Scotsman, to declare it had solved the mystery of Willie McRae’s death – just when security service tasking on the SNP returns to the levels of 1975-86.

The Scotsman claims that the police had first removed the vehicle and then replaced it, and this explains the mystery of why the gun was so far from the car after McRae’s remarkable two shot “suicide”. For me, that adds just another level of improbability to so very many. How, inside a car, you shoot yourself in the head in such a way that the gun falls out of the window, seems problematic. The car was crashed over a burn; how you order that with the suicide is peculiar.

The case is a notorious one in Scotland. There was never any indication of McRae having suicidal tendencies. He was driving to a destination – his cottage – where he was expected and he had phoned ahead for the fires to be lit. A briefcase of documents went missing from his car. Several retired policemen have affirmed he was under police and security service surveillance, which since his death the authorities refuse to comment on. He was not only a leading member of the SNP, but an effective anti-nuclear activist. All that I already knew – what was new to me was that he had also been investigating a senior paedophile ring. It is tempting to put that together with his having been ADC to Louis Mountbatten, but I confess that is mere speculation.

Establishment lackeys have been trying to ridicule my assertion that the SNP is a major security service target. Many know they are lying, and deliberately are trying to distract. But for those who are actually naïve, is it not extraordinary that anytime anybody mentions anything the security services do, it is dismissed as “conspiracy theory”. GCHQ, MI5, MI6 and SO15 employ over 50,000 people between them. What do you actually think they do all day?

A gentleman in a dark trenchcoat has just handed me this minute. I am not going to check the veracity of its contents at all, but I am rather going immediately to publish it.

Mr Carlton-Browne,

I had a phone call from that Peruvian Johnny. No idea what he was saying, some kind of foreigner talk apparently. Anyway it turned out that young Olga the cleaner could speak the language so she translated for me. She is a marvel, Olga. She even takes copies home of everything for me so that if I lose something she’ll have another copy safe and sound.

Anyway, apparently this Peruvian chap had been in Scotland and met up with Alex Salmond, who used to be some sort of local official. He thought that I would like to know that Salmond said he wasn’t big on canapes and despite his name didn’t like smoked salmon. Rather wry that, I thought.

He went on to say that Salmond said he had enormous respect for Nigel Farage, who was very macho, and he would be delighted to see a UKIP government in power after the general election, preferably in coalition with Pegida. Salmond added “thank God nobody knows about this, or they would lynch me. Of course I haven’t told anybody, but I feel perfectly safe revealing it at random to a passing Peruvian I just met.”

The Peruvian chap said before he hung off that of course he was telling me as everybody knows that all foreign ambassadors must by protocol give details of all their transactions to their host governments and that anybody who denied this was a dirty liar, particularly smart-arsed ex-diplomats from Edinburgh. He also added clearly that nobody at all should believe him if he himself denied these conversations had ever taken place.

I thanked him very much for this information. This is a very proper and official government memo, oh yes. It even has acronyms – we shall have to tell R2D2 and SPECTRE before the meeting in Rio about climate change because we are all genuine government people doing important government business, oh yes.

I shan’t put my name on this as it is all jolly secret. If anyone catches us out, just say Olga got lost in translation.

The Foreign Office has denied the existence of any such memo as that allegedly leaked to the Daily Telegraph, which has now published the full text. Reading it, I can say for sure it is not an FCO memo. That has led some to assume this means it is a Scottish Office memo. But there is a problem here.

Firstly, if the Scottish Office – or any other government department – made a record of a conversation with the French Consul-General, they would undoubtedly have copied it to the FCO. Particularly as the FCO is mentioned and a number of overseas visits and an international negotiation are discussed. If this were a genuine minute, the FCO would undoubtedly have a copy. If the FCO denies it exists, that means there was no such memo made in the Scottish Office and distributed in the ordinary channels.

Secondly, as I stated, the media’s claim that it was a protocol requirement for the French Embassy to report such conversations to the FCO was a complete fabrication. Not only is there no such requirement, it would be contrary to normal diplomatic practice. That is even more true with the Scottish Office. It is unthinkable that the French Consul-General would report those kind of confidential comments from Nicola Sturgeon to the Scottish Office.

If Embassies reported everything people told them to their host governments, nobody would tell the embassy anything. Indeed this episode has already damaged the French Embassy, because it casts a slur upon the discretion and confidentiality which is essential to operate as a diplomat. It may well be that driving a wedge between the SNP and the French Embassy was part of what the security services sought to achieve.

It damages the French Embassy, it damages the SNP, and it damages Miliband by repeating the meme about his being weak and unfit. Those would all seem good results to the security services. Only Miliband has been stupid enough to go along with it.

It seems to me the overwhelming probability is that this document, whether it purports to be a FCO or Scottish Office document, was originated by the Security Services, possibly with the active collusion of someone in the Scottish Office, or equally possibly without their knowledge. Whatever it purported to be, it never entered the normal civil service distribution systems, as the FCO would have a copy, and it would have raised alarm bells all over the place as seriously weird and improbable. It is in that sense a fake, even if it were physically produced inside the Scottish Office. Its purpose was to be leaked to the media and influence the election.

The fake FCO memo has MI5 written all over it. This is the worst example of British security services influencing an election campaign since the Zinoviev letter.

For those whose history is a bit shaky:

The Zinoviev letter – one of the greatest British political scandals of this century – was forged by a MI6 agent’s source and almost certainly leaked by MI6 or MI5 officers to the Conservative Party, according to an official report published today.[4 Feb 1999]
New light on the scandal which triggered the fall of the first Labour government in 1924 is shed in a study by Gill Bennett, chief historian at the Foreign Office, commissioned by Robin Cook

Ever since Treasury Permanent Secretary Nicholas MacPherson stated that civil service impartiality rules do not apply in the case of Scottish independence, I have been warning the SNP that we are going to be the target of active subversion by the UK and US security services. We are seen as a danger to the British state and thus a legitimate target. I spelled this out in my talk to the Edinburgh SNP Club on 6 March, of which more below.

The FCO “memo” reporting that Nicola Sturgeon would rather have a Tory government, is a remarkable document. Firstly, its provenance is very strange. It has been leaked ostensibly by the FCO to the Telegraph. According to the Guardian:

“The leaked document was drafted by a Whitehall official after Coffinier called the FCO, as protocol requires, to pass on a confidential account of several of the ambassador’s meetings in Edinburgh, which included a meeting with Alistair Carmichael, the Scottish secretary.”

The extraordinary thing is, this is just a lie. As someone who worked in the FCO for over twenty years and was an Ambassador myself, I can assure you there is absolutely no protocol requirement on the French Ambassador to give the FCO the content of the meetings she, her Consul-General or anybody else from the French Embassy held in Edinburgh. That claim is absolute nonsense.

Look at it from the Embassy’s point of view. If you repeated everything Nicola Sturgeon told you to the FCO, do you not think she would shortly stop telling you anything at all interesting? That is why diplomats absolutely do not retail such conversations to their host governments.

The second quite extraordinary thing is that both sides of the alleged conversation categorically deny it was said. Nicola Sturgeon denies she said it and the French Embassy deny she said it. So we have a leaked account of a conversation which all the participants say is untrue, yet the unionist media all feel this evidently untrue account is worth splashing as their lead story? The collusion of security services and corporate media is terrifying.

Timing is all. I was wondering how the security services would react to the seemingly unstoppable SNP momentum, following Nicola Sturgeon’s brilliant performance in the leaders’ debate. When I gave that talk to the SNP club, I warned that, as the main threat to the British state, we would suffer the full panoply of dirty tricks from MI5 and CIA. This would include increased penetration, communication interception, agent provocateur activities, forgeries and eventually might include false flag violence blamed on nationalists.

We are at a crisis in our constitutional history. I believe the momentum towards a Scottish exit from the UK is unstoppable. The British state is seeking to appear on the surface to agree to give Scots a free and democratic choice, while using every dirty trick to subvert that choice. Those tricks range from complete control of state and corporate media to the darker arts of the security services.

As I also stated to the SNP club, the USA has decided it is in their interest for the Unionists to prevail, not least so Scotland remains a base for the American controlled Trident missiles the UK taxpayer so obligingly funds. A large part of the CIA’s existence has been and is dedicated to covert activity to keep the forms of government it wants in power in the world. It does not want the SNP.

That the attempt to destabilise Nicola Sturgeon originates with the UK government and the Telegraph should give everyone pause. It is very obviously a security service effort. How otherwise is an account which the French Embassy says is completely false, contained in an official memo to be leaked?

This episode raises very serious questions. But they are not questions about Nicola Sturgeon. They are questions about the subversion of democracy by the security services, and the willing complicity of the corporate media.

Three months ago, I published this: “I remain hopeful that Iran will realise that there is a huge opportunity here. If Iran tactically backs down on its nuclear programme in the current circumstances, that will not be a defeat for Iran but a defeat for the neo-cons.”

That is precisely what has happened. My own Western diplomatic source with access to the talks, has told me today that he estimates 96% of the movement since December has been on the Iranian side, and only 4% on the international side. At the end, the Iranians took everyone by surprise by agreeing to take 2,000 more centrifuges out of use than anybody ever thought they would.

The Iranians have played a blinder by conceding. When Netanyahu had stripped off his thin cloak of international respectability and revealed himself to the world as an arrant racist warmonger, and Israel enjoys less popular support in the West than ever, Iran reveals itself as sensible, moderate and forward thinking in terms of its international relationships.

What is more, Iran has embarrassed and isolated its enemies. The enemies of this deal stand starkly displayed as the Saudi Arabian Royals, Israeli Zionists and United States Zionists – and a more evil combination it is difficult to imagine.

I remain strongly opposed to theocracy. Iran’s human rights record remains very poor and its treatment of gays utterly unacceptable. But by making plain that it is telling the truth in denying it is pursuing a nuclear arsenal, it is making a step in the right direction. If the West shows good faith – which I do not take for granted – and lifts sanctions, then we will see further development in Iran that I hope may produce improvement in democracy, society and human rights. But for now Iran has played a blinder.

If the congressional Zionists do manage to stymie Obama on this one, that will harm the US more than Iran as it will leave Israel and the US alone in sanctioning Iran, and almost certainly a situation where the US is sanctioning EU companies for trading perfectly legally with Iran after the EU lifts sanctions. The EU lifting of sanctions will not be conditional on the US lifting sanctions.That will drive a wedge between the EU and US. So this is a win/win situation for the world whatever Congress does.

It is worth reading the comments section on my December article, and seeing just how many commenters could not see that taking a step back would bring a victory to Iran, and that the Ahmadinejad policy of macho confrontation was deeply unintelligent. Sometimes you win by stepping back and watching your assailant blunder over.

If you thought that Nicola Sturgeon repeatedly mentioned the waste of money – 100 billion pounds – on updating the Trident nuclear missile system, during the leaders’ debate, plainly you need to be committed to a state mental institution. It is unthinkable that Britain’s possession of nuclear weapons should ever be questioned on British mainstream media.

It is so unthinkable, that IT NEVER HAPPENED. Not one British mainstream media report of the debate mentions Trident missiles or nuclear weapons. A Google news search on trident missiles or on nuclear weapons throws up zero references to the leaders’ debate or Nicola Sturgeon in British mainstream media today. Not one of the broadcasters’ highlight packages repeated Nicola’s outrage at the country’s throwing away money on weapons of mass destruction when so many children are living in poverty.

The media manage to report the many polls and commentators that say she won the debate, while suppressing what she actually said.

So there is nothing to see here. Go back to sleep. IT NEVER HAPPENED. YOU IMAGINED IT. IT NEVER HAPPENED.

Seriously, is that not really, really sickening and deeply, deeply scary?

In 90 minutes of BBC coverage and analysis of the leaders’ debate on the BBC News channel, the single Scottish commentator the BBC have had on that channel – and he has appeared three different times – is the ludicrous Torcuil Crichton of the Labour Party (and Daily Record), introduced by the BBC as though he were an independent commentator. Without being challenged by anybody, Crichton has again and again been allowed to expound the ridiculous argument that Cameron benefited from Nicola Surgeon’s strong performance because it weakened David Miliband.

This is ludicrous because of course it makes no difference to the balance of the House of Commons from a Tory point of view whether the Scottish MPs facing them are Labour or SNP. Three times Crichton has been on, making his invalid point, with nobody making the obvious response – or indeed any response. Three times – separate times, they are not repeats – he has been allowed to make a jibe about the SNP promising “a land of milk and honey”, as his Labour Party dismissal of anti-austerity economics. Again, without reply.

The BBC is an utter disgrace in the way it covers Scotland. My personal view is that post independence we don’t need state propaganda in news or current affairs, and should simply sack everybody in the BBC news and current affairs departments in Scotland, without compensation.

On the debate, without detracting in any way from Nicola Sturgeon’s excellent performance, I think the personalisation of it is wrong and that what the polls are reflecting is a strong desire right across the UK to support anti-austerity policies and no nuclear weapons. Sadly this is probably the last time even the possibility of such policy options will be allowed a significant hearing on mainstream media in England for the next five years.

It is fantastic to hear austerity economics being challenged before a huge audience, who don’t normally get to hear it. Miliband, Cameron and Clegg arguing like they have never heard of Keynes – rather wish Nicola would mention him which might help frame the debate for some viewers. Farage one trick pony blaming foreigners for everything, very nasty and sinister.

When did anybody last see nuclear weapons directly challenged on mainstream TV?

The state of Palestine today becomes a member of the International Criminal Court. This has a practical significance beyond the additional political pressure it piles on Israel. It means that in future Israelis will be liable to the jurisdiction of the court for crimes committed on Palestinian territory, despite Israel’s refusal to sign up to the court along with that other international rogue state, the United States of America.

In the case of the murders on the Mavi Marmara, the Court ruled that the scale of the incident did not reach the bar required for the Court’s jurisdiction – that it does not try war crimes which are individual acts. However it will be impossible to argue that at the next mass Israeli killing in Gaza, or even at the next large scale seizure of territory for Israeli settlements.

One of the many disgraces of neo-con government in the UK is the existence of legislation passed by the UK parliament specifically to allow Israeli war criminals to visit the UK without fear of arrest. That however will be overridden by Britain’s obligation to detain and hand over persons indicted by the International Criminal Court. Today’s apparently small step could change the atmosphere for the arrogant Israeli elite in a fundamental way. They will no longer be able to massacre hundreds of Palestinian women and children whenever they feel it boosts their cause, without some concern about personal consequences.

With the prospect of a deal bringing Iran back into the international community also appearing bright, we can be allowed a rare moment of optimism.

A monumental amount of naivety is being displayed by those heralding the election of Muhammadu Buhari as a new democratic dawn for Nigeria. I certainly hope that Jonathan’s concession does lead to a peaceful transition. But analyses which ignore the tribal factor are worthless. What has happened since 2011 is simply that the Yoruba have changed sides and swung behind Buhari. They did so largely because of his Yoruba running mate, married to a granddaughter of Awolowo. Awolowo is relevant because the map of the results looks just like the disposition of forces at the start of the Biafran war, with the Yoruba/Northern alliance back in existence.

I confess I am relieved that Buhari won, as the Muslim north would simply not accept a fourth consecutive southern Christian presidency, a potential situation which arose due to the death of Yar Adua. I feared very substantial violence following a Jonathan victory. Nigeria is spared that, and this tumultuous, sprawling and totally illogical colonial creation will be able to hang together a while longer. A northern Muslim President is better placed to crack down on Boko Haram, though given the abysmal condition and discipline of Nigeria’s armed forces I remain dubious about how effective this will be.

What will not change is the abysmal poverty, inequality, pollution and corruption. Buhari claims to be a reformed character, but his previous military dictatorship was characterised by massive corruption and human rights abuse, some of which – like his imprisonment of Fela Kuti – was hard to explain. Fela was only released by Buhari’s overthrow.

As ever, I shall watch events in Nigeria with great interest. I have fond memories of the countryside around Buhari’s home town of Katsina. But naive reactions like those of the Robert Kennedy Centre for Human Rights which sees this as a “watershed moment” for Africa will, I predict, only lead to great disappointment.

I am campaigning for the SNP in this general election. As I am still locked away finishing my book for 95% of my waking moments, that campaigning has been desultory so far, but will shortly be more lively. I am vain enough to think that my talents stretch beyond canvassing and delivering leaflets, but as the SNP show no desire to ask me to do anything else, that is what I shall be doing.

I did however emerge from my cocoon at the weekend to attend the SNP conference. Here are some very brief thoughts.

Firstly, it was great to be at the conference speech of the leader of a mainstream party, in which she pledged to no replacement for Trident, no more benefit cuts and the abolition of the House of Lords. The last got the biggest cheer of the whole Conference. I was wondering just how many people in England would like the chance to vote for the SNP.

I had a counterbalancing doubt at the back of my mind about this enthusiasm for – as Nicola Sturgeon put it – “Improving” the UK. I don’t want to improve the Union, I want to end it. Power has a fatal attraction to politicians, and I think I detected that exercising power in the United Kingdom is today gleaming brighter in the dreams of some professional SNP politicians than is independence for Scotland.

The other thing I did not like was the machine politics and management of it all. The entire first day there was not a motion that was passed other than by acclaim, and there was not a single speech against anything, though there were a couple of attempts at referral back. The only item permitted on to the conference agenda, in closed session on day 2, that was in the least likely to cause controversy was the adoption of all women shortlists – and the only reason that was on the agenda was that the leader made it abundantly plain she wanted it. I incline to the view that as a short term measure it is justified, but I abstained because I did not like what I saw of the way it was managed.

It was the only debate the leader sat through, and it was very plain she was watching carefully how people were voting. There was a definite claque of paid party apparatchiks and organised feminists occupying front centre of the hall. There was a strong suspicion, voiced by Christine Graham, that deliberately weak and left field speakers had been chosen against women shortlists. And for the vote, party functionaries including Angus Robertson and Ian McCann stood at the side of the hall very ostensibly noting who voted which way and making sure that the payroll vote performed. I was right next to where Angus Robertson stood as he did this. He moved into position just before the vote, made it very obvious indeed what he was doing, and left immediately after. I found myself regarding the prospect of a whole raft of new MPs, their research assistants and secretaries providing 200 more payroll votes, as depressing.

Coming back to the plus side, I was delighted by the content of many of the resolutions passed, including on the right to return of the Chagos islanders and the inequity of financial tests used by the Home Office to keep immigrant families apart. I left pretty convinced that if we can get the abolition of the monarchy, leaving NATO, and an independent Scotland abandoning the pound sterling onto the agenda, we will pass them. But how to get past the agenda gatekeepers? The party is completely sewn up.

I had intended to speak against the new standing orders for Westminster MPs, which contain eleven draconian clauses on whipping and discipline, as against three more liberal ones in the old standing orders. I confess I did not get to speak because the item was called at 9.05 on Sunday morning, on the morning the clocks went forward, and I was commuting from Edinburgh. The spirit was willing but the flesh is pretty knackered.

After such an extended break from blogging, you will be deeply disappointed that I restart with something as mundane and trivial as Jeremy Clarkson. I have defended the man in the past, because I much enjoy Top Gear and consider that much of what he has been criticised for in the past had been an amusing winding-up of the po-faced of the kind I employ myself. But nasty, indeed vicious bullying of a subordinate should always be a sacking offence.

That did not ought to be the question, though. He hit someone and they had to go to hospital. Where are the police? They are incredibly fond of sweeping up scores of teenagers for thought crime, but here we have an actual violent assault that spills blood, and it seems completely out of the question the perpetrator is brought to account. Why is that? I had a personal experience a couple of years ago when I was very mildly hurt – less than young Oisin – in an assault, and the police insisted on arresting the perpetrator despite my repeated requests to them not to do so. They told me rather firmly that the idea that it is the victim who has a say in pressing charges, is a myth. Why was Clarkson not arrested?

I cannot in my mind dissociate this from the non-arrest of Jimmy Savile for his crimes, despite their being well-known and reported at the time. That seems to link in to the wider paedophilia scandal, and the question of why no action was taken even in the most blatant of cases when there was compelling evidence, such as that of the extremely nasty Greville Janner MP.

But then I think still more widely as to why, for example, Jack Straw has not been charged with the crime of misfeasance in public office after boasting of using his position to obtain “under the radar” changes in regulations to benefit commercial clients, in exchange for cash. I wonder why a large number of people did not go to jail for the HSBC tax avoidance schemes or the LIBOR rigging scandal, which involved long term dishonest manipulation by hundreds of very highly paid bankers.

At the top of the tree is of course the question of why Blair has not been charged for the crime of waging illegal war. The Chilcot Inquiry heard evidence that every single one of the FCO’s elite team of Legal Advisers believed that the invasion of Iraq was an illegal war of aggression. Yet now the media disparage as nutters those who say Blair should be charged.

Then I think of all the poor and desperate people who get jailed for stealing comparatively miniscule amounts in benefit fraud, or the boy who was jailed for stealing a bottle of water in the London riots.

The conclusion is that we do not have a system of justice in this country at all. We have a system where the wealthy and governing classes and those associated with them enjoy almost absolute impunity, broken in only the rarest of cases. At the same time those at the bottom of the pile are kicked hard to keep them there. There is no more chance of justice against those in power in the UK than there is of the killers of Nemtsov being brought to book in Russia.

But what has really scared me is this thought. This situation has been like this my entire life: and I have reached the age of 56 before I realised it. A very great many people have still not realised it at all.

What does not scare me is this. I realise that if the system of justice is completely corrupted, then there is no obligation on me to follow the laws of the state. In fact it would be wrong of me to do so. I must seek my ethical compass elsewhere than in the corrupt power structure which weighs so hard upon the people.

Honoured to give the keynote speech at Amnesty’s conference on torture in London yesterday. Then dashed back to Edinburgh for a very romantic evening with Nadira – and Cameron!