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No criminality in the McAlpine story – now let it be

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Today’s press, , 27th March, are all over the story that the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body [SPCB] has cleared First Minister, Alex Salmond’s key aide, former journo now MSP, Joan McAlpine, of wrongdoing in using her expenses budget to channel money into the household of her former lover, the married Mark McLachlan.

This is essentially no more than a common and sad little tale of personal misjudgment hyped up in a settling of accounts.

Before Ms McAlpine became an MSP she worked in the SNP alongside Mr McLachlan, who was a staffer in the private office of Michael Russell MSP, then a List MSP based in Dumfries and Galloway, now constituency MSP for Argyll and Bute.

McAlpine and McLachlan had an affair. This is no unusual occurrence in the rootless, high octane world of egos, public profiles, political manoeuverings and mischief – and Mr McLachlan was a player in the world of mischief, in his production of The Universality of Cheese, a blog used to smear and damage political opponents of the SNP.

This unsavoury excursion unravelled in public, following a particularly dreadful smear job on someone in local politics. The fact that this blog was being run by an employee of the MSP accelerated interest in what had been going on.

Mr Lachlan was sacked. The MSP denied having anything to do with the blog. A desperate McLachlan, now out of work, with no great testimonial likely to shoehorn him into another one and feeling abandoned by the party whose interests he had sought to serve, went public and hinted that the MSP’s denial might not be what is appeared to be. McLachlan then found himself pursued officially by the authorities on an allegation of attempted blackmail.

He and his wife Jane, a landscape photographer, were struggling financially after he lost his job.

By this time Ms McAlpine had become an MSP and, although their affair was over, wished to try to help him in his financial distress.

Unable to employ him in her own MSP’s office, she came up with the notion of contracting his landscape photographer wife to act as her official photographer at political events, for a fee of £1,750.

The news of her former affair with McLachlan emerged during that loose contract, which a shocked Mrs McLachlan then refused to complete, also withdrawing permission for her photographs to be used by Ms McAlpine.

The McLachlan marriage was over, with Mr LcLachlan looking at a situation where he had lost both his job and his wife.

Ms McAlpine voluntarily repaid the £1,750 fee for the photographic contract which would then clearly produce nothing.

Recently both McLachlans have taken to the press with their stories about McAlpine. While It is understandable that Mrs McLachlan remains angry, bitter and retributive, feeling doubly betrayed by her husband and by Ms McAlpine in the affair of the pseudo photographic contract, Mr Mclachlan does not come well out of his storytelling. He has chosen to reveal some private details of Ms McAlpine’s neediness in her wish to revisit their relationship.

He has given her no real credit for her genuine attempt to do what she could to help him by feeding money into his household so that he and his wife could have a holiday, which was the purpose of the photographic fee.

Holyrood is now in full cry of ‘whitewash’, claiming to be horrified that the Corporate Body has found Ms McAlpine guilty of no wrongdoing in her use of public money.

They are not wrong that the ‘investigation’ appears far less than adequate – but this is no major scandal, just a private mess.

It is essentially a common enough tale of egos, poor judgment and people of mediocre ability hoisted into positions of prominence which they are not equipped to sustain.

Joan McAlpine is foolish – frequently and loudly foolish – but while clearly lonely and needy, she had a sense of care and responsibility for McLachlan. She tried to help him. In his wish to try to recover his wife, who now seems to live mainly in Spain, he has seen fit to join her in repetitive press revelations and attacks upon McAlpine.

McAlpine cannot fairly be said to have ‘got away’ with anything. Rather the reverse. Her parliamentary offence was slight – although she would be wise to take cognisance of the fact that utter probity has to be the baseline of public life.

In reality, the late Conservative Leader, the likeable and able David McLetchie, misdirected infinitely more public money that Ms McAlpine in charging to his political expenses the many taxi rides he made in connection with his continuing parallel professional life as an Edinburgh solicitor. He had to resign as leader of his party group when that one emerged. He then repaid the mischarged amounts.

For all her arrogance, bravado and rashness, Joan McAlpine emerges from the McLachlan story as a vulnerable person. She has been seduced into a wildly exaggerated sense of her own ability and political significance by the First Minister’s making her a personal favourite and a key adviser in his office.

Alex Salmond  may enjoy the presence of a court jester and office Bella Caledonia – Ms McAlpine is too impetuous to be a credible ‘adviser’ -  but like all of the imperial tendency, his need for entertainment has secondary costs to others, not least Ms McAlpine.

This is no criminal matter, more a public humiliation. The Holyrood Village should be ashamed of trying to score political points on the back of an everyday personal misery broadcast to the public to satisfy the needs of others.


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