Tory MSP Miles Briggs was yesterday cleared of sexual harassment claims by an internal Conservative Party inquiry process. We have no idea what the facts of his specific case may or may not be, and as such express no view on it, but the nature of the process has been severely criticised by Rape Crisis Scotland, and with what in this instance appears to be extremely good reason.
An obvious question does rather leap to mind, though.
Many on social media contrasted the rather low-profile coverage of the case with the feeding frenzy that greeted similar allegations concerning Alex Salmond. But Salmond was accused under entirely different rules focused on government ministers. In fact the circumstances of the Briggs case are much more analogous to those of former SNP MSP Mark McDonald.
McDonald was reported to the Standards Committee of the Scottish Parliament, for a case which amounted to his mobile phone autocorrecting the word “dingied” to the word “fingered”.
For that crime – no other allegation of sexual misconduct against him was proven – he was the subject of page after page of absolutely excoriating media coverage over many weeks depicting him as something akin to Jack The Ripper, suspended from the SNP while the inquiry took place, and eventually kicked out, suspended temporarily from Parliament and banished to a basement office far from other MSPs.
He’s now invariably referred to as “shamed MSP Mark McDonald”, was ludicrously castigated by former colleagues as a risk to the safety of staff, and is widely expected to lose his list seat at the next election.
We’re sure there must be a reason why Miles Briggs – a backbench MSP accused of sexual harassment, just like McDonald – hasn’t been subjected to the same procedure and treatment, and has been allowed to be dealt with by his own party via a process so obviously horrifying in its nature that it scared the complainant away – something which also happened this year with Labour’s Alex Rowley.
We’d quite like it if someone could tell us what it was, though.
