EDITORIAL : THE GUARDIAN, ENGLAND

           

 

Dominique Strauss-Kahn: The human stain

It is important to note that the rush to judge the former IMF chief is now being accompanied by a similar one against the woman

The charge of sexual assault against Dominique Strauss-Kahn reads like something out of a novel by Philip Roth. And Friday's chapter was no exception. After it was reported that the case against him was close to collapse because major holes had opened up in the credibility of the chambermaid – the alleged victim of the assault and the chief prosecution witness – Mr Strauss-Kahn was released from house arrest on his own recognisance, and had $6m in cash bail and bond returned. In six weeks, Mr Strauss-Kahn had gone from being the global economy's top bureaucrat, and hot favourite to become the next French president, to a humiliated criminal suspect picked out of the "perp walk", the parading of the accused, and back again to man in a sharp suit with a confident grin on his face, his wife at his side.

But this is not fiction, and the case continues with even greater intensity and publicity than it did before. It is important that the wild rush to judgment that originally tore this man's reputation to shreds, before a word of the evidence against him had been tested in court, is not now accompanied by a similar rush to judgment against the woman. It is possible, as her lawyer Kenneth Thompson continued to claim outside the courtroom yesterday, that she made false statements in her asylum application and was also the victim of a sexual assault in a hotel room, of which he proceeded to give graphic details. The system of criminal justice in America, which allows lawyers to speak freely outside the courtroom about the evidence before it is presented in court, does little to staunch the trial by media to which the case has been subjected on both sides of the Atlantic.

This is now set to get more public as the woman will soon waive her right to anonymity and speak about what she claimed happened to her. Her defence maintains that the only lies she told which directly concern the case are changes to her account about where she fled after the incident took place. However, if – as widely reported – she had a telephone conversation with a man charged with drug possession in which she discussed the possible benefits of pursuing charges, that alone could establish reasonable doubt about her story, as it could be proved that she had a financial motive for pursuing them.

The resulting case is, as an official said, a mess. It is one which besmirches everyone connected with it. The woman could potentially be charged with lying to a grand jury as well as suffering what she claims happened in the room. The accused, however the case unfolds, has lost his job, his reputation and, in the immediate term at least, a political future.
 

Politics: Scotland's mixed messages

Mr Salmond's elegantly concealed nationalist pitches reach out to the independents while massaging the moderates

Opening the newly elected Scottish parliament in Edinburgh yesterday, the Queen began by observing that Scottish politics will never be for "the meek, the passive or the faint-hearted". She then, with rather conspicuous meekness herself, delivered a speech which avoided any reference to the United Kingdom, to the union of England and Scotland or to the likelihood that this Scottish parliament will vote to set in motion the possible constitutional separation of Scotland from the British state. Given the conventions which surround her position, the Queen's avoidance of controversy was very proper. Yet it was political shadow-boxing in the Edinburgh sunshine. Given that the Scottish National party now commands a majority in the Holyrood parliament, it was bizarre that independence was the issue that dared not speak its name there yesterday.

Unsurprisingly, rather fewer scruples applied to the speech which the SNP first minister Alex Salmond made in reply. No one would ever accuse Mr Salmond of being meek, passive or faint-hearted. Yet he was far too canny and polite to speak the I-word in the royal presence yesterday. In other respects, though, Mr Salmond's message was hard to miss. He delivered a stylish speech studded with nationalist implications: that the Queen's recent visit to Ireland as a "firm friend and equal partner" also had resonance for Scotland's independent future; that the works of great writers like William Shakespeare, James Joyce, Dylan Thomas and the late Edwin Morgan were shared across the islands but were rooted in distinct nations too; and that the best way to articulate their nation's distinctness lay along a constitutional path that it is for Scots to choose.

By making such elegantly concealed nationalist pitches, Mr Salmond is attempting to massage moderate Scottish opinion towards treating independence as not such a big deal after all. By sucking up to the Queen as he did yesterday, the first minister hopes to tell independence sceptics that it is possible to have it both ways. He reckons that it is possible to dissolve the Act of Union 1707 while maintaining the regal union of 1603, with the Queen as head of state of an independent Scotland. Mr Salmond has chosen to frame the independence campaign in the message that it is possible to separate while maintaining British links from the crown to the NHS. It is a clever message and the opponents of independence will have to be much cleverer than they have yet been, if they are to rebut it effectively.

The opponents will, though, find something to steady their nerves in the result of Thursday's Westminster byelection in Inverclyde. The important news from Inverclyde, which Labour retained with an only slightly reduced share of the vote, is that the SNP is not all-conquering after all. After the SNP's Holyrood landslide in May, this had looked to be a possibility. Mr Salmond clearly thought the Holyrood tide would carry his candidate to victory this week. He put everything into the effort, visiting seven times. In the end, though, Labour's vote held up strongly, while the Conservatives and, in particular, the Liberal Democrats, collapsed to the nationalists. The SNP result was very much par for the Scottish Westminster byelection course in recent years. Labour, still stunned by the May result, was surprised at its own success. It looks as though a lot of Labour voters are happy to vote SNP in Holyrood contests but will stand by Labour in UK-wide contests.

As the two dominant parties in Scotland, Labour and the SNP must weigh the implications of this discriminating electoral behaviour with care. Both can take some comfort from it. But it also presents both of them with problems. Labour's Inverclyde win cannot disguise the scale of its May election failure. Mr Salmond, meanwhile, still faces an uphill task to persuade a sceptical electorate to follow him along the Royal Mile to independence.

Unthinkable? Retiring cliches

The House of Lords should 'avoid cliches like the plague'

The other day the Lords debated the revolutionary proposal that peers who have had enough of the place should be allowed to quit, and even discussed whether the House should have a retirement age. Let us step straight up to the plate and endorse the view of the peeress who acknowledged that while we could simply "wring our hands" about the house being too large, it was in fact high time to "bite the bullet, grasp the nettle and accept that you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs". For while it is always true that people who act in haste may repent in leisure, it's perhaps even more on the nose that a stitch in time saves nine, and they who hesitate are lost. Some peers suggested that to sugar the pill a lump sum might be paid to those who had passed their sell-by dates, but this was firmly resisted by the leader of the house, Lord Strathclyde, who as a Scot is well aware that many a mickle makes a muckle (or is it the other way round?). Riding roughshod over those who thought it best to kick any such notion into the long grass, the Lords agreed, on the principle of striking while the iron is hot, to let the proposal proceed. Yet if peers who are past it need to be told to quit, shouldn't this kind of clapped-out metaphorical ironmongery be sent to the scrapheap as well? Is it really too much to hope that Messrs Cameron and Clegg might now circulate to ministers the advice that used to appear long ago in a Manchester Guardian stylebook? "Avoid cliches," it said, "like the plague."