The Scottish police yesterday announced that from now on it will “not be in the public interest” to pursue housebreakers who hold their hands up when caught red-handed with bags of swag; muggers will be let off scot-free if they apologise after taking the money; and arsonists will now be allowed to burn down any buildings they like, provided they aren’t caught doing so more than once. The reason is that each will have taken “significant steps” to comply with the law.

No, I just made it up. This is obvious nonsense, of course. But it is the same remarkable double-think by which the body responsible for protecting democracy, the Electoral Commission, has just announced that Wendy Alexander is not to be prosecuted for corruption - despite her own admission that she broke the law by accepting a large ‘donation’ (note, NOT a bribe!) from an overseas businessman. Apparently it wouldn’t be in the public interest for a political party leader who takes illegal donations to be prosecuted. Why? It might scare other politicians into being more careful before accepting bribes, and then where are their slush funds going to come from?

Now, I’m not a member of the political elite, so perhaps I’m naive about these things. But hey, I read the newspapers occasionally, and somehow through the blur even I knew the basic rules on acceptable and unacceptable political bribes, oops donations. Why on earth would a rich developer not living in Scotland give money to politicians here EXCEPT to have unfair influence. And are we seriously meant to believe that a party leader and her key advisers were totally unaware of the rules after the last decade and more of corruption scandals and sleaze? It seems massively more likely they just thought they’d get away with it. And that, apparently, is taking “significant steps” to comply with the law.

Personally I’d like to see Scottish politics cleansed of ALL bribery. Let’s call it like it is. Money corrupts. Anyone giving money to politicians does so because they want their own beliefs and policies to count more than the next person’s, and that’s a corruption of democracy. And any politician accepting any donation is going to be swayed in favour of the next wad of easy money, however hard they convince themselves they’re squeaky clean. That’s just human nature, and anyone who believes otherwise is fooling themselves.

I can only say I’m disgusted by this landmark declaration by the political classes that corruption is okay if the perpetrator is important and influential enough. I find it hard to accept that one of our major parties is being led by someone who the public knows to be corrupt; this can hardly help develop the respect for politics we need to go forward, so that we can trust they are taking decisions in our best interests rather than their paymasters’. So I can only hope that the stench of scandal does put off other greedy politicos from putting their fingers in the till so blatantly. But right now, it’s a really sad day for our fledgling democracy.