 | 'What compounds Mike Watson's crime and further impugns his character is that after the event he attempted to dissemble and deny it. He tried to conceal matches and continued to deny his guilt even when confronted with damning CCTV footage, stills of which were obtained by The Herald.' Herald Editorial, 2 nd September 2005. |  |
Wilful fire-raising is a serious crime that can bring death to others and personal ignominy to the perpetrator. That is the message of a compelling Scottish Executive poster campaign launched recently. How powerfully ironic it is that one of its own former ministers admitted such a charge at Edinburgh Sheriff Court yesterday.
Whether it was two minutes of drunken madness or the symptom of some underlying problem or mental condition, the fact remains that the consequences of Lord Watson's actions could have been catastrophic.
The occasion was one of the most glittering nights of the calendar, the Politician of the Year awards, sponsored by The Herald. The venue was one of Scotland's most prestigious hotels, Prestonfield House in Edinburgh. The hotel was packed with guests, most of them asleep by the time Watson took it into his head to set a curtain ablaze, after berating employees trying to close the bar. It is only by luck and the prompt action of the staff that the fire did not take hold.
What compounds Mike Watson's crime and further impugns his character is that after the event he attempted to dissemble and deny it. He tried to conceal matches and continued to deny his guilt even when confronted with damning CCTV footage, stills of which were obtained by The Herald. Yesterday, his solicitor conceded that the case might never have come to court without this evidence, handed over to police by this newspaper. Watson changed his plea to guilty only yesterday.
Under these circumstances it is essential that he should receive an exemplary punishment. Anything other than a custodial sentence would be inappropriate. His resignation yesterday as MSP for Glasgow Cathcart may be seen by some as a personal tragedy. It is never edifying to witness such a precipitate fall from grace. Yet while it is both unrealistic and unfair to expect our elected representatives to live blameless lives, the fact remains that this man has sullied the reputation of the fledgling Scottish Parliament. His conduct embodied the caricature of the belligerent drunken Scotsman that the executive is so keen to erase. He has also betrayed the trust of his constituents. This left him little alternative but to resign and it is to his credit that he did so promptly. The same applies to his directorship of Dundee United Football Club.
This leaves the matter of his life peerage. Mike Watson was elevated to the upper house in 1997 after losing his Commons seat through boundary changes. Provoked by the case of Lord Archer, there is currently discussion of including in reforms to the House of Lords legislation to strip peers of their titles if convicted of serious criminal offences. Foreigners visiting these shores might find it odd that someone who has so besmirched himself that he feels obliged to resign from the board of a football club is still free to operate as a peer of the realm. "Life" should not mean "life" in this instance.
Mike Watson's humiliation will doubtless be softened by the knowledge that he still stands to collect a respectable parliamentary pension, as well as a "winding-down allowance" from the Scottish Parliament. But what he has lost is irreplaceable. As Shakespeare's Othello puts it: "I have lost my reputation. I have lost the immortal part of myself."
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