John Swinney must have thanked his lucky stars that Andy Burnham managed to take the heat off him this week. No sooner had Rob Hay, the President of the Association of Scottish Police Superintendents (ASPS), warned that public trust in policing was plunging, as reported by The Herald on Monday), than No 10 announced there was nothing it could do to stop the early release of two of those convicted of the manslaughter of PC Andrew Harper, who was dragged for more than a mile to his death behind a speeding car fleeing the scene of an attempted theft in Berkshire seven years ago this very month.

To be fair, the Prime Minister could hardly have imagined that, while he was busy with his TikToks and Insta reels, he was about to become the patsy for the unholy mess designed by his predecessors – of both Labour and Conservative stripe. At least he has that to cling on to – whereas the crisis gripping Scotland’s justice system is the product of SNP neglect through and through.

I suspect – nay expect – Burnham will quickly realise the unholy mess he has inherited could be the defining moment in his premiership, and if he is to have any hope of outlasting each of his predecessors since Andrew Harper’s death, he will have to change the law to keep his killers behind bars. Here, though, we are still very much in denial of any kind of problem at all.

“Weak on crime and weak on the causes of crime” is not exactly the kind of line that you’d slip into a speech to reassure your country that you take their concerns seriously – but such has been the neglect of policing and wider justice over the past decade (and marginally longer if you live the other side of the........

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