A Scottish Care Inspectorate report into concerns about child protection services in Edinburgh is due next week, but campaigners are not holding their breaths, writes Herald columnist John McLellan

Ever since claims in the 1980s about a “Magic Circle” of high-profile homosexual lawyers and judges said to be blocking prosecution of gay criminals, talk of sexual conspiracy woven into the so-called “Edinburgh establishment” has never gone away.

The various rumours were drawn together in a 2023 BBC Scotland documentary, Beneath the Magic Circle Affair, which revealed the late Robert Henderson QC was likely to have been a primary source, but as a smokescreen for his own paedophile activities, and those of his associates, which included the abuse of his daughter, Susie.

Whether consciously or otherwise, East Kilbride Labour MP Joani Reid echoed the past with her claim in this week’s Herald that if the Scottish Government did not agree to a full inquiry into modern “grooming gangs” then it would look like “a cover-up by a complacent and self-important, but ultimately cruel, Edinburgh establishment.”

Whoever is in this “Edinburgh establishment” − be it a group of lawyers, politicians or whatever – wider conspiracy theories can distract investigations........

© Herald Scotland