This week’s events at Holyrood only confirm that a lack of genuine accountability and responsibility for serious mistakes is becoming an accepted feature of public office in Scotland, writes Herald columnist John McLellan.

Inconsistent doesn’t get close, and the dangerous implications of the different treatment meted out to Edinburgh East MSP Ash Regan and Justice secretary Angela Constance this week were clear immediately.

It doesn’t take professor of jurisprudence to work out that suspending an MSP for simply communicating their intention to lodge a complaint about a colleague, while a tut-tut is all a cabinet secretary receives for two breaches of the ministerial code, runs a coach and horses through any notion of fair accountability that godforsaken architectural and political pile-up at the foot of the Royal Mile ever possessed.

Sometimes, as with Michael Matheson and his attempt to hand taxpayers his £11,000 holiday football streaming bill, the sinews are stretched beyond breaking point. But as with ex-First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s brush with the Ministerial Code, for Ms Constance bending over backwards wasn’t impossible.

To get in a muddle about what Professor Alexis Jay did or didn’t say about the need for a Scottish grooming gang inquiry might be deemed inadvertent if it wasn’t for the lack of immediate contrition and open correction. But for a second........

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