IT’S not a witch hunt. It’s not political spite. And it’s not driven by “hordes of mad nationalists”. It’s called doing politics differently and Alistair Carmichael should resign.

We now know all the facts. The Scotland Office memo claiming the First Minister told the French Ambassador to the UK that she would prefer David Cameron as prime minister was inaccurate. Nicola Sturgeon said so and the French Ambassador said so, in no uncertain terms. The memo was leaked to the Telegraph. That Alistair Carmichael authorised the leak by his special adviser in the middle of an election campaign was a pretty low down tactic.

But during the ensuing furore, Alistair Carmichael looked down the lenses of cameras and told the electorate that the first he had heard of the memo was when he was contacted by a journalist for a comment. He lied. And in lying he triggered a Cabinet Office inquiry that took just long enough to take us past May 7, and cost a fair bit of your money and mine.

When he lied he crossed a line. He maintained that lie right through until he was safely elected, in what must have been the full knowledge that the truth would come out. By his calculated deceit, he revealed himself to be a politician contemptuous of you and me and, most importantly, the voters of Shetland and Orkney.

All of that is bad enough. But what is worse and spine chillingly revealing is the defence his supporters have mounted. Malcolm Bruce’s assertion is that all politicians tell lies, so Carmichael is no worse than any of them and shouldn’t be singled out. In the fourth estate the Guardian’s Michael White claims that not only politicians but everybody else lies and anyway, while the memo might have been resoundingly proven to be wrong ‘we all know’ that’s what the ‘nats’ think. A defence shored up by asserting that if Carmichael had been a minister he would have resigned that office. And we’re told he ‘gave up’ the £17,000 and apologised, so what more could any reasonable person possibly want? Poor Alistair – it’s all so unfair.

Except it’s not yet anywhere near fair enough. When you stand for election you are doing two very important things. You are asking the voter – who through that election holds sovereignty in her and his hands – to trust you and to lend you their power. It is beyond my ken how you can claim integrity while lying through your teeth in that exercise.

The sundry apologists and the commentators who are bound as tightly into that Westminster bubble as any politician offer us yet another blinding glimpse of their arrogance with their defence of ‘old pals’ and their sense of entitlement made evident in their contrived outrage at the very idea that such a good chap be questioned by mere voters. As blinding a glimpse of their arrogance as that given by their reaction to our outrage over their expenses not so very long ago.

But what they are palpably, and almost embarrassingly, failing to understand is that the past three years have seen voters in Scotland understand their power and their right to be represented by people who do not lie or play dirty political games. Voters who have shaken off the too prevalent excuse that “its always been like that” or indeed, that “all politicians lie”. Voters who not only hope for better, but now know they can insist upon it.

And what of Carmichael himself in all of this? In a tweet last night he asserted that “it will all blow over”.

Well no, it won’t. It’s called democracy and voters can make it work.

Assisted suicide vote – a missed opportunity

I FELT sad when I learned that the Scottish Parliament had voted out the Assisted Suicide Bill. Sad for all the folk who desperately want the pain and anguish of their own situation to be eased by the possibility of personal choice and some semblance of control over the manner and timing of their death. But sadder in fact for all of us.

Somehow we have all distanced ourselves from the fact that we will die. The people we love and who give our life meaning will die. I am increasingly convinced that in distancing ourselves from dying, we are distancing ourselves from living.

Of course there are strongly genuinely held views on both sides of this debate. None of us has the monopoly on compassion. In truth none of us has the monopoly on certainty either.

But just as we have conversations about bringing life into this world and how best to live that life, we need to reconnect, conversation by conversation, with that essential fact that we will die. And we need to talk about how we can make our death a good death, for ourselves and for each other.

It shouldn’t be about some kind of binary choice where you have to either support assisted suicide or support increased palliative care.

It isn’t about sides. It’s about hard choices, grown up conversations and a sign that our country is mature enough to talk honestly, respectfully and with compassion about dying.