Hue and cry

In the good old days, a hue and cry was a process by which bystanders were summoned to assist in the apprehension of a criminal who had been witnessed in the act of committing a crime. According to Wikipedia:

By the statute of Winchester, 13 Edw. I cc. 1 and 4, (1285) it was provided that anyone, either a constable or a private citizen, who witnessed a felony shall make hue and cry, and that the hue and cry must be kept up against the fleeing felon from town to town and from county to county, until the felon is apprehended and delivered to the sheriff. All able bodied men, upon hearing the shouts, were obliged to assist in the pursuit of the criminal.

This morning, the Sunday Herald has raised a full hue and cry:

WENDY ALEXANDER has been reported to the procurator fiscal for failing to register her leadership campaign donations. Dr Jim Dyer, the standards commissioner, has sent a report to the area fiscal in Lothian and Borders after concluding there was evidence the Labour leader broke the rules on declaring gifts.
She now faces a police investigation and possible charges if the fiscal concludes the offence warrants a criminal sanction.
The dramatic development will increase the intense pressure on Alexander to resign as Labour leader and comes as she awaits the verdict of the Electoral Commission's investigation into her campaign team's acceptance of an illegal £950 donation from Jersey tycoon Paul Green.

Presumably it remains open to the Procurator Fiscal to decide that Ms Alexander's alleged offence is trivial and that prosecution would not be in the public interest - not that that you would know it from Ian Macwhirter's hysterical response:

THIS MUST be end of the road for Wendy Alexander, her short reign as Scottish Labour leader is almost certainly over. Her credibility was damaged enough by the dodgy donations affair. But for parliamentary standards commissioner Dr Jim Dyer to refer her to the procurator fiscal's office for apparently breaking the law takes this controversy to a new level. It is the most extraordinary and dramatic development.

Aye, well. Given the current atmosphere, it would be a brave fiscal who opted for anything short of chucking the book at Ms Alexander. But let us hope that judicial process is not entirely subject to media pressure.

Meanwhile, let every able-bodied newspaper hack scream his head off. Sometimes, Scottish politics is a dirty business.