I’ve seen a horse’s fundament and the well-dressed and articulate John Nicholson bears no similarity. I see a larger, more podgy and odorous form of a man there.
‘Preening and performative?’ A bit of borderline homophobia there?
Kevin McKenna knows this:
Public records in the Public Record Office, other than those to which members of the public had access before their transfer to the Public Record Office, shall not be available for public inspection until they have been in existence for fifty years or such other period, either longer or shorter, as the Lord Chancellor may, with the approval, or at the request, of the Minister or other person, if any, who appears to him to be primarily concerned, for the time being prescribe as respects any particular class of public records.
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Eliz2/6-7/51/section/5/enacted?view=plain
He seems, at the end of the extract above, to accept this, from Scotland on Sunday, in 2020 but with the url link now broken:
THE SNP was spied on by British secret service agents, previously classified Government files seen by Scotland on Sunday have finally proved.
Claims of surveillance of nationalist politicians by intelligence officers have circulated for years, but the new papers provide the first incontrovertible evidence that the state spied on the SNP in the 1950s.
Agents from MI5 and Special Branch infiltrated the party as part of a campaign to undermine support for Scottish independence, the papers show.
https://www.facebook.com/652161291863934/posts/files-prove-that-mi5-spied-on-snpthe-snp-was-spied-on-by-british-secret-service-/830453070701421/
But, now, he thinks that Special Branch and MI5 no longer behave in such a manner, that they had no part in the massive presence outside the house of the former FM and that to think so is ‘tragicomedy.’
There is, of course, no recent documentary evidence of Special Branch and MI5 undermining the independence movement and the SNP because there is no recent documentary evidence of anything recent and certainly not for the last 14 years of SNP Government in Scotland.
The evidence of spying on the SNP in the 50s has taken more than 70 years to be released.
The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.
As for the accusation, Nicholson did not blame MI5. McKenna has lazily lifted fundament from the Express. Nicholson seeks an apology: https://twitter.com/MrJohnNicolson/status/1647583016959524868/photo/2
Talking-up Scotland 
Shades of Willie MacRae?
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Labour government files on the SNP were locked away for 50 years.
Should be due for release about 2030–I suspect they will have been shredded by then, ‘specially if Sir Keir gets in.
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McKenna in Labour electioneering mode, don’t expect anything positive SNP from him.
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McKenna is a total “false flag” operator, and if anyone was on the books of MI5 (and there will be many in the media), I would consider him a prime contender.
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The only danger of the MI5 angle is that it lets all sorts of unscrupulous characters and organisations off the hook, available to the corrupt with deep pockets.
It wouldn’t have been MI5 who orchestrated decades of propaganda to make Brexit possible, but I’d bet they had been watching those who had.
We will probably never know who orchestrated the circus of the Sturgeon raid, a whisper from someone in the Crown Office of something PS might no know about (and never found), or much more likely the Operation Commander made damned sure the media were kept kettled, and even an extra large tent to deny long range lenses an internal shot for an exclusive.
I’m certain MI5 will maintain a watching brief over the SNP, but the days when skullduggery was the playground of intelligence services alone are long gone.
BBC Scotland for instance…
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Im sure that the ‘Disclosure’ team at BBC Scotland will shortly be on the case!!
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🤣
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I do not want to reveal his identity or location as I might expose him to unwanted attention but in canvassing in 2014 a fellow constituent revealed to me he was one of the founding members of the SNP group in London and as such their meetings were routinely disrupted and attended by observing officials from MI5. So if anyone believes they are not still actively involved in undermining the SNP then think again.
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A friend of mine who was a member of the London Branch SNP had got a copy of the Special Branch reports from the 1950s from the National Archives for Dr Bob Purdie who was going to write a book about it but alas Bob died before he could start on it. The informant was an office-bearer who passed on all details of the members to the Police but the name of the culprit was blanked out. The reports are Special Branch files not MI5 files which to my knowledge have never been released as they are under the 100 year rule.
One tale from the Coronation of 1953, each office bearer was visited on the eve of the Coronation by a policeman who informed them that they would be under observation until after the event. Much to the Police annoyance they all travelled to a members house for a party. All the police were outside in the rain waiting for their charge to come out. The London Branch had a meeting at Speaker’s Corner on the Sunday before the Coronation. One person asked if they would stop the Coronation? The reply in jest was to throw marbles in the street so the procession would be disrupted. Special Branch were at that meeting. I still chuckle at the thought of those wet policeman.
John Nicolson has since had an apology from the editor of The Herald for the lies contained in that article.
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Anyone who denies that the UK ‘spooks’ are a myth should have a look at the video “Diomhair’ (Secret) from some time ago from BBC Alba still available on Youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQdkyggLrsc
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