I have been infuriated by news reporting of the controversy surrounding the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi. Time and again editors have tried to pin blame on the UK government without considering the bald fact that this decision was taken in Scotland by a Scottish Nationalist government. The pack has been motivated more by ideology than by any desire to find out what really happened. In my book that consitutes a deplorable failure of journalism.  I am no fan of Gordon Brown (he is an execrable prime minister), but I am too familiar with political reality to imagine that a Labour PM can persuade the SNP to do his bidding simply by asking them nicely. Labour and the SNP despise each other utterly. Fraser Nelson, the new editor of The Spectator, invited me to argue my case. You can read the result here.