14 February 2026
By Accused.scot Editorial

A private backer is funding a Court of Session action first raised by Alex Salmond. Whatever one’s politics, the case raises a hard question: when the state uses its powers improperly, who can afford to force the truth into the open?

A story like this feels unreal because it exposes something many people already suspect but rarely see stated plainly: in Scotland, accountability can depend less on who is right, and more on who can afford to keep going.

The Herald reports that businessman and musician Paul McManus will underwrite a reported £3 million civil action originally raised by Alex Salmond against the Scottish Government. Salmond’s widow, Moira Salmond, has assigned the legal rights of the case to McManus, and it is he who will now sue the Government.

This is not a rerun of the criminal trial. It is a Court of Session action, raised in November 2023, described as alleging malfeasance — the wrongful exercise of lawful authority. In plain terms, it is about whether state power was used improperly, and whether anyone can be held to account for it through the courts.

McManus says he did not know Salmond and disagreed with his politics, but believes senior figures used “levers of state” in a manner that could have led to wrongful imprisonment. He frames his involvement as a public interest issue: if the Government can do this to one of their own, what chance does the public have if the machinery of the state turns on an ordinary citizen?

Even when you “win”, the system can still destroy you

This is the part that should matter to every reader, regardless of party loyalties.

Salmond won a judicial review of the Scottish Government’s handling of complaints in 2019, with the process found to be “tainted by apparent bias”. Yet even that legal victory illustrates how hollow success can be when the financial consequences remain devastating.

The Scottish Government was ordered to pay £512,000 in costs. That was not compensation; it merely covered part of the legal expenses already incurred. In civil litigation the successful party typically recovers only around 60 to 70 per cent of costs, leaving the remainder to be paid privately.

Then there was the criminal defence. Salmond reportedly spent more than £300,000 on representation for his High Court trial, and under Scots law an acquitted accused cannot recover those costs.

A system that can vindicate you and still ruin you financially is not merely expensive. It is deterrent by design.

The ordinary man does not have this luxury

Now strip away the celebrity and the politics.

Most people do not have a wealthy individual willing to fund multi-million-pound litigation or assemble a legal team capable of taking on the state for months or years.

Most people, if wrongly accused, fight once. If they survive, they carry the debt, the reputational damage and the psychological fallout for years. If they want answers about how the machinery of the state operated behind closed doors, they are usually expected to accept that those answers are simply unaffordable.

That is why the McManus funding story is more than a curiosity. It is a spotlight, showing how a right that exists in principle can become, in practice, a privilege of wealth.

If accountability requires private finance, it is not equal justice

Following Salmond’s death, his estate entered sequestration management and his widow ceased to control it, with a trustee taking over responsibility. Yet the case continues because someone else has stepped forward to fund it.

That raises an uncomfortable question.

If there is genuine public interest in determining whether state powers were misused, why must the public rely on private wealth to force that question into court?

If the answer is simply that “this is how the system works”, then Scotland is admitting something profound: truth may be available, but often only at a price ordinary citizens cannot pay.

What to watch next

If the litigation proceeds, the public interest questions are straightforward. Will it compel disclosure of documents that have never been properly aired in public? Will it clarify who authorised key decisions and on what basis? And if wrongdoing is established, will anyone face consequences?

Or will the case follow a more familiar path, swallowed by procedural defences and institutional shielding before the full picture ever reaches daylight?

Whatever the eventual outcome, one point already stands. A justice system that can be challenged only by those with access to millions is not one in which the ordinary citizen stands equal before the law. It is a system in which the ordinary person is expected to endure, quietly, what he cannot afford to contest.

Editorial note: Accused.scot is not endorsing any political faction in reporting this. Our interest is the structural question: when public power is alleged to have been misused, can ordinary citizens realistically access remedies that reach the truth, or does accountability depend on wealth, connections, and endurance most people do not possess?