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, meaning the wrongful exercise of lawful authority. In plain terms, it is about whether state power was used in a way that was improper, 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 claims he 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 they decide to target 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 the Herald’s account also underlines how hollow “victory” can be when the costs are personal and unrecoverable. 

The article notes that the Government was ordered to pay £512,000 in costs, but that this was not compensation and was consumed by legal bills. It also states that even in civil litigation, the successful party typically recovers only around 60 to 70 per cent of expenses, leaving the remainder to be paid privately. 

Then there is the criminal defence. The Herald reports Salmond spent more than £300,000 on representation for his High Court trial, and that in Scotland an acquitted accused cannot recover those costs. 

A system that can vindicate you and still ruin you is not merely costly. 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.

Most people cannot assemble a “team” that can take 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 unaffordable.

This is why the McManus funding story is not merely a curiosity. It is a spotlight.

It shows that what is framed as a right in principle can become, in practice, a privilege of wealth.

If accountability requires private finance, it is not equal justice

The Herald reports that following Salmond’s death, his estate entered sequestration management and his widow ceased to control it, with a trustee managing matters. Yet this case continues because someone else has stepped in and paid for the continuation. 

That should provoke an uncomfortable question.

If there is a serious public interest in whether state powers were misused, why must the public rely on private wealth to force the issue into court?

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

What to watch next

If this litigation proceeds, the key public interest issues are straightforward.

• Will it compel disclosure of documents that have not been properly aired in public

• Will it clarify who authorised key decisions and on what basis

• Will it test whether wrongdoing, if established, carries consequences

• Or will it be swallowed, as so many cases are, by procedural defences and institutional shielding

Whatever the eventual outcome, one point already stands.

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