One of the reasons I go to American conferences is to fly the British flag as serious players in the electronic disclosure world, and to answer questions about it. The Civil Procedure Rules apply only in England and Wales. The only thing anyone in Washington wanted to talk about was Scotland.

It would be easy, staying here in the UK, to underestimate the level of American anger at the decision by Scottish Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill to release the Libyan terrorist Al-Megrahi who was convicted of playing a part in the downing of Pan Am Flight 103 in December 1988. One becomes cynical of government-level complaints designed to look populist at home and to safeguard contracts or diplomatic relations abroad. Nevertheless, it was interesting to realise what very strong feelings run amongst ordinary people in America about the decision to release Megrahi.

One of the issues is that Americans, understandably, find it hard to distinguish between the component parts of Europe, let alone the United Kingdom. They lump the UK in with Europe, for a start, believing that we are part of it; they are puzzled to discover that there is a mismatch between the political and the cultural, and that Britain does not feel part of Europe in  most senses. This is part of a long tradition: Lord Raglan, commander-in-chief of the British Army in the Crimea in the 1850s, persisted in referring to the enemy as “the French”, notwithstanding that we and France had not been at war since Waterloo in 1815 and that the French were actually our allies in the Crimea.

Devolution, the process by which Scotland and Wales were given powers to run themselves to some extent, and an expensive parliament building to do it in (the “wee pretendy parliament” as Billy Connolly apparently described the Scottish one), is a puzzle to many of us over here, never mind abroad, not least because the boundaries of powers seem unclear.  It feels as if Scotland still takes our money, and still sends members of Parliament to Westminster to govern us, but withholds any say on our part in most Scottish affairs. This summary does not do justice to the complexity of the relationship, but that is how it appears to many.

In addition, whilst Scotland has a long and distinguished tradition of producing lawyers, engineers, soldiers, writers and politicians, it has to be said that most of them have made their names and fortunes outside Scotland. Although the lawyers often stay and prosper in Edinburgh, would-be politicians have always scampered down across the border as fast as their hairy little legs could take them. Our Prime Minister, for example, has never been elected as anything but the representative of a constituency north of the border (try explaining to Americans that Gordon Brown was dumped on us by the internal machinations of the Labour Party, not by any election). For all his obvious character defects, his indecisiveness, dishonesty, backstabbing disloyalty etc, Gordon Brown has become a big figure in British politics, not Scottish politics. With few exceptions, what gets left behind in the Scottish political scene is the jumped-up parish councillor type – or, as an article by Gerald Warner put it in the Telegraph, “the chief consequence of setting up the Holyrood parliament has been that 129 Scottish villages are missing their idiots”.

The many Americans who asked me about the decision to release the Libyan terrorist by and large accepted my answer that it was the decision of a provincial prat who wanted to look big on the international stage. It was an accident of timing which made Flight 103 a Scottish problem — if the explosion had occurred a few minutes earlier, the plane would have come down in England; minutes later would have put it into international waters. MacAskill was not going to pass up the opportunity to get his hitherto unknown name in the papers. He seems oblivious to the fact that by forestalling Al-Megrahi’s appeal, he has denied the victims, and the rest of us, the chance for the full facts to come out, and that most of those affected are not from Scotland.

The Scottish government seems uncertain as to how to react, torn between the need to show solidarity with its representative and feeling the same bewilderment as the rest of us. Gordon Brown has reacted with his typical style – delay, lie, then blame somebody else is his normal course, and he is still at the indecisive stage. The British government, indeed, seems uncertain as to what its own powers and duties are – like so much of recent legislation, devolution was rushed through with short term effect uppermost in mind rather than the long-term implications. If we on this side of the Atlantic are bemused, it is no wonder that Americans find the subject difficult.

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