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Hello and welcome to Spectator Out Loud. I'm Fraser Nelson.

Every week on this podcast, we ask three of our writers to read their pieces from the magazine aloud.

This week we start with Cindy Yu, who's reading our leading article about the spectator's ongoing fight with Scotland's Crown Office.

They've asked us to, rather told us, to take down the Alex Salmon's evidence attacking Nicholas Sturgeon. They don't think

the public have the right to see it. We disagree. Douglas Murray then follows. He's got a report

from the Archbishop of Canterbury's Anti-Racism Task Force. He says that the document itself

amounts to nothing less than a new religion, which the Anglicans, he says, are now embracing.

And then, at the end, Philip Hensher, our lead book reviewer, reads his review of Jordan Peterson's latest, Beyond Order.

He's not a great fan. He says it's pretty odd. He wonders why anybody should listen to what Jordan

Peterson has to say. He discusses it, by the way, with Douglas Murray on our

weekly podcast, The Edition. But first up, here's Cindy Yu and this week's leading article.

The power wielded by Nicholas Sturgeon and her Scottish government means it's hard to hold her

to account for basic policy failures, of which there are many. It's even harder to

investigate accusations that her aides conspire to frame and imprison someone who had become a

political problem for her. The Alex Salmon affair has shown the many ways the public prosecutors

in the Crown Office, led by a member of Sturgeon's cabinet, have sought to censor and redact his

allegations. The House of Commons is immune to the threats and menaces of government lawyers.

The notion of parliamentary privilege, a cornerstone of British democracy, means that anything

can be said within the walls of Parliament without fear of prosecution. David Davis, a senior Tory MP and lifelong member of the political awkward squad,

this week took advantage of that privilege to give a no-holds-barred version of the Salmon story,

including new allegations.

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