Too much heat and not enough light on Lockerbie

[This is the headline over columnist Ian Bell's Holyrood sketch in today's edition of The Herald. It reads in part:]

Strange the unworthy thoughts that pop into your head. There was Labour's Iain Gray demanding that Alex Salmond make himself available to Holyrood's justice committee to discuss further the Megrahi affair. The idea, it seems, is to give the American families a proper say.

So I was wondering: when will the US government publish its share of related correspondence? You have a choice of answers, either "not soon", or "not at all".

Then, while Annabel Goldie was formulating the Glasgow lawyer's equivalent of J'accuse, I had another thought. She was joining the dots between Mr Salmond's meeting with Qatari officials over "investment" and that same government's support for the Libyan's compassionate release. Justice sold for the Scottish Futures Trust? It sounded sensational.

Important humanitarian issues at stake and Arab politicians in the vicinity? They worry about little else in Whitehall when they sell arms to the Saudis. Meanwhile, Ms Goldie does not yet have a case, I think.

But, lo and behold, a third thought arrived. Tavish Scott, for the Liberals, still has hopes for the truth about Lockerbie. Can't the Scottish judiciary do something?

Mr Salmond also harbours hopes. The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission identified six grounds for a further appeal from Megrahi. The bereaved, one might think, are entitled to know the reasons why. So the First Minister has been talking to law officers.

But Scotland has limited rights in this, as he pointed out. He did not point out that the London government headed by a man who didn't (or did) wish to see Megrahi dead in Greenock prison has no interest whatsoever in a proper public inquiry.

That must have been why Mr Gray, he of Gordon Brown's Labour Party, claimed Mr Salmond "failed to carry the chamber" in the debate on Megrahi's release. "All the evidence shows he has failed to carry Scottish opinion," added the Opposition leader, with his usual thrilling doggedness.

The SNP lost Wednesday's vote, predictably. But Labour, the Tories and the Liberals lost their appetite for a confidence motion. A chance missed, surely? Or did winning such a vote look like the surest way to lose an election, while reducing an argument of principle to a squabble? (...)

In any other week, of almost any other year, the First Minister's utterances of the morning would have kept the Opposition buzzing with derision for the full half-hour of biting and gouging (Question Time, to you). Instead, of 13 proposed bills, barely a cheep. Of an independence referendum next year, barely a growl. There will be plenty of time to fight over votes towards the voting on a vote - exciting, isn't it? - but still: for now, one issue consumes all.

That's as it should be. But the old problem of heat and light is obvious. We've had lots of the former, none of the latter. Until the facts of Lockerbie are established, even the debate over compassion will remain peripheral.