Scottish football needs an inquiry. Celtic must be alert for which version we get.

Earlier in the week the SFA announced that it intends to hold an “independent inquiry” into the events that took place at Ibrox. The Ibrox club supports that. Celtic supports it as well. But before anyone celebrates the idea, there are some very obvious questions that need to be asked.

What exactly is the nature of this inquiry? And what will it actually explore? What will its remit be? And perhaps most importantly of all, what powers will it have?

Those questions matter.

As a political geek I have followed inquiries for decades. I have watched countless “independent investigations” arrive with great fanfare, only to turn into exercises in containment rather than truth-seeking. Some inquiries carry real teeth. Others are designed so they can only reach conclusions the institutions behind them already find acceptable.

That is why the scope of this inquiry matters so much.

Scottish football has already shown how this works.

The Lord Nimmo Smith inquiry into the EBT era at Ibrox offers a perfect example. Investigators limited that process to the so-called “Big Tax Case”. They left the earlier Discounted Options Scheme, which predated the EBT arrangements, entirely outside Nimmo Smith’s remit.

That omission was not accidental.

The Discounted Options Scheme formed the arrangement that would have implicated the then Scottish Football Association president Campbell Ogilvie, whose signature appears on documents connected to that scheme. However, the narrow framework imposed on the inquiry prevented Lord Nimmo Smith from examining the full picture.

The infamous Five Way Agreement also barred the inquiry from reaching conclusions that might have led to title stripping. That restriction effectively predetermined the outcome. Many observers still regard the process as one of the most notorious whitewashes in the history of professional sport.

If that sounds like conspiracy thinking, remember that cases currently moving through the courts allege that senior Scottish detectives fabricated cases against named individuals in connection with the liquidation of Rangers FC. Imran Ahmad, who served as vice-chairman under Charles Green, refused to return to Scotland for questioning because he believed investigators intended to frame him.

None of that history inspires confidence.

Institutional politics has long relied on a simple trick. Organisations announce an “independent inquiry” while quietly restricting what investigators can examine. Once the authorities fix the terms of reference, they can push entire areas of relevant evidence beyond the inquiry’s reach.

An inquiry cannot stray beyond its remit, even when the areas excluded might shed far more light on the events under investigation than the ones included in it.

That is why the SFA’s role in setting up this investigation immediately raises concerns. If the governing body defines the scope too narrowly then this process risks becoming little more than a public relations exercise.

If the inquiry focuses only on stewarding and policing, while ignoring the conduct of clubs and supporters, then it will miss the wider issues entirely.

Should the SFA refuse to examine the role of sectarian and racist chanting in fuelling the toxic atmosphere that surrounded that match, then it will be addressing symptoms rather than causes.

In that scenario we would simply be going through the motions.

History shows how easily inquiries can be steered into dead ends. In 1997 the British government appointed Lord Justice Stuart-Smith to review the Hillsborough disaster. The problem was the remit. His review was restricted to considering only “new evidence”.

That meant the inquiry could not revisit evidence already examined in earlier investigations. As a result, it had no authority to examine whether police officers had altered statements. It had no scope to investigate whether the media had been steered toward blaming Liverpool supporters. Anything already covered by previous inquiries was effectively off limits.

Predictably, the review concluded there were no grounds for reopening the case.

Years later the Hillsborough Independent Panel exposed the full scale of institutional failure that earlier investigations had ignored.

That is why the battle over the remit of this inquiry matters so much.

Behind the scenes there will almost certainly be an intense struggle over the terms of reference. There should be. If the inquiry does not have the power to compel disclosure of evidence, including emails, meeting minutes and internal communications, then it risks becoming little more than a talking shop.

Without those powers the inquiry will only reach conclusions the governing bodies are prepared to accept.

Whether Celtic is fighting that battle behind closed doors raises another question entirely. Publicly the club has maintained what looks like cowardly silence. Perhaps the board is loading its guns and biding its time.

Recent history, however, does not inspire confidence.

Over the past two years in particular the club has shown little of the leadership required to push back forcefully when necessary.

If the other side dictates the framework of the inquiry, Celtic could end up taking the blame for events it did not cause. Investigators could quietly remove entire aspects of supporter conduct from scrutiny and allow the narrative to drift in one direction.

And that would suit certain people very well indeed.

The Scottish Football Association therefore needs to publish the terms of reference as quickly as possible. The public deserves to know what this inquiry will examine and what it will ignore. If the remit excludes the most contentious issues surrounding that afternoon, Celtic should say clearly that such an investigation is unacceptable.

An independent inquiry can be valuable, but only if it has the power to examine the full range of questions. If the organisers reduce the scope to something that could fit on the head of a pin, then the process becomes an insult to everyone affected by those events.

That includes the players and officials the mob attacked. It includes the supporters the attackers assaulted. It also includes those who have grown sick of the sectarian and racist chanting that continues to poison the atmosphere around fixtures at Ibrox.

Ultimately an inquiry only has value if it leads somewhere.

It must produce recommendations. Those recommendations must carry weight.

Otherwise the exercise will produce another report that lists the problems, declares that “lessons must be learned”, and then vanishes quietly into a drawer.

An inquiry with real teeth would do more than describe what went wrong. It would propose solutions and require the authorities to implement them. Whether we will see that kind of inquiry this time remains highly doubtful.

The coming weeks will determine whether this investigation deserves serious participation at all. If it proves to be little more than a charade, then people should call it exactly that. Celtic boards in the past would not have hesitated to do so.

Whether this board has the stomach for that fight is another matter entirely.

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