Yesterday man trying to make the news
IT’S a tough gig, being a former political leader. By your very nature you are yesterday’s man, yet somehow you’ve got to get up in the morning and pretend you’ve something important to do.
Life after leadership – like ageing, quinoa and IKEA on a Saturday morning – is not for the faint-hearted. Some leaders, like Tony Blair, try to re-invent themselves as saviours of the world. Others, such as Margaret Thatcher, are farmed out to the House of Lords and spend the rest of their lives sniping from the side lines and churning out memoirs.
There are even a handful who step back in order to let their partner take the spotlight (Bill Clinton, Neil Kinnock and Jim Sillars spring to mind).
Alex Salmond was never likely to fall into any of these categories. While he remains Scotland’s best known politician on the world stage and was without doubt a tub-thumping First Minister, he seems to operate best when off the leash, at the cantankerous, edgy, twinkle-eyed end of politics.
It’s one of the reasons he always enjoyed being a Westminster MP, even if it didn’t quite come with the cachet of his Holyrood job.
At this stage, though, can it really be said that Salmond is still in politics? His stint at the Edinburgh Festival was all very showbiz jazz hands, and having lost his seat in June of this year he no longer has any official role.
What he does have, however, is a new job. Yes, the former leader of Scotland has launched a chat show on the Kremlin-funded TV channel RT.
This announcement begs a number of questions, not least of which is: haven’t the Russian people suffered enough?
Actually, a more pertinent point might be whether the SNP hasn’t suffered enough. Certainly Salmond’s new appointment has been the talk of the Nationalist steamie, and the prompting of many heads in hands.
One Nationalist MP called the decision ‘dangerously undignified’. Another, MEP Alyn Smith, baldly enquired: ‘What the f*** is he doing?’ What indeed.
Even Nicola Sturgeon, for many years one of Salmond’s closest allies, was moved to say ‘his choice of channel would not have been my choice’. Ouch.
Criticised as a tool of Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy, RT has been denounced as little more than a propaganda machine that does a fine line in conspiracy theories.
MEANWHILE, over in the US (which does not have its troubles to seek when it comes to Russian relations), Washington has just ordered RT America to register as a foreign agent by Monday under anti-propaganda laws. Moscow is not best pleased.
So why, then, has Salmond signed on to become their very own Terry Wogan? Perhaps he looks good in a Cossack hat. Perhaps St Petersburg’s particularly nice this time of year. Perhaps they made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.
I reckon that it’s altogether simpler. Salmond is a showman and a fully paid up lover of the limelight.
A show like this – controversial, headline-grabbing, edgy – is right up his Nevsky Prospekt. It’s his shot at life after leadership.
I wonder if he realises that in taking it he’s not only embarrassed himself, but the party he led for so many years.