BROKEN, THE DOUBLE ACT WHICH TOOK SCOTLAND TO THE BRINK

THEY were the ultimate power duo – he the mentor, she the protégée. He would march a weary army to an improbable triumph, followed by a searing defeat; she would enjoy the spoils of both as the undisputed heir.

For a time, Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon were unstoppable, unbeatable and unbreakable. Blair and Brown? A stormy coupling born in betrayal and sunk in bitterness. Thatcher and Whitelaw? A relationship of unequals. Wilson and Healey? Too clever by half.

Salmond and Sturgeon drank in the lessons of those who went before; sobriety was their watchword – they would abstain from the mistakes of others. Bounding with hubris though they were and are, they presented a face of competence and steel. Their party’s addiction to infighting and fringe politics would no longer be tolerated. They were a government in waiting.

Between them, Salmond and Sturgeon cooked up a strategy to achieve the unthinkable: overturn decades of political habit and convince Scots to elect their first ever SNP government. It worked and 11 years on there is an entire generation of Scots who have grown up knowing only SNP rule, seeing it as natural, inevitable. Between them, Salmond and Sturgeon made a nationalist party the national party of Scotland.

Now their insoluble bond has come adrift in the most extraordinary 24 hours Scottish politics has seen in years.

The headlines boomed the news, Salmond faces allegations of sexual misconduct – claims which came to light in a Scottish Government inquiry. Two staffers allege that the former SNP leader attacked them in Bute House, the Edinburgh townhouse now occupied by Nicola Sturgeon.

Mr Salmond strongly denies the accusations, branding some of them ‘patently ridiculous’. He has gone further, declaiming Scottish Government Permanent Secretary Leslie Evans’s handling of the internal inquiry and announcing his bid for a judicial review into her conduct.

The former First Minister is suing the Government he once led, a Government now headed by his closest ally in politics. To call this turn of events astonishing would be an understatement. There is simply no precedent for a set of circumstances such as these.

Miss Sturgeon has responded crisply and firmly, saying: ‘Complaints were made in January relating to Alex Salmond by two individuals. These complaints have been considered since then under a procedure covering ministers and former ministers that was agreed by me in December 2017 in the wake of public concern about harassment.

‘Although I have been aware for some time of the fact of the investigation – initially from Alex Salmond – I have had no role in the process, and to have referred to it before now would have compromised the integrity of the internal investigation, which I was not prepared to do.’

Parsing those words, it is clear the First Minister is eager not only for justice to be done but for justice to be seen to be done. What justice would look like we do not know. Nevertheless, she now faces calls for her predecessor to be suspended.

Labour MSP Monica Lennon says that course of action would be ‘appropriate’.

Mr Salmond has demands of his own. In a public statement issued on Thursday night, he accused Leslie Evans of ‘behaving unlawfully in the application of a complaints procedure’.

AND the document goes on to cast the Scottish Government’s investigatory processes in Kafkaesque terms, with Mr Salmond objecting: ‘This is a procedure so unjust that even now I have not been allowed to see and therefore to properly challenge the case against me. I have not been allowed to see the evidence.’

That he will now take his former government to the Court of Session underscores the seriousness of the matter. Indeed, he warns that, should the court rule in his favour, ‘the administration at the senior levels of the Scottish Government will have the most serious questions to answer’.

It is a comment one could scarcely have expected to hear from the man previously in charge of that same government. And what of the Scottish Government? It is limited, as we all are, in what it can say at this time, but it vows through a spokesman to ‘defend its position vigorously’.

‘As a matter of principle and integrity,’ the spokesman adds, ‘it is vital that any allegations of harassment are treated seriously and investigated thoroughly, regardless of the identity of the party involved.’

It is important to stress that the First Minister and the Permanent Secretary are not the same thing. One is a political figure, the other a senior civil servant, indeed the most senior civil servant in Scotland.

Yet, the once titanium alliance between Sturgeon and Salmond will be corroded beyond all salvaging by these events. They might remain outward comrades, exchanging pleasantries at funerals of party veterans and political gossip at party conferences, but they will never again enjoy the comity they once did.

Many forget that SNP history was supposed to play out differently. It was supposed to be Nicola Sturgeon who took the helm of the party in 2004 after John Swinney’s departure. Alex Salmond offered her a deal: clear the way for him to return to the leadership and stand instead for the secondin-command post.

WHEN they shook on it, they made an implicit mutual admission: she could not win over the membership without him and he could not win over the country without her. They understood acutely their own and each other’s weaknesses. It’s what made them such a formidable team.

What we must remember – above the politics and the strategic ramifications and the wan ironies of these events – is that we are not discussing characters from a TV drama.

Real people are at the heart of this matter and whatever the facts – which the proper authorities must be allowed to establish – an intolerable measure of misery has been doled out to human beings.

One way or another, there has been or will be suffering and anguish; lives will be turned upside down, including those of blameless loved-ones.

We do not yet know the truth. That is why it is essential there be a fair and due process. But we do know these events are remarkable for our politics and will etch painful scars on those involved for years to come.