Week that destroyed a political marriage
He the chortling bon viveur, she the awkward political anorak, but both wedded to a common cause. Now shattering allegations of sexual misconduct have ripped them apart – and may wreck their ultimate dream
TEN years after Tony Blair and Gordon Brown met in the Granita restaurant in London’s Islington and struck an era-defining political deal, Alex Salmond sat down with Nicola Sturgeon in the dining room of the Champany Inn near Linlithgow.
It was July 2004 and Miss Sturgeon was cruising towards defeat in her party’s leadership contest. The former leader sitting opposite her knew it and, in her heart of hearts, Miss Sturgeon must have known it too.
She was young, unpolished and hadn’t won a constituency election in four attempts. Nor did she have the power base of her friend and rival Roseanna Cunningham – who had won three first-past-the-post races and, few doubted, would win this leadership race too.
Dinner with Alex Salmond at the Champany Inn changed all that. How would it be, he asked his 33-year-old dining companion, if he reneged on his assurances that he would not stand and announced his candidacy for party leader – and if Miss Sturgeon withdrew from that contest and ran for deputy instead?
She thought about it briefly – before forming perhaps the most potent partnership in modern British politics.
Blair and Brown bickered almost from the moment they sealed their Granita deal.
Not Salmond and Sturgeon. Driven by one overarching political imperative, those two contrasting characters were a study in harmony, leading an increasingly disciplined movement ever closer to its dream.
Only a decade after the Champany Inn pact, independence was within the SNP’s grasp.
How distant a memory it must all seem today, as their partnership lies catastrophically fractured. And how bitterly ironic that the two figures responsible for bringing the party its greatest successes should find themselves so polarised in its darkest crisis.
With telling symmetry, the 63-year-old Mr Salmond returned to the Champany Inn eight days ago to declare war on the government whose very existence dates back to his 2004 dinner there.
This week, another devastating development: Mr Salmond resigned from the party his successor leads and launched a crowdfunding appeal to raise cash for his legal battle against her government over its handling of sexual harassment allegations against him.
Clearly squirming with discomfort over her former boss asking for handouts from the public to fight her government, Miss Sturgeon could say little more than that he was entitled to do so.
That the appeal reached its £50,000 target in four hours – with some donors apparently convinced Mr Salmond was fighting a sinister Westminster plot – is testament to the Twilight Zone world into which Scottish politics has lately been propelled.
SENIOR members believe that it also demonstrates the scale of the Salmond power base. They say it remains by far the largest in the party – even though he has not represented it in any parliament for more than a year and is now no longer even a member.
To a First Minister whose support was largely borrowed from him in the first place, that must give pause as the gulf between them widens.
As one senior SNP source told the Scottish Daily Mail this week: ‘Alex’s resignation does nothing to remove his power base within the party – and the very quick response to his crowdfunding clearly illustrates that is the case.
‘He may no longer be formally a member of the SNP – but I think most members of the party will still see him as the chief member of the SNP.’
It was at an extraordinary press conference last Friday that the fault lines between the ‘spiritual leader’ of the SNP and the actual one were drawn.
Mr Salmond spent much of the afternoon at the Champany Inn, telling journalists the procedures for handling sexual harassment allegations – approved by Miss Sturgeon herself – were unfair on him as a man accused of sexual misconduct.
In scenes bordering on the surreal, Scotland’s best known political figure denied any harassment or criminality while confessing that he was not a saint and had made mistakes in his personal and professional life.
That brought such frank questions as ‘Do you regret any behaviour towards women?’ and ‘Are your memories sharp? Had you been drinking?’
A few miles away in Edinburgh, the First Minister was talking to journalists too, assuring them the Government would ‘defend its position vigorously’ against Mr Salmond’s challenge and insisting complaints against him ‘could not be ignored or swept under the carpet’.
It was known Mr Salmond and Miss Sturgeon had drifted apart somewhat in the years since she had taken his place in Bute House. Indeed, for a First Minister intent on stamping her own personality on the job, establishing clear blue water between the two of them was necessary.
But a female First Minister leading a government investigating claims her male predecessor and mentor groped women was the stuff of lurid political thrillers, surely, not of public life in Scotland.
Yet this was really happening: the former first minister was accused of sexual misconduct – and the current First Minister was a zero-tolerance hardliner on any kind of boorish or sexist behaviour by men towards women.
Long-time allies of Mr Salmond were speechless with shock when the bombshell was dropped last Thursday evening. Even Kevin Pringle, for years the eyes and ears of the party and Mr Salmond’s closest adviser, had known nothing of the crisis until his phone rang while he was attending an event at the Edinburgh Festival.
Yet, unwisely perhaps, Mr Salmond and Miss Sturgeon had discussed the sexual misconduct claims against him for months before landing on opposite sides of a legal dispute which now threatens to engulf the party.
‘I’m sitting here, as a party member, utterly depressed,’ one Nationalist politician told the Mail
‘I think we’re going to live in a fog of depression for a considerable period because it’s not going to be over in a few weeks. It’s of such a magnitude, given Alex’s status and Nicola’s position, that it could be quite devastating.
‘It’s going to be very damaging to the SNP as an organisation. And it’s going to require a great deal of leadership on the part of those at the top to make sure the party doesn’t collapse under this, that morale doesn’t get so low that there’s no life left in it.’
One of the claims against Mr Salmond has him arriving back at Bute House the worse for wear with drink after a function in late 2013. He is alleged to have invited a member of staff to join him in his bedroom – where he is said to have repeatedly offered her drink, which she refused.
Then, it is claimed, Mr Salmond told her to get in the bed, where he is said to have kissed her and fondled her breasts and bottom through her clothes until, after repeated requests to stop, he did.
Both the female complainants made their allegations about Mr
Salmond within days of each other in January – at the height of the #MeToo campaign that followed the Harvey Weinstein sexual harassment scandal.
Ironically, posters had gone up in the Scottish parliament only weeks earlier, urging anyone who thought they had been sexually harassed in the building to call a special hotline.
Days after that, Miss Sturgeon agreed new procedures covering ministers and former ministers accused of harassment.
Now, almost before the ink was dry, there was one: Alex Salmond.
‘We are watching a tragedy,’ was one senior party member’s reaction this week.
If a tragedy is what it has become, then the seeds of it were planted that day 14 years ago in the Champany Inn.
Determined to stop his enemy Roseanna Cunningham taking the reins of his beloved party, Mr Salmond played the only hand he knew would not fail – standing against her himself.
For her part, Miss Sturgeon had been anxious to advance her standing in the party and elected to throw in with its most powerful figure rather than suffer the ignominy of what looked sure to be a crushing defeat.
But how well-suited were the two characters in this political marriage of convenience?
Well enough, it turns out, when they were working together – but chalk and cheese now that their interests no longer coincide.
A natural politician, born orator and betting man who perennially backs himself, whatever the odds, Mr Salmond had, until last year, never lost a constituency election since winning his first over Tory Albert McQuarrie in 1987.
His young protégée did not win one until 2007.
In stark contrast to him, she was naturally shy and, in her early years at least, utterly devoid of humour. The expression ‘nippy sweetie’ seemed to follow her everywhere she went. Words such as charismatic and captivating did not.
The politicians’ partners and home lives revealed much about their differences too.
Mr Salmond’s wife Moira is 17 years older than he and at one step’s remove from politics. They live in a converted mill in Strichen, Aberdeenshire, where she once bred rare Muscovy ducks.
Miss Sturgeon is married to her party’s chief executive Peter Murrell, a former Salmond aide – and the two live in what might have been the show home on an anonymous estate near Glasgow.
She admits she had no culinary skills and never learned to drive.
When asked once about her tastes in popular culture, the answers were so bland they sounded like they were put together by a focus group: Ian Rankin, Coldplay, EastEnders, The X Factor...
While Mr Salmond at least talks a good game on Scottish literature – ever ready with the apposite quote from Burns or Scott – no such vestige of hinterland is apparent in his successor.
She stood at her first General Election at 21 before she had even sat her final exams at Glasgow University – and it is doubtful whether politics have been absent from her thoughts for a single day since.
Little wonder that, as her stature grew in the party under Mr Salmond’s tutelage, an attempt to soften her image was swiftly dubbed Operation Human Being.
Raconteur, bon viveur, charmer, chancer – whatever people said about Alex Salmond, he never failed to come across as a fully paid up member of the human race. His protégée too often came across as an anorak.
MANY in her party now worry that, as she finds herself increasingly at odds with her former mentor, the fundamental charisma deficit between the current leader and the last will become all the more damaging.
One SNP politician told the Mail: ‘There has been adulation of Nicola – but there are now people beginning to seriously question her ability and her judgment. They never did that with Alex. Right to the end he was the king of the castle – and she’s no longer queen of the hive.
‘There’s a big difference between what people are saying in public, what they clap at in a speech at the annual conference, and what a number are actually saying in private. Because they are picking up on the doorstep that Nicola is not the same as Alex.’
Indeed, the source suggested Mr Salmond had done Miss Sturgeon a huge favour by resigning his membership before she came under intolerable pressure to suspend him.
‘If she had suspended Alex, all hell would have broken loose within the party. And you would have found that the Salmond power base is far superior to hers – if hers even exists.’
It is not only that Miss Sturgeon must govern without many of her mentor’s strengths; she must also govern in the face of some of his least appealing weaknesses, particularly his penchant for self-publicity.
Long before the actual Alex Salmond Show was launched on TV, it was clear that life after Bute House would be all about the Alex Salmond show for the former first minister – however uncomfortable that might be for his successor.
Within days of losing the vote on Scotland’s status in the Union, he gave notice of the loose talk to come by suggesting we could simply ‘declare’ independence.
Before the 2015 General Election there was more mischief-making when, entertaining a group of London journalists, Mr Salmond appeared to suggest a second referendum could be held against the UK Government’s will. After winning a Commons seat in that election, he enjoyed himself even more, oozing self-satisfaction in the Palace of Westminster bars as the huge intake of new Nationalist MPs regarded him as a deity.
Losing his Westminster seat two years later, he became, if anything, an even bigger headache for Miss Sturgeon.
His opening line at one of his talk shows at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe ran thus: ‘I promised you today we’d have either Theresa May or Nicola Sturgeon or Ruth Davidson or Melania Trump, but I couldn’t make any of these wonderful women come... [drum roll]... to the show.’
Yes, the former First Minister was trying his hand at showbiz, launching his act with low-grade smut which name-checked both the Prime Minister and First Minister.
Sources close to Miss Sturgeon said she was ‘fizzing’ about the joke – which she condemned publicly as belonging ‘more in the Benny Hill era’. ‘Harmless innuendo’ was Mr Salmond’s defence.
Worse was to come as, weeks later, he launched the Alex Salmond Show on the controversial RT channel, bankrolled by the Kremlin.
The channel had been censured by watchdog Ofcom for breaking broadcasting guidelines. Worse, Mr Salmond’s own party had voiced alarm at the Russian government which financed the channel, pointing to reports of attacks on dissenting journalists and persecution on the grounds of race and sexuality.
Nationalist MEP Alyn Smyth said at the time: ‘What the f*** is [Salmond] thinking?’
ONCE again, an embarrassed Miss Sturgeon was forced to criticise. ‘His choice of channel would not have been my choice,’ she said. ‘Of course, Alex is not currently an elected politician and is free to do as he wishes – but had I been asked, I would have advised against RT and suggested he seek a different channel to air what I am sure will be an entertaining show.’
One item on that first programme dealt with the clutch of post-Harvey Weinstein sexual harassment cases coming out of the woodwork at Westminster. Chillingly, Mr Salmond was only weeks away from being named in a sexual harassment case of his own.
Infuriating as much of his postreferendum behaviour must have been for the Sturgeon administration, these allegations were of another order entirely – which, if proved, would turn the totemic figure of Scottish Nationalism into a pariah and for ever stain the SNP’s entire period in government.
And yet, say critics in her own party, that should not have been Miss Sturgeon’s first concern. The integrity of the investigation should have been – and she should never have met Mr Salmond to discuss the allegations.
That face-to-face meetings between them took place three times in the space of seven months before any information about the women’s claims was passed to the police raises more difficult questions.
What exactly did they discuss? Did they talk about how to make the claims go away? And can it possibly be right for the Scottish Government to investigate a potential criminal complaint for fully seven months before any of it is brought to the attention of Police Scotland?
Leading human rights lawyer John Scott, QC, said this week it was essential in any such case that the complainants’ employer contact the police as soon as possible.
He added: ‘It is in the interests of witnesses, complainers and the person on the receiving end of the accusations that the allegations are dealt with at an early stage.’
Meanwhile, a senior SNP figure who knows both Mr Salmond and Miss Sturgeon well had this to say: ‘Why she met Alex, Lord alone knows. Where are these highly paid special advisers? Did none of them say to her, “No, no, no. Given that this is now under investigation, you can’t meet him, you can’t talk
to him – because you’ll put yourself in jeopardy”?
‘I can’t believe nobody advised Nicola not to see Alex if this was going to be under discussion. The best thing would have been to say, “Look, while you’re under investigation, I can’t meet you because that would compromise my position in every respect”.’
That is not the only questionable judgment call in the affair.
Why, in view of the explosive nature of the allegations facing her former boss, would Miss Sturgeon offer such a lengthy defence of her Government’s position when a few words stressing the matter was now to be decided in court would have sufficed?
And what had possessed Mr Salmond to fan the flames by giving a press conference which served only to underline the schism with Miss Sturgeon and open up a raft of new areas of inquiry?
‘Do you think you used to drink too much as FM?’ was one question – to which he gave the careless reply: ‘I’m not a paragon of virtue by any means whatever...’ – thus inviting inevitable follow-up questions.
‘I thought it was a dreadful mistake for him to have a press conference,’ said a former SNP colleague. ‘As soon as he described himself as not a saint, it invites the question, “What is not saintly about you?”.’
All of which exposes yet more dysfunction at the party’s highest level. The simple explanation for Miss Sturgeon’s failure to place a wall between herself and Mr Salmond until the upshot of the misconduct allegations was known is the former first minister’s towering status in the party and her debt to him.
Without him, she would probably never have led the SNP, far less her country.
Under him, she also learned to govern in his image, to brook no dissent and appear decisive even if she felt anything but. Could that be the reason no one spoke up and told her she must on no account meet her former boss and discuss the allegations with him?
One senior party source said: ‘If you operate on a Stalinist basis, you don’t get the kind of discussion and internal debate that leads to wise policies – and here we are. We’re in a mess and a lot of that mess is traced back to how things have been run.
‘We’ve been in this position for a long time, almost from the moment Alex became leader and right through Nicola’s period in office as well.’
In short, then, the Salmond crisis brings into sharp focus issues which have bubbled away in the party for years – in fact, ever since that meal in the Champany Inn.
There is the former leader, more loved than the current one, even as he faces sexual harassment allegations, yet too vain, too fond of showbusiness and too ready for full-throated attack even if it is to the detriment of the independence movement.
There is the current leader, too much in Mr Salmond’s debt and too immersed in his counter-productive dictatorial leadership style.
There are special advisers too cowed to insist their advice is heeded or kept out of the loop.
Among the party’s lower echelons, kneejerk conspiracy theorists who, having known nothing about the sexual harassment claims until now, assume it must be some Establishment plot.
‘I stand with Alex Salmond’ against the ‘British Establishment’ was one ludicrous message retweeted by Nationalist MP Angus MacNeil this week, as claims circulated that Scottish Government permanent secretary Leslie Evans’ husband was former head of MI5 Lord Jonathan Evans. In fact, her husband is SNP supporter Derek McVay, a former punk musician.
It all adds up to an atmosphere of ‘utter despair’ among many in the SNP – and a sense of incredulity in the wider political community.
The pre-eminent Scottish politician of his generation is wounded – perhaps fatally – and some wonder if, in his fury, he is about to pull the roof down on everything he has built.