SALMOND VS STURGEON
They were Scotland’s most important power couple, he the political titan who led the SNP to the brink of independence, she the anointed heir to his throne. Now the stage is set for a spectacular showdown as Salmond, cleared of sex assaults this week, seeks to settle old scores – his protegee firmly in his sights...
Beware old friends with a publisher’s advance to earn. The news that alex Salmond is to write a book about his prosecution and subsequent acquittal on a series of sexual offence charges piqued the interest of political correspondents and gossip columnists.
But no one will have been as attentive to the announcement as his protegee and former ally, Nicola Sturgeon. ‘You gotta dance with the one that brung ya,’ runs an old Texas maxim and Sturgeon knows how punishing her old boss’s footwork can be.
when Salmond walked free from the High Court in edinburgh, he started the clock on the reckoning to come by noting that ‘there was certain evidence I would like to have seen led in this trial but for a variety of reasons we weren’t able to do so’. He added: ‘at some point that information, that fact and that evidence will see the light of day.’
It was a shot across the bow with an exocet missile. There are those who disapprove of talk of revenge and scoresettling because it does not fit the ideological frame they wish to apply to the events of this past week.
But their wished-for response to the High Court verdicts takes no account of the cold, hard brutalities of politics.
alex Salmond believes he was wronged and the day of vengeance is in his heart.
It was all so different in 2004. Salmond and Sturgeon came as a package deal, offering a chance to stir the SNP out of the post-devolution doldrums and seize the initiative from a tired and uninspiring Labour-led Scottish executive.
Salmond may have sat at the top of the ticket but Sturgeon was no mere echo. This was effectively a diarchy, co-rule of what would become the most formidable political machine Scotland has seen.
AS leader, Salmond devolved farreaching authority to Sturgeon, even putting her in charge of the case for independence. as deputy, Sturgeon deferred her ambitions in the knowledge that she was first in line to the throne.
Together they made history: taking the Nationalists into government, winning Holyrood’s first majority, and delivering an independence referendum.
This ultimate power couple was thrown together by the resignation of John Swinney from the party leadership.
The race to succeed him pitted Sturgeon against Mike russell and firebrand roseanna Cunningham.
rumours swirled that Salmond was preparing to seek a return to the post he previously held between 1990 and 2000, but he issued a Shermanesque statement: ‘If nominated, I’ll decline; if drafted, I’ll defer; and if elected, I’ll resign.’ Barely a month later, he was in the race.
Salmond knew he had to coopt one of his rivals and he chose the one in which he saw the most promise.
He invited Sturgeon to a meal at the Champany Inn in Linlithgow, west Lothian, and proposed she drop her leadership bid and stand to be his deputy. It was not their first alliance: she had campaigned for him in 1990 and remained a steadfast supporter.
In this ritzy setting, Salmond sewed up the leadership but also pushed the accelerator on Sturgeon’s career.
Granita, the trendy Islington eatery where Tony Blair and Gordon Brown cooked up their infamous deal, has since become (appropriately) a marketing suite. The Champany, on the other hand, has remained living history.
In 2018, when allegations against Salmond were first levelled, it was to this rural bistro that he summoned the media for a press conference.
He told them he was ‘no saint’ but insisted: ‘I certainly have not been engaged in criminality.’ at first the partnership was unequal; Salmond was by far the more seasoned political pro. Sturgeon studied on the job, observing how he operated and honing her own skills. She became the leader she is today by watching him at work.
as she told Loose women in 2015: ‘I’ve worked with alex for 25 years. He’s been a mentor to me. So much of what I know about politics and how to be a politician I’ve learned from him. we’re great colleagues, we’re great friends.’
It was a friendship that would transform the SNP from a fringe force into Scotland’s ruling party and take independence from sentimental dream to a proposition supported by almost half the population. Salmond expected supreme loyalty and got it from Sturgeon. In government, he trusted her to run the NHS, infrastructure and the independence referendum, and she delivered as best as she could.
He believed in her, so much so that, when he stood down following defeat in the referendum, he handed her power without an election.
For a party that waxes the glories of democracy, this sudden monarchical turn was bracing, but Sturgeon’s coronation was her reward – for the Champany accord and for her fidelity to the man who struck it with her.
In his final speech to party conference that year, Salmond described his protegee as a ‘woman of extraordinary talent’, and told her: ‘Nicola, your contribution to where this party now stands has already been immense. Your future contribution – I have no doubt – will be to make history.’
This political partnership began as expediency but
evolved into an intense mutual respect and admiration. At first master and student, Salmond and Sturgeon eventually became equals and the strength of their political bond was what made them so powerful – unbeatable in elections and unchallengeable within their party.
This unity ticket got results, electorally if not necessarily in terms of public policy.
Together they won two Holyrood polls in a row, the second an improbable landslide, and achieved Scotland’s first ever referendum on secession, managing a far healthier share of the vote than most had predicted at the outset.
The Salmond-Sturgeon juggernaut pummelled Scottish Labour, while their party’s ascendancy began a march through the institutions of public life.
There is an identifiable Nationalist nomenklatura that dominates most sectors today, with the possible exception of business. This is the new Scottish establishment and they established it.
Salmond and Sturgeon are two very different personalities; their nationalisms are even distinct. But rarely have two politicians been so tightly bound together for so long.
When Salmond resigned his membership of the SNP following the initial publication of allegations against him, Sturgeon responded: ‘I feel a huge sadness about this whole situation. Alex has been my friend and mentor for almost 30 years and his contribution to the SNP and the independence movement speaks for itself.’
THAT mentorship is now over and the friendship appears unrecoverable. Sore though Salmond may feel, he can hardly claim his protegee did not extend him vast reserves of loyalty and leeway.
In fact, she was happy to give him the benefit of the doubt even when his actions caused her and her party significant embarrassment.
In 2015, he hollered at Tory minister Anna Soubry to ‘behave yourself, woman’; Sturgeon told the media in response that ‘there’s no man I know who is less sexist’.
In 2017, he cracked a joke about her and other prominent women at his Edinburgh Fringe show that even she said ‘belongs more in the Benny Hill era’. All the same, she told the BBC: ‘Alex Salmond’s not sexist... I’ve worked with Alex Salmond very closely for almost 30 years now, so he’s not sexist.’
Only when Salmond popped up on Kremlin-funded propaganda network RT did her tongue sharpen: ‘Alex is not currently an elected politician and 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. Neither myself nor the SNP will shy away from criticising Russian policy when we believe it is merited.’
When complaints were lodged against Salmond, Sturgeon met him three times and spoke on the phone twice to discuss the matter.
The wisdom and propriety of these contacts will be considered by multiple inquiries, but it is safe to assume proceedings were business-like, far from the cosy meal all those years earlier at the
Champany. He may or may not come for her job but he is not the only threat to her position.
The former First Minister has been acquitted but the current First Minister has yet to face a jury of her peers. A parliamentary inquiry, to be chaired by a Nationalist MSP, is on the cards and its remit will be ‘the actions of the First Minister, Scottish Government officials and special advisers in dealing with complaints about Alex Salmond’ and ‘actions in relation to the Ministerial Code’.
NOW she will have to contend with Salmond’s book, too. Will it tell all? What is there to tell? But the more pressing question is whether he intends to settle scores then settle into retirement – or use the publication as a launch pad for a new political career.
If it is the latter, Sturgeon is in trouble. The party members love Salmond. He speaks as they do and he knows how to push their buttons. Unless an uneasy truce with Sturgeon can be negotiated, he is well positioned to challenge for the leadership.
What the political and media elite think of him is irrelevant; here is a man who cleared his name, who claims there was a conspiracy against him and who remains Scotland’s longestserving First Minister. Opponents of a return would point to his own admissions in court, his neglect of modern workplace conventions and his concession in 2018 that he was ‘no saint’.
His fondness for the bottle would come up, as would his behaviour around women. They would cite Alex Bell, former Salmond adviser and defence witness, who said his old boss had been ‘revealed as a creep’. They would likely not find enough in the rank-and-file who posed an obstacle to a Salmond return.
The public is perhaps another matter. Salmond will have to address those aspects of his behaviour hitherto shielded from public view. He might find in opinion polling an even bigger ‘woman problem’ (as such things are regrettably termed) than he faced during the independence referendum.
He walked out of court not guilty but not unblemished. After all, his own QC lamented to the jury that his client was not ‘a better man’ who had ‘always behaved well’.
But let us not be as blind to Salmond’s visceral appeal as Trump’s critics are to his. There is still a substantial sweep of the voting public – especially middleaged men – who would fall back in line behind Salmond.
Perhaps the near-death experience of coronavirus will shock us out of our inclination for smoothtalking populists – but that may prove too much to hope for.
Salmond’s path back to power is pitted with potholes, hurdles and treacherous patches but the road beyond them does indeed lead to the door of Bute House.
Does he want it, though? On this question, the future of Scottish politics and of Nicola Sturgeon’s leadership hinges.
Those who disdain talk of retribution believe naively that a man like Alex Salmond can be crossed without consequence.
For the most part, they were happy to ride his coat tails when it looked like he might carry them all the way to independence. Now they flee from the wrath they once watched him direct at the BBC, the Unionists and others who questioned the separatist project.
The distress of Nationalist activists and commentators is understandable. The partnership that took their worldview to the apex of its electoral appeal and institutional capture has imploded in the unforgiving glare of law courts and public controversy. Their desire to turn this into a teachable moment will not heal the festering acrimonies nor remedy the maturating recriminations. The one that brung ya won’t be denied his dance.
Senior MP and Salmond ally Kenny MacAskill has urged resignations from ‘individuals who went beyond simply doing what you would expect, which is to co-operate with the police, but actually went to a stage of seeking to instigate matters’. Another supporter, MSP Alex Neil, wants ‘an independent judge-led inquiry to find out was there a conspiracy’ against Salmond orchestrated by ‘organs of the state like the civil service, the Crown Office and government advisers’. Salmondite Na h-Eileanan an Iar MP Angus MacNeil declared the former leader ‘a man with much more to contribute to Scotland’s cause’.
Joanna Cherry, herself tipped as a future party leader, has called for an inquiry into the party’s handling of the Salmond allegations.
‘I am sure the complaints manager and chief executive would welcome the opportunity of an independent review,’ she said.
OF course, the chief executive is Peter Murrell, better known as Mr Sturgeon. The First Minister is not being sent a message; she’s being sent a 15ft billboard surrounded by spotlights: ‘Time’s up.’
The Champany accord seemed for many years to have been a dream offer of mentorship. In stepping aside for the moment, Sturgeon would one day inherit the kingdom. When the time came, he indeed made way for her.
With hindsight, though, that investiture may have been a curse as much as an anointment, for the man who elevated her could be responsible for her downfall.
Six years on from that coronation, Sturgeon might feel from her once glistening crown the sudden jab of thorns.
He believes he was wronged and vengeance is in his heart