Row over claim Alex Salmond said he could ‘destroy’ Nicola Sturgeon
Alex Salmond has expressed his sadness at the collapse of his friendship with Nicola Sturgeon and denied he had ever attempted to “destroy” her, as claimed in a US magazine.
According to the New Yorker, Mrsalmondmadetheastounding claim as part of a profile piece on Ms Sturgeon.
The magazine interviewed both for an in-depth feature on their political relationship over decades, and raised the accusations against the former first minister about inappropriate behaviour with two civil servants.
Mr Salmond denied the allegations and the Scottish Governmentinvestigationintohim was later ruled to be unlawful, which cost taxpayers upwards of£500,000andsparkedascottishparliamentaryinquiry,and an independent inquiry into whether Ms Sturgeon had broken the ministerial code.
In the piece, Ms Sturgeon revealed the pressure she faced while the two investigations were ongoing.
“I think my political opponents – I don’t know, maybe Alexhimself...therewasanelement of ‘we can break her,’ you know," she told the New Yorker. "Almost kind of personally as well as politically. That was how it felt.
"And, you know, there were days when they might have come closer than they knew. But they didn’t.”
Asked in the same piece why he had tried to destroy his forup
mer ally, Mr Salmond reportedly laughed before adding. “If I wanted to destroy her, that could have been done.”
However, the inflammatory words have been denied by Mr Salmond. Asked at a media briefing whether he "felt sad at the way things have gone between you two", Mr Salmond said: "I'm sure we both feel sad at the way things are.”
He added: "In this entire campaign I have not made a single personal attack on Nicola Sturgeon
and I don't intend to start now.
"The New Yorker is totally taken out of context. I did not chuckle, as was said in that phoneinterviewofmanyweeks ago. I think I guffawed at the suggestion [made by the journalist]."
He continued: "My habit of guffawing at prejudicial, pejorative questions is perhaps a bad habit of mine. It's one that's incidentallysharedbynicola,so maybeit'sabadhabitshepicked
from me.the point I was making was, far from trying to 'destroy Nicola Stur geon' ... was at the parliamentary committee, despite being invited to call for Nicola's resignation, I refused to do so."
At the same briefing Mr Salmond said the biggest difficulty the Alba Party had faced as a new party in the campaign was not securing candidates and gettingamanifestowritten,but “breaking into broadcasting”.
He said he would exempt
STV, Bauer Radio and Sky from complaints – despite not agreeing with the decision to exclude Alba from the STV leaders’ debate – as “these organisations have done their best to fairly reflect there’s a new political party with a distinctive point of view, that on seven opinion polls, is going to gain parliamentary seats, and havegivenusairtime,butthat’s notbeenthecasewiththebbc”.