Marriage of convenience is heading for a messy divorce
PAINFUL though it might be for her to admit it, Nicola Sturgeon owes her political career to Alex Salmond. Without him, she’d have faded into irrelevance many years ago. When Mr Salmond announced, back in 2004, that he wished to return for a second stint as SNP leader, he did so because it had become clear that his preferred candidate to replace the departing John Swinney – Ms Sturgeon – was on course for defeat.
Rather than allow the party to fall into the hands of colleagues with whom he disagreed, Mr Salmond offered his protégé a lifeline. They would run on a joint ticket, with her standing as his deputy, and – in time – she would take over the leadership.
A lot of rot has been written since about how Ms Sturgeon had to be persuaded to recalibrate her ambitions. The truth is she enthusiastically grabbed the lifeline Mr Salmond had thrown.
Now, the man who saved Ms Sturgeon’s political career wishes nothing more than to destroy it.
In a submission to a Holyrood inquiry into the Scottish Government’s botched handling of sexual harassment allegations levelled against the former First Minister, he describes Ms Sturgeon’s testimony to MSPs as ‘simply untrue’.
Mr Salmond alleges his successor misled parliament and broke the ministerial code. If this is found to be so, Ms Sturgeon’s political career would come to an ignominious end.
The Scottish Government was forced to pay Mr Salmond’s legal costs of more than £500,000 when he successfully challenged the fairness of its investigation into claims he behaved inappropriately towards female civil servants.
A separate police investigation led to court proceedings, with Mr Salmond walking free after a jury rejected a number of charges last year.
On leaving the High Court in Edinburgh, the former First Minister said there had been evidence his legal team had been unable to lead but that this would be made public in time. Mr Salmond has kept that promise.
He accuses Ms Sturgeon of failing to inform the Civil Service in good time of meetings she had with him, and of allowing the Scottish Government to contest a civil court action he had launched, despite having legal advice that it was likely to collapse.
Ms Sturgeon says she entirely rejects her predecessor’s claims.
‘We should always remember,’ her spokesman said on Friday, ‘that the roots of this issue lie in complaints made by women about Alex Salmond’s behaviour whilst he was First Minister, aspects of which he has conceded.
‘It is not surprising therefore that he continues to try to divert focus from that by seeking to malign the reputation of the First Minister and by spinning false conspiracy theories. The First Minister is concentrating on fighting the pandemic, stands by what she has said, and will address these matters in full when she appears at committee in the coming weeks.’
Nobody can be in any doubt that what was once the strongest, most formidable partnership in Scottish politics is in tatters and that its participants are now at war.
One SNP insider who has worked closely with both politicians says: ‘It was never true that Nicola and Alex were personally close. We might have spun things that way but the truth was that they recognised the political value of working together. They both favoured a gradualist approach to achieving independence and, by working together, they could see off the fundamentalists who were more gung-ho. And, look, things might be awful now but for a long, long time, that partnership worked. Alex appealed to a certain kind of male voter, your older, more unreconstructed guy, and Nicola won round women and younger men.
‘The numbers don’t lie. When they took over the leadership of the party in 2004, less than a third of Scots backed independence and ten years later, they got us to 45 per cent. That’s a successful partnership by any standards.’
But behind their united facade, there were always tensions between the SNP’s two most powerful politicians. Mr Salmond, says one source, doubted whether she had the killer instinct that he considered essential for political success, while Ms Sturgeon bristled at what she saw as his boorishness.
‘Take them out of politics and they would have absolutely nothing in common. It was a convenient relationship, that’s all,’ says a party source.
There is never a good moment for a First Minister to be accused by a predecessor of breaking the ministerial code but the timing of Mr Salmond’s intervention really could not be worse for Ms Sturgeon.
Not only is the First Minister’s focus currently on the coronavirus pandemic, she also faces growing pressure from within SNP ranks to deliver a second independence referendum or find another way of breaking up the United Kingdom.
Recent internal SNP elections saw some key positions on the national executive seized by activists who disagree with Ms Sturgeon’s insistence that a referendum is the only way forward. And many
Take them out of politics and they would have nothing in common
Ms Sturgeon bristled at what she saw as Mr Salmond’s boorishness
of those Nationalists calling for a Plan B also happen to be allies of Mr Salmond.
The Edinburgh South MP Joanna Cherry is a leading light in the faction that wants to see an alternative to a referendum brought forward. She is also a strong supporter of Mr Salmond and seen by some in the party as a potential challenger for the SNP leadership.
The SNP’s success over the past 16 years has been underpinned by remarkable discipline. Where once the party was hopelessly split over strategy, it came together as one and started winning in parts of Scotland where it had previously been rejected.
But political success is a fragile thing. The graveyard of history is littered with the careers of politicians who took public support for granted.
Will voters – even those inclined, at least, to give the SNP’s independence plans a hearing – indulge a party that seems determined to tear itself apart?
As the war between Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon heats up, we’re about to find out.