What the commentators said

Three months ago, Nicola Sturgeon was on track to win a “crushing victory” in this year’s Holyrood election, said Alex Massie in The Times. Today her chances of an absolute majority are no better than 50-50. Why? Because the re-emergence of Salmond means she can’t run a “post-Covid Mother of the Nation” campaign, but must instead “slay the Salmond Minotaur all over again”. True, he’s a toxic figure – 74% take a “dim view of him” – but he can rely on the support of the hard-line nationalists who scorn Sturgeon’s more cautious approach. Yet this could equally well prove a nightmare for unionists, said Henry Hill on CapX. Under Scotland’s “absurd” electoral system, voters get to cast two ballots: one for their constituency MSP, of whom there are 73 in Holyrood; the other for MSPs representing their region. (Eight separate regions return a total of 56 regional MSPs.) The former are chosen on a first-past-the-post basis; the latter on a complex PR system involving lists of party candidates. To stop any party growing too dominant, that system is weighted against parties which do well in the constituency vote. But if the SNP’s expected triumph in the constituencies allows Alba to mop up the regional vote, Scotland could still end up with a parliament dominated by pro-independence MSPs.

Still, there’s no reason to think this “supermajority” would persuade Boris Johnson to change his mind on a second referendum, said Euan McColm in The Scotsman. Indeed, if Salmond wins a seat, his carping at Sturgeon and his toxic reputation will only harm the nationalist cause. He may have been cleared of sexual assault, but he’s still a “puffed-up little bully” whose behaviour towards female colleagues was criticised in court by his own QC. The worst thing about this new challenge from Alba, said Chris Deerin in the New Statesman, is that it means neither the SNP, nor the country, nor the women who accused him can move on. It just guarantees that “Salmond continues to haunt the scene like a malign unexorcised ghost”.