Salmond hits out at SNP’s blunders on push for indy
Alex Salmond has blamed SNP “incompetence” in government for holding back the cause of Scottish independence.
The former first minister also warned there was no immediate path to a second referendum after Nicola Sturgeon pursued an “ill-fated, kamikaze” Supreme Court case on the issue.
SNP ministers vowed in 2022 to push ahead with an IndyRef2 only for judges to rule Holyrood did not possess the legal powers to stage such a vote without prior Westminster approval.
Salmond described Sturgeon’s decision to seek a judicial review as an “ill-starred, ill-fated, kamikaze venture to the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom” that was “just ludicrous from start to finish”.
Asked if he saw a way a second vote on independence could be held, Salmond said: “Not immediately.”
Asked if devolution had helped or hindered the cause he has championed throughout his political career, Salmond said: “It helped independence when the SNP were a competent government.
“Obviously it has hindered independence when the SNP became an incompetent government in more recent years.”
Salmond left the SNP and, in the run-up to the 2021 Holyrood elections, launched the rival proindependence Alba Party.
He said there were a “litany of demonstrations of incompetence” by his successors in government, citing construction delays of two ferries to service lifeline routes to the islands of Scotland’s west coast as one example.
The Alba leader said his former party had been “diverted into the highways and byways of identity politics” instead of “worrying about health, education, housing, transport, finishing the A9 and so on”.
Salmond spoke out before it was revealed John Swinney had abolished the role of Minister for Independence in the Scottish Government this week.
The position was created by Humza Yousaf in March 2023 during his 14-month spell as first minister and was handed to MSP Jamie Hepburn, who will now serve as minister for parliamentary business.
The decision was criticised by Alba as well as senior SNP MP Alyn Smith, who said yesterday: “The Westminster group had a meeting with John yesterday which was a good chance to chew the fat about where things are.”
When asked if Swinney mentioned in the meeting he was going to scrap the job, Smith said: “No. Those discussions were internal anyway but we had a discussion with him about such matters.”
He added: “My view personally is that having Jamie Hepburn as the independence minister was really effective to focus government on getting the independence white papers out the door.
“One particularly close to my heart, the Independence in europe paper, really does go into the nuts and bolts of how we’ll accede into the european Union.”
Swinney argued that every government minister in his Cabinet had a responsibility for independence.
He added: “We will use every electoral opportunity to advance the cause.
“The next such opportunity will be the forthcoming UK General election.
“The SNP will go into that election on a manifesto which will say on page one, line one, ‘Vote SNP for Scotland to become an independent country’.”