...and here’s the woman always at his side
SHE is the ever-attentive and conveniently photogenic travelling companion who has criss-crossed the country with Alex Salmond in search of Yes votes.
In the final days of the push to break up the UK, the SNP’s Westminster press officer Catriona Matheson has been Mr Salmond’s loyal sidekick – holding his umbrella, nodding vigorously and finding her way into an extraordinary number of photographs.
Miss Matheson, from Fife, currently works in Westminster where the SNP has six MPs. Ultimately, of course, they will have to stand down from what will be a foreign parliament if Scotland votes for independence.
The press officer, who has tweeted pictures of herself posing with celebrity Yes supporters like actor Alan Cumming and Franz Ferdinand frontman Alex Kapranos in the last few days, says she represented her school in a march to mark the opening of the Scottish Parliament in 1999.
It was after leaving school, she says, that she began to see a case for Scottish nationalism.
‘I lived abroad, and it was viewing my own country from a distance and through the eyes of others that gave me a new perspective. On quite a few occasions when travelling I have been asked about my nationality; why did I say I was from Scotland when I had handed over a British passport? I would find myself explaining that “Britain” was not synonymous with “England” and giving a lesson on the constitutional make-up of the UK.
‘I realised I found it difficult to explain why being part of a political union which regularly delivered a government we did not vote for, and which had caused north/south wealth disparity, was a good thing for Scotland.’
In an article for the Women for Independence website, she said: ‘Some people have told me that, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” but I would argue that it is broken.’
She wrote: ‘The UK is the fourth most une- qual country in the developed world. Some people in Glasgow have a life expectancy lower than those on the Gaza Strip. One in five Scots children live in poverty, and we have an arsenal of nuclear weapons next to our largest city which would wipe out half our country in an accident, but billions of pounds is spent on them. It’s time Scotland took responsibility for these issues.’