YES HIS LIP TREMBLED – BUT THE EYES WERE TWINKLING
Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, he’s free at last. Well, not quite. Dressed like a mid-market undertaker, Alex Salmond was a picture of sober modesty yesterday as he met a throng of news cameras outside the Court of Session.
Lord Pentland had ruled the Scottish Government’s investigation into harassment allegations against the former first minister unlawful.
Salmond had been persecuted by the Government he once led, denied due process by a cruel and capricious bureaucracy. Now the fallen leader stood before his people, a victim vindicated. His lower lip trembled; he was either very emotional or his tongue was having an allergic reaction to all this humility.
He intoned: ‘I never thought it possible at any point that I’d be taking the Scottish Government to court and therefore, while I’m glad about the victory which has been achieved today, I’m sad that it was necessary to take this action.’ Breath was paused for, ponderous sideways glances delivered, but the eyes gave him away. Gotcha, they twinkled. One day the scene will turn up on a stock images website with the caption: ‘Miscarriage of justice, slightly smug.’
The Scottish Government’s snafu was procedural, not substantive, but a set of jowls were eager to judder on the matter. Salmond’s fleshy chin plunged and bounced back like a smoked ham on a bungee rope as he professed himself ‘deeply troubled’ by ‘deliberate and malicious’ leaks to the Press. Of course, there were no leaks when Salmond was in gov– Before my cynical mind could even complete its thought, Pr man Campbell Gunn appeared as if from the ether, like Banquo’s ghost with a Teddy Boy slick back. He was Salmond’s special adviser when he leaked against a campaigning mum who opposed independence, telling journalists (incorrectly) that she was related to a Labour politician.
No time for past infractions. Now Salmond was the one sinned against and the sinner Scottish Government Permanent Secretary Leslie evans, overseer of the probe against him. She should, he said, ‘consider her position’.
Those with ears perked up will have heard something else. While he railed against evans as ‘the person who is responsible’ for an ‘institutional failure’, he also noted that the Scottish Government had accepted ‘not personal but institutional responsibility’.
If that sounds to you like a shot across the bow at his former protégée, you are not alone. One of the assembled correspondents picked up the cue and asked about the current First Minister, who is, after all, head of the very government Salmond was getting stuck in about.
THe jowls tightened. He had practised this. ‘My view of what Nicola Sturgeon should do now,’ he ventured, ‘is that she should concentrate on achieving independence for Scotland, particularly in the current political circumstances.’
Had this been a playground, a chorus of ‘Ooooooohhhh...’ would have struck up. Leslie evans had been told where to go; Nicola Sturgeon had been told to get on with it.
Clang! Salmond’s speech was punctuated from above by the bells of St Giles’ Cathedral, once ministered by John Knox, who had his own views on monstrous regiments of women. Salmond persevered, mindful of the import of the moment and the evening news deadlines.
If nothing comes of the allegations against him, he will be well placed for a return to frontline politics. Those bells might have been tolling for Nicola Sturgeon. He addressed the media with the practised bonhomie that the charmless are forced to acquire in public life. Sky’s James Matthews was ‘Jim’; the first question went to Salmond’s old university mate, the BBC’s Brian Taylor.
Salmond reckons himself a liberator, once comparing voters lining up to register for the referendum to the post-apartheid election that brought Nelson Mandela to power. Salmond must await the outcome of a separate police investigation before he can offer himself once more as the Father of the Nation.
The long waddle to freedom goes on.