A shattering ordeal for wife who has been his rock ...warts and all
MOIRA Salmond is a woman long used to those little tests of patience which marriage can bring. When, oh when, she was once heard to complain, was Alex ever going to put up that pole for her curtains? And what was he thinking of, wearing that terrible tie on TV?
Lately the tests have grown more taxing. In August 2017 Scotland’s former First Minister was so determined to remain in the limelight after the loss of his Westminster seat that he launched his own Edinburgh Festival show.
He was crude enough to begin one performance with a blue joke which referenced Theresa May, Nicola Sturgeon, Ruth Davidson and Melania Trump. Quite how the patience of the nation’s former first lady weathered such crassness from her other half one can only imagine.
Now this. For the past fortnight lurid allegations concerning Salmond’s conduct in office have spilled from the witness box. It was claimed he was a groper, a sexual predator who was the scourge of his female retinue. Yet, through it all, Moira Salmond stood by him.
And her faith appeared to have been repaid yesterday when her husband was formally acquitted of all charges against him.
It was entirely in keeping with her stoic loyalty to Salmond that she was furious to learn he was the subject of a police investigation. A source close to the former First Minister confirmed she supported him to the hilt and backed his claim that the allegations were politically motivated.
That much appeared clear, certainly, when Mrs Salmond accompanied her husband to court on the final day of evidence on Thursday. Indeed, for a time there was speculation that she might testify on his behalf. In the event, she retained the dignified silence which has characterised her long years as a politician’s wife.
Salmond once admitted it was only with his wife’s blessing that he began his second spell of leading the SNP in 2004. Had she said no it is likely most of the past 15 years of Scotland’s political history would never have happened.
But she said yes – and look where it led. First, in 2007, to Bute House and then, 13 years later to the High Court in Edinburgh.
After almost 40 years of marriage and of working diligently behind the scenes to further her husband’s political cause, Moira Salmond looked gravely at risk of humiliation. The jury’s not guilty verdicts for 12 of the charges and not proven finding for the remaining one spares her that cruel fallout.
Not that the trial leaves their marriage entirely unscathed. Faced with a charge of attempting to rape Ms H, Salmond told the jury he had a sexual encounter with her but that it was consensual, did not go far and happened almost a year earlier than the date libelled in the charge.
He also admitted on the witness stand that he had a ‘sleepy cuddle’ with Ms F, a civil servant in the Scottish Government, on his bed after they drank too much of a Chinese spirit.
The Salmond marriage with its 17-year age difference has long been the subject of speculation. These Bute House ‘encounters’ from 2013 will do nothing to silence the chatter. Protective he may have been – even devoted and eulogistic towards her, but as he himself admitted at the start of this legal process, he was no angel.
‘Moira is my life,’ he once told presenter Kirsty Young in an interview for BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs. ‘I have been married for 30 years and she has done it with such grace and patience and been so helpful. I have just been so lucky.’
Never one for sharing the limelight with her
‘Let’s just say I am public property while she is not’
spouse, Moira Salmond was most often to be found at home in Aberdeenshire during her husband’s years as First Minister. He was usually at Bute House in Edinburgh.
Her softening influence, it now seems clear, was much missed there. While he could be volcanic, histrionic and, as even his defence team admitted, inappropriate, his wife invariably found a gentler, more attentive tone.
She was forever asking after the children of her husband’s associates – how old were they now? How was school going? – and was so genuinely eager for answers she sometimes asked Salmond to hand the phone over so that she could probe further.
Back in 1997, Salmond had joked that, while accompanying him on an unofficial visit to Bute House his wife had brought the measuring tape and was eager to move in.
In reality their home in Strichen was more her style and the splendour of the mini-palace in Charlotte Square more her husband’s.
Even after he became First Minister Mrs Salmond’s profile was so low she could have walked down any high street in Scotland without being recognised. Other party leaders’ wives would be ushered on stage for the obligatory hug at the close of the conference speech, but that was never her style. Instead the duty to partake in the Salmond embrace fell to then-deputy Nicola Sturgeon.
‘Let us just say I am public property, while she is not,’ Salmond used to say.
It was in the late 1970s when Salmond landed a job as an assistant economist at the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries for Scotland that he and Moira French McGlashan first crossed paths. He was 24 and she, already past 40, was his boss.
According to his biographer David Torrance: ‘Everyone who knew either Alex or Moira at this time recalls them being a perfect match, while their 17-year age gap was barely perceptible.’ But he adds that some political contemporaries regarded Salmond’s marriage with ‘bemusement’.
One said: ‘It was so out of character, so out of style with Alex. This young, radical, working class person marrying someone not only 17 years older than him but, by her own admission, of a more Conservative leaning background and so much more proper than he was.’
By choosing to marry a woman of 43, Salmond appeared to have turned his back on the prospect of fatherhood. Some in his party believe that would have made him a more rounded, patient man – but perhaps a less effective leader too.
However, the notion that she has little interest in politics is mistaken. ‘Of course she’s political,’ said a friend of the couple. ‘How can she be married to Alex Salmond and not be? The idea that, because she doesn’t have a profile, because she doesn’t make public utterances she is some kind of dishcloth is ludicrous.
‘Five minutes in her company and you would realise this is a woman who’s really well up on things, who’s extraordinarily well attuned to the political climate.’ Only once, in the early days of his career, did the couple agree to a joint interview. The fact that it was never repeated indicates both regarded it as a mistake.
‘He hasn’t a clue about the colour of ties, shirts or socks,’ Mrs Salmond told the newspaper.
‘He just puts on the nearest thing to hand.’
She added: ‘Sometimes I switch on the six o’clock news and I’m horrified by what he is wearing.’
Finding himself at a personal and professional crossroads, Salmond dropped the bombshell in 2000 that he was quitting as party leader. Though he never said so directly, friends suggested his wife was a key factor in his decision to step down.
Simply, they said, the two had come to believe there were more important things in life than the political battleground, including spending more time together.
Not that he maintained that position for long. By 2004, with the SNP seemingly destined to be led by Roseanna Cunningham, he performed a volteface and challenged her for the top job.
By now in her mid-60s, Mrs Salmond may have had the veto on his decision but recognised, perhaps, that her husband lived for politics.
And so she did not stand in his way as he went on to fulfil what he saw as his destiny – and within three years he was leading his country as First Minister.
It was during his second term at Bute House that Salmond’s mini-betrayals appear to have occurred.
Who can say what words have been exchanged between the couple over those? All that could be said for certain as Salmond strode out of the High Court building in Edinburgh a free man is that she stood by him in the hour of his greatest need – as indeed she has always done.
As First Minister, he once admitted he could not do his job without her; many times he has referred glowingly to her ‘grace and style’.
Lately her good grace has been tested to a nightmarish degree. If it ever wavered, Mrs Salmond never let it show.