Mischievous ghost returns to haunt Holyrood

Critics pan committee’s questions

Speaking out: Alex Salmond, centre, and the inquiry committee at Holyrood yesterday

FOR 11 months he had remained silent despite hundreds of invitations to speak out. Even days ago when, he said, Nicola Sturgeon used a Covid briefing to ‘effectively question the verdict’ of the jury that acquitted him on sexual harassment charges, he kept his powder dry.

‘today that changes,’ declared Alex Salmond in his devastating opening statement to the inquiry investigating the Scottish Government’s handling of the harassment complaints.

Yet there were times as the question and answer session wore on when even Mr Salmond himself looked bored.

Some of the inquiries he faced were so ill-focused they took several minutes to ask and had, by the time they finally invited a response, strangled themselves in clauses and sub clauses. Mr Salmond gamely attempted resuscitation.

One question from the SNP’s Maureen Watt meandered so aimlessly social media observers began to wonder if it was party policy to run down the clock.

Others bore no relevance. Interesting though it may have been to learn whether Mr Salmond was sorry about his conduct towards complainants, that was not the business of the inquiry and convener Linda Fabiani told the Lib Dems’ Alex Cole-Hamilton so.

He responded by asking several more questions which were not the business of the inquiry.

Little wonder that after barely an hour there was already an air of tedium to what should have been the parliament’s most significant committee session.

As tV historian Neil Oliver drily pointed out on twitter: ‘Most folk would have to rehearse for weeks to come across as inept as the committee questioning Alex Salmond. this bunch does it effortlessly.’

Watching the former First Minister face this bunch, he said, was ‘like watching a bear being baited by a troop of the balloon tube men you see flailing around outside car showrooms’.

For former MP and socialist firebrand George Galloway, Mr Salmond was like a ‘Monarch of the Glen surrounded by scarcely audible yappy dogs’, while journalist and tV presenter Andrew Neil marvelled at the failure of some inquisitors ‘even to put a coherent sentence together’.

there were notable exceptions. Labour’s Jackie Baillie made such cogent inquiries that, when her turn was over and the baton was handed to the SNP’s Stuart McMillan, Mr Neil tweeted we were ‘back in Numpty Nursery’.

Miss Baillie wanted to know about the leak of the harassment allegations to the Press, which Mr Salmond described as ‘politically inspired’.

He said he was confident he knew the identity of the leaker, but would give evidence only on matters for which he could pro

‘Monarch of the Glen surrounded by yappy dogs’