A well-rehearsed performer takes centre stage
Yesterday felt like the first day of spring; a glorious late-february afternoon promising blooming daffodils and the start of lambing. Yet amid these prelapsarian settings, a massacre was under way. I am speaking of Alex Salmond’s longawaited testimony.
The scene of the carnage was not Glencoe but the Robert Burns Committee Room, though something far more Shakespearean was about to unfold. Mr Salmond, despite his past travails, was no “cowerin tim’rous beastie” – more like Macduff plotting the overthrow of Lady Macbeth. At times we caught glimpses of simmering contempt worthy of The Godfather.
You see, Mr Salmond’s thorny task was to harm his enemies, while appearing reasonable enough to blunt any accusations of tinfoil hats or conspiracy theories. It was a fine line, which the former first minister navigated adeptly.
His habit of repeating certain phrases for emphasis – like a hypnotist or primary school teacher – was often tedious, yet undoubtedly effective. “I watched in astonishment on Wednesday when the First Minister of Scotland – the First Minister of Scotland – used a Covid press conference – a COVID PRESS CONFERENCE to effectively question the result of a jury.
“Still, I said nothing. Well, today, that changes,” he finished. “Fredo, I know it was you,” his tone implied.
Mr Salmond showed total mastery of endless intricate details and legal arguments, only derailed when a dry cough – the result of hours of non-stop talking – temporarily stalled proceedings. Occasionally he’d give a qualifier like “If memory serves”, or “as I recall”, but this was mere bluff. Not since sitting my GCSES at an all-girls private school have I seen such levels of over-preparedness.
His questioners were slow to warm up. Some SNP committee members opted to filibuster, delivering excruciatingly long pre-prepared preambles, or else sticking doggedly to topics unlikely to harm their Girl in Holyrood. Alex Cole-hamilton of the Lib Dems wasted precious minutes asking Mr Salmond if he wanted to apologise for claims already thrown out in court.
The real blood-letting came later, via the box-office pairing of acting Scottish Labour leader Jackie Baillie and Murdo Fraser of the Tories. Both excelled at leaving the door slightly ajar for Mr Salmond to rampage through unhindered.
“If we could just see the document, then we’d all be better informed,” lamented Salmond. “Well, indeed,” countered Baillie. “This parliament has asked twice. We’ve still not seen it. So good luck with that one,” she added, with a devastating eyebrow raise.
Fraser calmly delivered the milliondollar question: “Would the UK Crown Prosecution Service have ever asked the House of Commons to redact evidence?”
“No. It is intolerable,” replied Salmond coldly.
Yet, like any skilled surgeon, Mr
Salmond knew not to stick the knife in too far or linger too long. One moment he’d say “I believe the First Minister has broken the ministerial code”, next “it’s not for me to suggest what the consequences should be”.
Even when one questioner teed him up by asking, incredulously, about Nicola Sturgeon’s claim to have forgotten when she had heard her chief of staff making sexual allegations against her mentor of three decades, he would not be drawn.
“That’s a question you’ll have to put to Nicola,” he replied, with cod magnanimity. This was unmistakable “keyhole surgery”, which made the final filleting all the more potent.
To see this nationalist luminary delivering the coup de grace to the SNP leadership should have been shocking, for sure; but it’s a measure of our topsy-turvy times that the strangeness scarcely registered.
With Labour opposing Tory tax rises, the Lib Dems abandoning free speech and Theresa May proving a bigger cavalier than Boris Johnson, perhaps Alex Salmond is after all the man to save the Union.