The feud that threatens to capsize Scottish nationalism
Most nationalist movements wait until they have achieved independence before having a civil war over who runs the country. But Nicola Sturgeon and Alex Salmond have jumped the gun by opening hostilities while Scottish selfdetermination is still well over the horizon.
Could it remain an unattainable goal thanks to the open warfare between the past and present leaders of the Scottish National Party? The feud has broken the sense of inexorable progress towards Scottish
independence propelled by the political skills of the SNP leadership and aided by the British government’s repeated blunders.
The British media loves a good dog fight and the melodrama of the Sturgeon/Salmond battle has swiftly promoted Scottish politics to the top of the news agenda in a way unseen since the referendum on Scottish independence in 2014.
The ill-concealed unionist sympathies of sections of the press have ensured a pro-Salmond bias and antipathy to Sturgeon, leading her actions to be compared by some to President Nixon during the Watergate scandal. “What did she know and when did she know it?” asked one commentator with relish. A breach of the “ministerial code”, though recently carried out with impunity by Priti Patel under Boris Johnson, is spoken of in awed tones as if it were a capital offence.
Much of this venom is driven by a desperate effort to damage the SNP before the May election for the Holyrood parliament in which, at the time of writing, the SNP is set to win a narrow majority. It would interpret this as giving it a popular mandate for demanding a second referendum on independence. Since the popularity and competence of Sturgeon is the SNP’s biggest asset at the polls, anything damaging to her – even if it does not destroy her politically – could stall the advance towards a pro-independence vote.
Trivial or exaggerated many of the allegations of misconduct against her may be, but to explain them to the Scottish parliament she has had to admit to serial incompetence by her administration at every level.
Suppose that the secret purpose of this process was the political assassination of Salmond, then the assassins were comically inept. Suppose, far more likely, that the purpose was simply to deal with allegations of sexual harassment against him without fear or favour, then the blundering is equally culpable.
In her evidence this week, Sturgeon repeatedly expressed sweet sorrow at the failings of an old friend, but kept returning to the original allegations
Salmond’s claim of a far-reaching conspiracy against him is difficult to take seriously because there is no obvious motive for such a plot. He posed no threat to Sturgeon’s leadership since she is very popular in Scotland and he is not, according to the polls. A conspiracy would have had to recruit as co-conspirators the great armada of people and institutions that have played a part in the affair. The allegation that the Scottish political, judicial and civil service elite is such a close-knit group that they automatically act in concert, and there is no separation of powers, is contradicted by their stumbling and incoherent performance.
A better explanation for why Salmond was targeted simultaneously by so many – a concerted attack that he sees as proof of a deep-laid conspiracy – is that they were all running scared of sexual harassment accusations and over-eager to avoid being seen as protectors of a friend and colleague.
They would have been all the more prone to avoid this risk and make a rush to judgement as the #MeToo movement got under way in 2017, heightening awareness of powerful men acting as sexual predators. Salmond, it must be pointed out, has been cleared of all 12 charges against him.
This is the heart of Sturgeon’s defence of her actions, telling the parliamentary committee that “I refused to follow the age-old pattern of letting a powerful man use his status and connections to get what he wants.” She claims that Salmond became so angry because he expected her, as his long-time political partner, to get him off the hook. In her evidence this week, Sturgeon repeatedly expressed sweet sorrow at the failings of an old friend, but kept returning to the original allegations against him.
Sturgeon may survive the attack on her, but how much damage will be done to Scottish nationalism, which
has shallower and more recent roots than Irish nationalism? It was only six and a half years ago that the independence referendum unexpectedly legitimised Scottish self-determination as a credible option for Scots, even though they voted it down.
The SNP had an unprecedented winning streak in gaining public support, as England and Wales voted narrowly for Brexit and Scotland voted strongly against. The Boris Johnson government is deeply disliked north of the border and its floundering response to the Covid-19 epidemic last year compared badly with Sturgeon’s image of cool competence.
Yet her own account of the missteps made by her government shows how bereft it is of capable leaders who might replace her
Nationalist movements past and present are usually good at surviving scandals. Recent examples of this include President Donald Trump and Indian prime minister Narendra Modi. They have been able to do this by wrapping the national flag around them and denouncing their critics as unpatriotic. This gambit becomes even easier during the epidemic, because leaders like Boris Johnson and Matt Hancock can claim that supposed wrongdoings are a diversion when they are devoting all their efforts to fighting the deadly virus.
Sometimes national leaders fall because of scandals but nationalist movements do not. In 1890, the Irish Home Rule leader Charles Stewart Parnell – “the uncrowned king of Ireland” – was cited as a corespondent in the divorce case of Katherine (Kitty) O’Shea, with whom he had been living for 10 years and by whom he had three children. The scandal ended his leadership of his party, which split amid furious and long-lasting disputes, but the movement towards Irish independence continued.
Sturgeon does not have the same dominance of Scottish politics as Parnell once did in Ireland, but she is far and away the SNP’s greatest electoral asset. Her eight-hour grilling before the Scottish parliament showed her to be as formidable a politician as ever. Yet her own account of the missteps made by her government shows how bereft it is of capable leaders who might replace her. No wonder that unionists in Scotland and the government in London are slavering over their best chance of wounding her politically just when she appeared to be on the verge of decisively winning the Holyrood election in May.
Her problem is that she does not only need previous SNP voters to stick with her, which the polls show that they are likely to do. She needs a slice of Scottish voters – primarily the large number who voted “no” in the referendum of 2014 but “no” also to the UK leaving the EU in 2016 – to change their minds in favour of an independent Scotland.
The rise of Scottish nationalism in recent decades is in keeping with the increased sense of national identity all over the world in reaction to globalisation. The SNP benefitted from this by becoming the vehicle for economic, social and cultural discontents in Scotland, just as Brexit did in England.
Its rise was meteoric because of good leadership and the failings of its opponents, but the Sturgeon/Salmond feud has robbed it of the first advantage – and the rollout of the vaccine might deprive it of the second.
I’m glad Rupert Everett knows relatively little about me – because he has the best put-downs about people he’s encountered during his long career. Worse, he never fails to repeat them in print or in interviews.
This jaw-dropping “honesty” has proved a lucrative earner when acting roles started to thin out. This week, Everett’s “observations” (sample – “Colin Firth tongued me when filming St Trinians” – meaning kissed – and “well parked was the biggest compliment in our family”) were delivered to an unusually sycophantic Piers Morgan (ITV’s Life Stories), providing a welcome tonic during these grey and gloomy times.
Having met Rupert many times, on each occasion I’m slightly fearful about what he is mentally filing away – his three volumes of best-selling memoirs have been revelatory about his self-confessed shortcomings (huge vanity and vast ambition), his sexual explorations and his determination to become a star at all costs.
He’s not held back on his famous co-stars, describing Madonna and Julia Roberts as smelling “vaguely of sweat” because they shunned deodorant. Although he came out as gay in 1989 (did it limit his career?), he’s subsequently owned up to sex with women, claiming he was “basically adventurous”. When asked about his six-year affair with Paula Yates, Everett told Piers “it was up to her to feel guilty, I wasn’t married to Bob”.
Rupert’s hour was frothy telly entertainment, but for the real McCoy you must read his memoirs – which veer from the utterly tasteless (encounters with fans in a porn shop) to the touching (wheeling his father on one last trip to Lourdes as he was dying).
My closest encounter with the fearsome diarist occurred an hour before we were invited to appear at a posh costume party (the theme was “revolutionary”). As I panicked, Rupert got down on hands and knees with scissors and a staple gun, creating a Mad Max look of genius constructed from army surplus netting and camouflage trousers (which he shredded and turned into a blouse). Naturally, he shunned the dress code, appearing in a perfectly cut suit.
In case you think we’re close pals, he’s since described me (along with Madonna) as “a whiny old barmaid”.
Reading memoirs has been a very rewarding way to explore and travel in other people’s worlds through the months of confinement – and Rupert’s remain the gold standard. But what kind of personality sets down their judgement on everyday encounters? Do they care if they lose friends as a result? What about their friends and partners? Rupert is highly selective – choosing to keep one part of his life out of the public view, his 20-year relationship with his partner Henrique, a Brazilian accountant. Is that fair?
I’ve just finished Sasha Swire’s memoir Diary of an MP’s Wife, covering the years between 2010 and 2019, of her MP husband’s journey from the back benches to ministerial office and back again. She talks of local constituency bores, the dreary fund raisers and the shameless chumocracy of Cameron and co – but has anything changed with Boris at the helm?
Too much honesty (unless, perhaps you are Rupert Everett) could see me blacklisted. Yes, people do settle scores, and I know plenty about those I’ve encountered during my career in print and television
By the end of Swire’s book, I felt slightly unclean and a little bit nauseous. It is compelling, providing an insight into the way that Tory world operates, with its snobbery and social demarcations. Image is everything – Boris still employs one of the personal photographers (he has three on the payroll) that Cameron used to buff up his image. Swire appears to tell us about life at the coalface of politics, but has she left stuff out? Now her husband has retired as an MP, can we expect more?
I’m guilty of selective recall, having written two volumes of memoirs. Baggage examined my fractious relationship with my mother, written after her death. Fallout is about the late 1960s, sexual infidelity, college and being a newcomer in the very male world of Fleet Street in the early 1970s.
Fallout stops at 1976 as I’m still working in the media and too much honesty (unless, perhaps you are Rupert Everett) could see me blacklisted. Yes, people do settle scores, and I know plenty about those I’ve encountered during my career in print and television.
As an antidote to Sasha Swire, the memoirs of Lady Anne Glenconner (Lady in Waiting) are utterly seductive, mainly because she is determined never to feel sorry for herself, in spite of losing two sons (one, a heroin addict, to hepatitis and another to Aids) and nursing another through a coma following a motorcycle accident.
Having dedicated her life to service as an uncomplaining (and long-suffering) lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret, Lady Glenconner tolerated her eccentric husband’s behaviour until his death, only to discover he’d left everything to a favoured employee in Mustique.
Anne’s voice comes across loud and strong, in the same way that you can hear Rupert Everett as you read Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins, or his latest opus To the End of the World, grovelling around European film festivals trying to raise money for his movie about the last years of Oscar Wilde.
But the most original memoir I’ve read this lockdown uses the story of a building, the unique modern house designed by Peter Womersley in 1957 for the textile designer Bernat Klein. The See-Through House, written by Klein’s daughter Shelley, after his death, describes how her teenage father left his parents in northern Yugoslavia in the 1940s to study in Israel, returning to the UK after the war and starting his own mill in the Scottish Borders.
His deep love of the surrounding countryside translated into sensational tweeds which were used by all the top Parisian couturiers. The see-through house, near Selkirk, was the ultimate expression of Klein’s determined modernism, and Shelley’s book describes the tyranny of living with “Beri” – a dad who refused to allow any decoration, insisting that toys and any object he had not authorised were placed out of sight. Furious rows ensued.
Funny and shocking at the same time, I wish I could have met Beri, we have a lot in common.
I’m not feeling ‘re-entry anxiety’ – I can’t wait for lockdown to end
Did you know that a condition exists called “re-entry anxiety”? It’s not connected with a satellite returning from Mars but describes the difficulties some people might have when current restrictions are eased.
A new report from the Together Coalition reckons that a third of us think that life will never resume as before, that the pandemic has brought permanent changes to social interactions. The authors express concern that we could have gotten too used to being apart, even though the pandemic brought communities together to help the most vulnerable.
According to one clinical psychologist, those experiencing re-entry anxiety divide into two groups – those who were diagnosed with anxiety before the pandemic, and people who feel “frightened and unable to sleep at the thought of getting into crowded trains or seeing groups of friends”.
Prisoners, astronauts, long-distance walkers and sailors have expressed how overwhelming it can be to reenter everyday life, but will we feel the same?
Zoom and social media have enabled us to work and communicate. Photos taken during the recent sunshine reveal many of us have walked with friends, even though officially that’s not meant to happen until Monday. Has lockdown been thoroughly detrimental to our mental health as some experts claim?
For many, the removal of pointless meetings, of social encounters involving small talk, along with the need to go out and “keep up”, has been thoroughly enjoyable. Yes, some people have actually found lockdown
rewarding.
But we’ve all had enough now – and I don’t think l’ll need to relearn how to hold a face-to-face conversation.