Scottish National Panto
On Friday the 26th of February, former First Minister and Russia Today host Alex Salmond appeared at Holyrood to accuse his former deputy and current First Minister Nicola Sturgeon of breaking the ministerial code. Salmond was acquitted of 14 charges of sexual assault in the Scottish high court in March 2020 and immediately embarked on a mission to prove that the accusations were part of a conspiracy by Sturgeon to take her predecessor and former mentor down.
When the news of the Salmond accusations broke in summer 2018, the glee with which Labour and the Conservatives anticipated the collapse of the SNP was shameful. Since then, the narrative has switched from ‘Salmond is a sex pest’ to ‘Salmond must be avenged’, the complete opportunism would be entertaining if it were not threatening to undermine Scottish democracy.
Before Salmond’s appearance in parliament, he demanded the government publish their legal advice over whether to prosecute. This was met with backlash over the anonymity of the accusers and Rape Crisis Scotland contacted the Scottish government to seek assurances that their anonymously would be protected. The government refused the request to publish as it is not customary for a government to publish their legal advice and could open them up to similar requests in future.
Salmond has since claimed this evidence was kept from being published by a plot involving Sturgeon, directly accusing Lord Advocate James Wolffe of suppressing evidence. This has turned what seemed like it would be Scotland’s reckoning with the #MeToo movement into little more than a political football. The alleged victims have been threatened, referred to as a ‘coven’ and repeatedly had their name exposed by Salmond acolytes, including his trial lawyer.
In my view, the former-First Minister put it best himself when, in his evidence to Holyrood, he said he has ‘no evidence that Nicola Sturgeon has been part of efforts to damage [his] reputation.’ The persistence in conflating the failings of the Scottish government in the investigation into his conduct as FM — which are completely legitimate — with a convoluted conspiracy to take him down has done more to undermine the integrity of the Scottish parliament than the Tories, Nicola Sturgeon and the Scottish Labour Party combined.
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Salmond’s main contention is that the First Minister misled Parliament when she gave April 2018 as the date she found out about the allegations, claiming the two met on the 29th of March 2018 and discussed them. While this could very well be true, you could be forgiven for not seeing it as despicable moral failing.
The simple fact, purposefully overlooked by independence bloggers and bad-faith columnists, is that Alex Salmond stopped being of great importance to the people of Scotland when he stopped being First Minister, more so when he lost his seat in Westminster. Under Sturgeon, the SNP membership surged; in her first election as leader she achieved the party’s best result yet in the Scottish parliament.
When there is a cult-of-personality like the one that follows Salmond — who is, unquestionably, one of Scotland’s greatest political figures — a finger-in-the-ears attitude to accusations of wrongdoing can easily develop. This was highlighted when, after the alleged victims came forward, the former First Minister’s fundraiser £100,000 in legal fees to challenge the accusations. What message does this send to those making accusations against powerful men?
He was found innocent of all charges — bar one which the official verdict was not proven — and the Scottish government should face questions about how it got so far. What I think has been completely beyond the limits of common sense, however, is the media’s portrayal of Alex Salmond as overtly concerned with parliamentary conduct, and not someone seeking revenge for nearly being imprisoned.
The former-First Minister’s keen-eye for breaches of ministerial conduct was nowhere to be found when it was revealed in court, there was an ‘unofficial ban’ on Mr Salmond being left alone with younger female civil servants at Bute house or the ‘brokered apology’ between Mr Salmond and one of his accusers to stop the accusations going any further while still in office.
Support for an independent Scotland has been polling ahead consistently since last summer, which is what makes the coverage of these accusations so frustrating. Scotland has been referred to as a ‘dictatorship’, a ‘banana republic’ and a ‘one-party state’ by journalists who, frankly, do not care if what they are saying is true. It appears that our press, sick of an SNP government who they have never shared the voters’ enthusiasm for, have set a giant elephant trap for the SNP and the few pro-independence journalists in Scotalnd — along with the Salmondite MPs and bloggers — are gleefully walking into it, clapping like seals as the first-ever pro-independence majority disappears into nothing.
If it can be proven that Nicola Sturgeon knowingly broke the ministerial code, I am sure she will consider her position. However, an issue of parliamentary procedure cannot and should not be conflated with an issue of morality, not to mention proof of a conspiracy. The Scottish public, after all, have a nose for bullshit.
