WITH THE EXCEPTION of devolution-minded academics annoyed with Nicola Sturgeon for letting down progressive Scotland by behaving like a Westminster ogre, those who wish the First Minister to depart are maybe not so plentiful in number as might be expected (so far at least).
Only the Scottish Conservatives express a persistent desire for her departure with any conviction. They talk-up the predicament she is in due to the fall-out from the Alex Salmond affair because they fear her vote-winning prowess. The fact Douglas Ross is not standing for a constituency seat but hopes to be elected as a list MSP rather speaks for itself.
Much of the Scottish media remains indulgent towards a leader facing terrible accusations from her former political mentor. Broadcasters in England would be giving hell to a Prime Minister who faced charges of misconduct a fraction as serious as those directed at her. But her style of politics and the central role of information (or should that be propaganda) in her government evokes a different response. Her own hyper-partisan interpretation of her role means a simple narrative can be spun by political journalists with minimal sweat and effort; this is most of all true of BBC Scotland and Scottish Television (STV).
Nobody has perhaps employed as many journalists in Scotland (albeit in various state roles) since the Canadian press barons who expanded their Scottish titles sixty years ago. But these days defending Sturgeon’s reputation and dreaming up diversions may be so exhausting she may end up burning her way through her battalion of propagandists.
What about the senior government in London which has had to endure her unfriendly, adversarial and peevish attitude ever since her Scottish reign began in 2014?
It would be wrong to assume the champagne corks would be popping if she was to depart in a torrent of scandal. She has become very predictable in her malice. Arguably she showed no tactical finesse in her bid to make Alex Salmond history. Her mortar attacks on Westminster also usually fell short of their target.
Some more cynical figures say they can almost read her like a book. Her aggression is often without a strategic direction and occurs because it is what comes easiest to her. Douglas Ross may wish to see the back of her but there won’t necessarily be huge sadness around the Palace of Westminster if Ross fails to make significant advances against her, leaving her hanging by a thread with a civil war still on her hands. A wounded First Minister with her leadership in question is manna from heaven. Lacking authority in her own citadel means she can hardly throw down the gauntlet to her British adversaries by challenging the unity of the island directly.
Besides her authoritarian style and alienating ways at Holyrood makes the world of Westminster seems a glowing model for statecraft by comparison. Salmond, in his evidence to the Holyrood committee told Murdo Fraser MSP that if the House of Commons had been asked by the Crown Prosecution Service to withhold evidence in the way Scotland’s Crown Office got away with doing at the Scottish Parliament, it would have got a very dusty answer.
There are calls for an investigation into the conduct of Permanent Secretary Leslie Evans, head of the Scottish administration since 2014, to be carried out by her line managers in Whitehall. She oversaw the drawing up, and implementation of the policy that allowed former ministers to be investigated (despite attempting to later distance herself from it).
Allies of Salmond have claimed the policy was specifically designed to “get” him which Salmond also implied in his evidence on Friday.
In January 2019 Lord Pentland, presiding in a judicial review secured by the former first minister, decreed her probe was ‘unlawful’, ‘procedurally unfair’ and ‘tainted by apparent bias’. Evans stated afterwards, ‘We may lose the battle, but we will win the war’. Her confidence may have sprung from the imminent arrest of Salmond on 24 January 2019 and charged with multiple accounts of sexual assault – that he was later to be acquitted of.
Strategists in London might conclude an investigation into Evans’s behaviour which the UK civil service is permitted to carry out, might only allow Sturgeon and her well-oiled information machine to talk-up the age-old issue of London interference to obtain a Pavlovian response of Scots closing ranks.
What then of Alex Salmond? Arguably he should be in no hurry to see the back of Sturgeon. BBC Scotland, an increasingly sloppy outpost of journalism, had to apologise when Sarah Smith, the politics editor, erroneously claimed that he had asked the First Minister to resign.
If Sturgeon vanishes quickly like a puff of smoke, what was done to him will also fade into the background. It is clear that his belief in Scottish independence is as fervent as ever. It is doubtful if he sees an alternative vehicle to the SNP being able to lead ‘the freedom struggle’. With Nicola swiftly gone, it is likely that a confederate like Angus Robertson would be slotted into the top job. After the excesses of the Sturgeon era, he’d be careful, if not plodding, and any transformation of the party would occur at a glacial pace.(On a personal note, the book that Salmond plans to publish would have far less impact if Sturgeon had vanished from the stage).
There is a case for saying that it is Sturgeon who should be left until at least half-way through the life of the next parliament to clean house. Shorn of her enforcers, she would be a servant of the SNP rather than its implacable master. Out would go her chief of staff, Liz Lloyd, who may well have a story to tell as absorbing as any chapter in the House of Cards by Michael Dobbs – were she able to have it published. By contrast, Evans, whose contract was renewed for three years in the month of Salmond’s arrest, would have no hiding place. The Lord Advocate James Wolffe who, according to the former Attorney general in the rest of the UK, Lord Falconer was absent without leave as the independence of the Crown Office (the Scottish prosecuting service) fell into disrepair, might be relieved to retreat to a judgeship like his predecessor Frank Mulholland who also quit under a growing cloud.
Sturgeon would be stripped of authority as others tried to rebuild the party, a kind of titular Emperor Hirohito reduced to doing scientific research on amphibious creatures. Of course she may well see things very differently and have to be dragged screaming from her seat of power. Like Salmond she is in thrall to an emotional cause. But unlike him she is ideological rather than cerebral. Her cause is a Scotland whose radical women and sundry minorities are to enjoy the chief sway. For that transformation to occur, there is little point in sticking closely to existing rules and conventions. Clearly his concerns about breaking the ministerial code by misleading parliament, seems not to be something she is greatly exercised over.
A leak to a newspaper like the Daily Record in August 2018, preparing Scotland for the news that Salmond was the subject of a police investigation, could only have come from a tight circle around the First Minister, but did not cause her apparent unease.
Nor has the evidence presented by Salmond that increasingly frantic attempts were made to ensure criminal charges arose from the late 2018 investigation because the judicial review was not going well for the government, produced major consequences.
Resignations and sackings? There have been none.
What Salmond views as a frightening display of ‘arbitrary authority’, Sturgeon sees presumably as the legal system doing its utmost to protect the rights of women complainants to have their day in court while preserving their anonymity.
Salmond made it clear he wants justice and won’t let go until he gets it. He named the figures whom he claimed were at the heart of a ‘deliberate, prolonged, malicious and concerted effort’ to damage his reputation and have him jailed, most key pillars of Sturgeon’s authority.
He has shown stoicism and composure by not speaking out until nearly a year after his acquittal on serious charges of sexual misbehaviour, ones which could have led to long years in custody that he might not have.
In his nearly six hours of cross-examination he clearly showed that for a man of 66, one needing a blue ventilator on account of an asthmatic condition, he had not slowed up mentally. He retained a diamond-sharp intellect, great powers of recall, an ability to think quickly on his feet, and the ability to repulse the hostile questioning that mainly came from his own nationalist side. This wasn’t the person who, in 2017 after vicissitudes such as losing his Westminster seat, doing cabaret at the Edinburgh Festival, and producing political shows on Russia Today, seemed to be drifting towards oblivion. Watching his assured performance on Friday Sturgeon and her allies might have been forgiven for kicking themselves for having turned on him in the way they did.
Salmond’s impending book is likely to be more riveting than Sturgeon’s collected speeches on women’s issues which a publishing firm flush with state funds is bringing out later this year. Her memoirs (if they are ever written) are more likely to resemble those of Anthony Eden or Ted Heath.
Sturgeon was keen to usher Scotland into a progressive era of endless equality drives in which Scottish men became accustomed to checking their privilege at every turn. She might have got away with this un-halcyon scheme if she had not reached the unhappy conclusion her predecessor was an obstacle on the road to a Woke Valhalla.
However charitably the evidence laid out by Salmond is interpreted, it is clear the full weight of the state was used to sideline him. Some excruciatingly difficult years lay ahead for him as a result. But in the end he was vindicated by a jury and perhaps public opinion won’t now be far behind in endorsing that judgment.
Sturgeon hopes an electoral victory for the SNP will enable her to ride out the storm and say the people’s verdict counts more than any claim she broke the rulebook of government. But if she prevails in May, it could well prove to be a Pyrrhic victory that she will come to regret ever happened.
Tom Gallagher is Emeritus Professor of Politics at the University of Bradford. He is the author of Theft of a Nation: Romania Since Communism, Hurst publishers 2005. His latest book is Salazar, the Dictator Who Refused to Die, Hurst Publishers 2020 (available here) and his twitter account is @cultfree54
