NICOLA STURGEON’S persistent caginess about what she knew as she was questioned by the parliamentary inquiry examining her administration’s handling of the allegations made against Alex Salmond was a sight to behold.
Phrases like ‘not to my recollection’, ‘I don’t recall’, ‘I have to check the detail’, ‘I’m not in possession of the information’, ‘I’m not 100 per cent sure’, ‘I ask myself how I could have forgotten that’ – gushed forth through many hours of cross-examination. At times it seemed as if she had been absent on a long cruise through the oceans of the southern hemisphere – rather than be an assumed control-freak at the centre of the supposed tight-knit administration that ploughed ahead in turning misconduct allegations against Salmond into a court trial between 2018 and 2020.
Her raging amnesia was contrasted by a blizzard of vivid recollections about her own feelings of sadness, dismay, grief, and sorrow through a drama which her own team had launched retrospectively with its customised investigation into the actions of a past senior minister, one which Lord Pentland, a judge sitting in the Court of Session deemed unlawful in January 2019.
She was like a garrulous, shrewd, but shifty and careless medical consultant trying to convince a tribunal of his peers that his botched operations were nothing of the sort. Evidence had to be prised out of her secretive state machine. Fresh material released in the days after her evidence was given revealed bigger holes in her claim that the process against Salmond, while ‘botched’, was carried out with the best of intentions.
While she was under oath and laying out her evidence, her justice minister Humza Yousaf, provided a shrill running commentary via Twitter, revealing a conflict of interest between his ministerial role and party identification that would have been a resigning matter in Westminster. On Saturday, Brian Taylor, the BBC’s Scottish political editor for nearly all of the devolution era, now writing for the Herald, hailed ‘Nicola Sturgeon’s committee performance as deftly executed, ‘thorough, respectful, controlled and capable.’
One of many critical readers noted: ‘If “thorough” means not answering, not remembering, not knowing, or speculation, then she was thorough. Sturgeon acolyte Taylor used to be an embarrassment to the BBC, now he’s just an embarrassment.’
Devolution has created a powerful nationalist establishment for whom Taylor has long acted as one of the main cup-bearers. Increasingly Sturgeon comes across as a ‘Wonder Woman’ for a media claque of Taylors, Riddochs, and Leasks. The party and its purpose, without which a lawyer who barely practiced her profession before entering politics would have got nowhere, are increasingly shelved.
A brutal and unseemly political and legal duel between the two titans of Scottish nationalism has become an ordeal for the party faithful, thousands of whom have quit their membership while thousands more stay, clinging to the belief that normality might return and a resumption of the war against the unionists might mend the gaping tear in the fabric of nationalism. But that seems increasingly unlikely given the calculated ferocity with which Sturgeon went for her predecessor and the fact she is busy creating a new presidential-style party with radical priorities that have little to do with nationalism.
She has consciously transferred to the very heart of her own movement the divisive atmosphere of the 2014 referendum which had split Scotland. Some of the ruthless tactics of the ‘Yes’ movement were meant to unnerve their pro-United Kingdom opponents to the extent that in some parts of Scotland it became an ordeal to campaign given how intense emotions had become. Sturgeon now has no hesitation about importing such ruthlessness into the heart of her own cause. Colleagues such as Westminster MP Joanna Cherry, who showed sympathy for Salmond’s claim that he has been framed, have been subject to intimidation and pressure not out of place in authoritarian regimes.
Clearly Sturgeon wants to build a new vanguard party, one in which nationalism will be pretty much what she considers is appropriate at a particular moment. Increasingly, just like Labour under Tony Blair she wishes to craft a new force which reflects what are the current global fashions. The need for the nation-state to make way for the forces of globalised capital and an international labour market unencumbered by borders, was his crusade. It is increasingly apparent that her vision of a new Scottish society is one in which acceptance and advancement is based on a complex set of ‘inter-sectional criteria’ based on race, gender and sexuality.
This ‘new edgy Scotland’ suffered a severe reverse when a mainly-woman jury failed to find Salmond guilty of any of the charges of sexual assault which had led to him being placed on trial in March 2020. The trial had gone ahead despite the conduct of the Scottish Government’s own harassment investigation against him having been decreed as unlawful in a previous judicial hearing. Many within the Scottish chattering classes had been taken aback by this trial outcome and complained about it, showing perhaps how out-of-touch they were with much of society.
Sturgeon sees her survival in this crisis and her future influence stemming from maximising her appeal to the sizable intelligentsia that is now entrenched in the universities, much of the media and not least in the charity sector controlled by her party through state funding. The feelings of the party which she inherited count for very little anymore. It is unlikely that it ever occurred to her what longstanding party regulars would make of the ruthless way she characterised Salmond at the inquiry.
He was portrayed by her as an arrogant, self-absorbed boor who mistreated party colleagues and officials in his power. She had in mind not only his accusers (whom she claimed not to know despite their links to the SNP and her administration) but ‘those of us who have campaigned with him, worked with him, cared for him and considered him a friend – and who now stand accused of plotting against him’.
She dwelled on his inappropriate behaviour which had become of compelling importance, requiring action to be take only with the upsurge of the #MeToo movement in 2017.
Had she known about her predecessor’s mores beforehand? Her explanation has varied from having heard of an incident at Edinburgh airport in 2008 some time after it happened to only learning about any pattern of wrongful behaviour when she met Salmond on 2 April 2018 (having forgotten about a previous meeting with his chief of staff on 29 January).
Salmond was clear on dates and events in his submission on 26 February. But she claimed to be only nominally in charge and oblivious to what was happening as the storm intensified around him. The media commentator and former Labour Party advisor Paul Sinclair has noted that Lesley Evans, the civil service Permanent Secretary in Scotland told Liz Lloyd, Sturgeon’s Chief of Staff, of allegations in March but neither bothered to tell her. Instead Lloyd told Geoff Aberdein, Salmond’s former Chief of Staff. He claims to have told Sturgeon on the 29th of March but she recalled neither that disclosure nor the meeting. She presided over leaks and allowed civil servants to freelance, taking actions which had very serious repercussions. Mistakes occurred. Yes. Serious ones. Yes indeed. But resignations. None were necessary, she contended. In a touching summary last Wednesday, she even claimed that the calibre and dedication of the civil service and the Crown Office was such that a new administration would need to change very little.
This was the same public body, the office of whose head Lesley Evans was searched on the orders of Lord Advocate James Wolffe, a move which Salmond was prevented from revealing until after Sturgeon had appeared before the committee.
She denies the claims of two senior SNP figures, Geoff Aberdein and Duncan Hamilton, an Advocate (QC) and former MSP for the party, that she had heard about the investigations against Salmond earlier than when she had claimed was the case to parliament. Aberdein has stated that the name of a complainant against Salmond was divulged to him by a senior official. But Sturgeon is unfazed about the claim the evidence strongly points to her having broken the ministerial code by lying to parliament. I am one of those who suspects that if the committee was to find this and a vote of no confidence was to be passed in her at Holyrood, she would still not resign.
Similarly, despite her protestations about the welfare of the female complainants being a primary consideration, lacking on her part was any sense of urgency about finding out if one of her officials, divulged a name while a criminal case was being assembled.
With a defence of her conduct displaying a growing number of holes, Sturgeon arguably should have been less keen to drag her predecessor through the mud on 3 March. Similarly, the next day, at Question time in Holyrood, she might have been better-advised to tone down the vitriol which she directed at Ruth Davidson MSP when she challenged core parts of her evidence. Disinterested observer might have observed that it was a stark contrast to the dignified demeanour she sought to cut while giving evidence.
While claiming ignorance about how the Salmond affair came about and the role of her key officials and advisers, it is clear that she aims to have a decisive role in shaping the narrative about how, why and when Salmond fell from grace. Tories are inured to her fulminations and occasional venomous diatribes but her characterisation of Alex Salmond as an unsavoury figure will prove far more upsetting to many mainstream independence supporters.
The signs are that she doesn’t care and it’s not hard to see why.
The party that she wants to construct is ceasing to be the broad church which Salmond was the principle architect of in the first decade of the century. Despite his big ego, the party was never primarily about him. But now a new vanguard force is taking shape which could be summed up as ‘the Nicola Show’.
If there were (as is claimed by Angus Robertson) up to seven thousand converts who jumped aboard as a result of her testimony last Wednesday, they are likely to have been impressed by the soap opera features of her defence rather than her commitment to striving for independence.
The claim by arch-loyalist Ian Blackford on 5 March that a referendum on independence could take place before the end of this year, was seen by not a few of her critics in the Yes campaign as being evidence of how disingenuous her stance now is on ending the 314-year Union. Her ambition seems to be for creating a party of radical social activists whose agenda seems more fitted for a post-national world order, and whose unconditional loyalty is to her.
This is not the party associated with Gordon Wilson, Margo MacDonald or Duncan Hamilton. Instead, it is a nationalist shell containing a party that seems to have more affinity to the Bay Area of San Francisco or the campus of a Woke university in central London than to Coatbridge or Kirkcaldy. In seeking some kind of planetary influence as a handmaiden of the latest irrational craze to shake up the West, Sturgeon seems serene about demolishing her movement. But her predecessor Alex Salmond refuses to be a sacrificial victim on her altar.
But nor does it seem likely that he will intervene politically until the Holyrood election is out of the way. Those whom Sturgeon has alienated and who (unlike him) remain the SNP, are likely to stay similarly tight-lipped. A demoralized party, lacking funds, slipping in the polls, and with a lacklustre set of candidates (both old stagers and leadership-backed newcomers firmly of the Woke tendency) exemplify its shopworn appearance.
It remains unclear to what extent the authorities will permit normal campaigning. But one thing is clear. The spring election campaign of the SNP will focus on Sturgeon rather than the increasingly opaque bundle of beliefs the party stands for. Yet it is common knowledge in some circles that her c.v. is being passed around in international bodies. Perhaps the radical zealots less keen on governing well than on experimenting with society and who have flooded into the party, will be content with a part-time First Minister thinking of being a global bureaucrat. But most voters, irrespective of their loyalties, yearn for a government that will govern rather than one that experiments, preaches and hoards power.
If understanding this is now beyond Sturgeon’s capability, then the final act of ‘the Nicola Show’ can’t surely be far off.
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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
