For the past few days nothing of any worth has been
written about Alex Salmond. De mortuis nil nisi bonum is a maxim that applies even
to Nicola Sturgeon, but if it applies even to your greatest enemy it makes for very
dull reading.
But the problem with Alex Salmond is that there is
already too much mystery without adding yet more statements that we don’t mean.
Above all with dead public figures we owe them the truth.
All Salmond’s achievements happened prior to September
2014. In the last ten years of his life, he achieved nothing whatsoever except
see his reputation tarnished and like a contagion he found that that reputation
infected others around him including Nicola Sturgeon and eventually the whole
SNP.
The cause of the SNP’s success as well as its failure
is ultimately due to Alex Salmond.
Scottish nationalism has never got further than “Scotland
is a country not a county”. But the weakness of this argument is best
illustrated by the fact that no one would dream of saying that “France is a
country not a county”. If Scotland were a country in the same way that France
is there would be no need to keep saying it. No one in any of the world’s
countries asserts that theirs is a country rather than a county.
Salmond’s argument is obviously Scotland is a country
and so should become a country. But this is the same as saying Scotland has
four equal sides and so should become a square.
The word “country” in the case of Scotland clearly
means something different from the case of France. In the case of France it
means independent sovereign nation state, in the case of Scotland it means
something more like Scotland used to be a country and is still called one and
in a few instances like football acts like one. But you cannot use one
definition of country to justify becoming another. That would be like arguing a
rectangle ought to be a square even if it lacks four equal sides.
The Scottish nationalist argument is both powerful and
trivial, but it depends on a dishonesty about the nature of Scotland a sort of self-deception
that involves pretending that we are already an independent country in order to
justify our becoming one. But it is not the only lie upon which the foundations
of the SNP were built.
From the beginning of Salmond becoming First Minister
there began the cult of personality that developed still further under Nicola
Sturgeon. There were no dissenting voices when Salmond was leader. There were
no leaks. It gradually became clear that so long as he offered nationalistic
minded Scots the prospect of independence, he could do no wrong as they were
completely indifferent to any other policies.
He began the process of conflating Scotland with the
SNP. He expected employees of the state to act in his party’s interest. He began
to argue that disagreeing with the SNP especially on the issue of independence was
unpatriotic.
It was this that created the two Alex Salmonds the
public and the private. We have a record of what the former did, but we know
little about the true nature of the latter.
Something must have happened while Salmond lived in
Bute House, which led to him being charged with a variety of offences against
women who worked there. It may be that Salmond was lucky to avoid conviction or
else it may be that his behaviour was exaggerated by the witnesses against him.
But the important point is that nothing was said in 2013 or 2014 that might
damage the cause of independence or its leader.
Salmond must have known when he was First Minister
that no one would complain or leak anything to the newspapers. It must have
given him a sense of power that meant he could get away with anything. He could
lose his temper or say something dubious. He could try to pick someone up and
if he succeeded it was fine and if he failed it was fine.
It was his pathetic little argument that Scotland is a
country that gave him this power because it meant that anyone with any
objection against Salmond would reflect that this is the leader of the
independence movement and so would keep silent out of party loyalty and patriotism.
But Salmond did not realise that the monster that he
had created was not merely his monster, it would be Nicola Sturgeon’s monster
too and she could use it against Salmond not least because it became still more
powerful under her rule.
Salmond should have stayed leader of the SNP and First
Minister after 2014 unless somehow, he was forced to resign. The cult of personality
under Sturgeon got worse. The secrecy increased and in time the same sense that
she could get away with anything grew to consume her.
But this time what Sturgeon thought she could get away
with was something quite different from what Salmond thought he could get away with.
He could get away with straying hands a temper and one drink too many. She
could get away with rather more.
“Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” someone
once said and soon appeared some loyal knights willing to do just that.
What Salmond himself created almost destroyed him. But
then it went still further and destroyed both Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP.
It’s all very well appealing to people’s nationalism, but
you had better mean it too otherwise they will feel foolish and turn again and
rend you.
So long as the SNP remained a nationalistic movement dedicated
to independence as it certainly was under Salmond then people would ignore all
his faults, but under Nicola Sturgeon it became something quite different.
Scottish nationalists began to realise that Sturgeon
was using “Scotland is a country not a county” to get away with anything and to
gain everything and so they turned against her and her party as this was the
only antidote to their previous folly in believing her.
Scottish nationalism is like birch bark it is thin and
shallow, but it can when lit give a brief bright flame. Salmond did not realise
that he had to provide more substantial fuel to win the argument. After all no
one to my knowledge has ever claimed Scotland to be a county.
But during that brief bright flame the danger of nationalism
is that it’s leaders can indeed get away with anything and gain everything. Salmond
blew on the dry kindling and created the conflagration that almost enveloped
him and indeed the rest of us.
Only now is it dying down. Perhaps in time we will
find in the ashes of Scottish nationalism some truth and some justice. But the
form of the branches of the Scottish legal system need to rise from those same
ashes if we are to find either.
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