Tuesday 15 October 2024

Salmond created the SNP's failure

 

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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