Salmond and Sturgeon - a little fishy?
Nicola Sturgeon, whose party has been in power since 2007, is set for a further term as First Minister, following next year’s Holyrood elections. She enjoys huge personal popularity in Scotland, being credited with calm, authoritative and consistent leadership throughout the Covid crisis. A safe pair of hands. Unlike Boris, whose hands were so unsafe that he not only had a near-death experience of Covid, but also had a second brush, requiring him to self-isolate, and whose team has been biting each other in the arse, much to the nation’s amusement. The Scottish experience of the virus has not been hugely dissimilar to that of England, whilst second-wave death rates are actually 25 per cent higher than those in England. Don’t bother with the facts, though – appearance is everything. Sturgeon looks the business. Boris, alas, poor Boris, doesn’t. Boris is Brexit. Sturgeon is pro-European independence. Sturgeon’s approval rating in Scotland is +49; his is -57. He is a liability for Unionists; she is the independence movement’s greatest asset. It is a bit of a worry. Opinion polls are reporting a Scottish majority in favour of independence. Nonsense and misinformation form the SNP’s claim that independence will leave Scotland wealthier - how can it be wealthier once the money stops flowing up the Great North Road from despised England - but the real driver for breaking up the United Kingdom is emotion. The SNP don’t like the English, don’t like being beholden, want their own sovereignty. As Sturgeon told the SNP conference on Monday, only independence will allow Scots to be the ‘decision makers’ in their own lives.
But, you know, there’s something very fishy in the Scottish Nationalist Party that just might save the United Kingdom when the Holyrood committee investigating the Alex Salmond affair reports before the election next May. It has been established that Sturgeon’s account to parliament of what she knew, and when she knew it, was at best incomplete and misleading. It has been said publically that Sturgeon has defied the Salmond Inquiry.
Salmond alleges that he was stitched up by a government-led plot. The inquiry was set up in January 2019 after the Scottish government conceded that an internal investigation of sexual misconduct complaints against Salmond had been unlawful. The inquiry was put on hold when criminal charges were levelled against Salmond, being resumed when he was acquitted of those charges.
The committee comprises a panel of nine MSPs - four SNP, two Tories, one Labour, one Green and one Lib Dem - headed by deputy presiding officer Linda Fabiani, with a remit to consider and report on the actions of Sturgeon, Scottish government officials and special advisors when they dealt with two allegations of sexual misconduct against Salmond, submitted in 2018 but dating back to when he was in office. Salmond maintained his innocence, said the way the investigation had been handled was "unfair and unjust" - and took the government of which he had once been First Minister to court. The Scottish government conceded defeat prior to this Civil Case hearing coming to Court. The two sides agreed that there had been a failure by the government in following its own recently-devised process, and that the report resulting from the investigation "could not be allowed to stand" because the investigating officer had been in contact with both parties. Salmond’s legal bill was £512,250, which the Scottish Government paid.
Sturgeon had signed off the complaints handling process, drawn up in the wake of the #MeToo movement and sexual harassment scandals at both Holyrood and Westminster. She told MSPs she had spoken to Salmond several times about the complaints. Questions have been posed about what Sturgeon knew and when she knew it. She said that she first learned of the matter in a meeting with Salmond at her Glasgow home on 2 April 2018, and that it had been considered strictly an SNP party matter rather than one of government. During his criminal trial, however, Salmond’s former chief of staff Geoff Aberdein - who helped facilitate the meeting - said he had met Sturgeon at her Holyrood office several days earlier, on 29 March. Salmond clearly thought this a significant point - to the extent that he appeared to prompt his QC to ask Mr Aberdein about it - and the Inquiry will ask why they only heard about it via testimony in court. Salmond's defence QC, Gordon Jackson, told jurors that the case originated in the "political bubble" and "absolutely stinks" .
Salmond's defence team very directly linked the failure of the judicial review to the criminal charges, claiming this "scandal" was the motivation for a politically-driven conspiracy against him. In pre-trial hearings, his lawyers said that after the "spectacular" collapse of the government's case in the Court of Session, people working within the current SNP administration turned their attention "very directly" to the criminal investigation and "sought to influence that process to discredit the former first minister". Witnesses giving evidence to the Holyrood Inquiry include Sturgeon, Salmond, members of Sturgeon's inner circle of special advisors and her husband, SNP chief executive Peter Murrell. The Inquiry has required internal SNP records, Sturgeon's personal phone data and the evidence Salmond had prepared for the judicial review. The Convener, Fabiani, has expressed "frustration and disappointment" about the paucity of information handed over by the SNP government. The Inquiry is working chronologically through the drawing up of the complaints procedure, its application to Salmond’s case and then the costly debacle of the judicial review. The Inquiry has also expressed an interest in examining the "culture" of government, which could see witnesses called to testify about life at Bute House under both Sturgeon and Salmond.
Related matters include an independent panel to determine whether Sturgeon broke the Ministerial Code in her dealings with Salmond, an internal SNP government review of how its harassment procedure had been applied, Salmond’s request for a review of how the existence of the internal investigation ended up in the media, the implication being that it was a government leak, and SNP MSP Alex Neil demanding a "judge-led public inquiry" into whether or not the "organs of the state" had been involved in a "conspiracy to do in Alex Salmond".
Time to turn to mr ishmael's take on the Salmond/Sturgeon fishiness, some 8 years ago:
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| Chairman Mac Tse Salmond, still on his Eating4Scotland mission. |
SHABBY SALMOND IN THE BUNKER: A GRUDGE TOO FAR. 12/10/14
Well he's off, blustering, his load shot, although he says he will continue to represent the constituency which shit on his independence proposals, will they have him and can he stand them, traitors all, unpatriotic, Tory lackeys?
She, now, must face proper scrutiny; why no children, is it cruel nature or obsessive career? Either way, national womanhood will be suspicious. Mr Fishwife? He's the Chief Executive of the SNP. How cosy is that, the taxpayer paying her salary, the party member paying his; national womanhood will be suspicious. National womanhood raises children. For the nation. National womanhood doesn't, as a rule, work so closely with husband, so well-paid and pensioned; national womanhood often does menial, part-time jobs, just to put food on the table - Ms Fishwife dines at official banquets and claims for her food on expenses.
National manhood, Jock, will not, does not, take kindly to having a woman in charge; Alec's deputy is one thing, First Minister is quite another.
The best thing, though, for those opposed to separation from friends, relatives and struggling comrades, is the fact that, quite dictatorially, without consultation, Alec has unilaterally written off the debts of PollTax non-payers, many of whom only registered to vote in order to support independence and now find themselves being pursued, via the electoral roll, by cash-strapped councils which now know where they live.
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| Hand, Alex. You have been warned about this sort of thing. |
The Tortoise stove is lit again
And lamp-oil light across the night
Has caught the streaks of winter rain
In many a stained-glass window sheen
From Crimson Lake to Hookers Green.
And round the Manor House the yew
Will soon be stripped to deck the ledge,
The altar, font and arch and pew,
So that the villagers can say
'The church looks nice' on Christmas Day.
And oafish louts remember Mum,
And sleepless children's hearts are glad.
And Christmas-morning bells say 'Come!'
Even to shining ones who dwell
Safe in the Dorchester Hotel.
And is it true,
Seen in a stained-glass window's hue,
A Baby in an ox's stall ?
Become a Child on earth for me ?
And is it true ? For if it is,
Around those tissued fripperies,
And hideous tie so kindly meant,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare -
That God was man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine.
