Hubris and the final years of the late Alex Salmond
Why the former FM could not bear to let go of the illusion of power, influence and the sound of his own voice
Farewell Alex Salmond, formerly first minister of Scotland, latterly presenter of Scotland Speaks, a news programme broadcast exclusively to 5.29k subscribers on YouTube.
Salmond’s premature death, aged just 69, has prompted outpourings of affection and admiration for our former leader. Many of these have been a masterclass in the art of airbrushing.
As if by magic, the YouTube years melted away. His Russia Today show, abandoned in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine, barely mentioned. The Alba Party, the vanity vehicle for his latter day electoral ambitions, a footnote.
Describing him as “a complex character” covered all of the above. Salmond was not the only one who believed his own hype.
And that’s without factoring in his 2020 trial. Back then he was found not guilty on 12 grisly charges of sexual misconduct, and not proven on one charge of sexual assault with intent to rape. The Salmond legacy team is now reframing this as evidence of a conspiracy against a great man.
It is hard to imagine a world in which a female politician who had been charged with 14 offences against 10 women, including two counts of attempted rape, nine of sexual assault, two of indecent assault, and one of breach of the peace would be repatriated on a private jet by a billionaire.
The women who made the allegations against Salmond were an SNP politician, a party worker, and several current and former Scottish Government civil servants. They were treated appallingly and callously while Salmond was alive and, now that he’s dead, there are further slurs and efforts to undermine and underplay their evidence.
Others have debunked this unedifying scenario with skill and precision. My takeaway is that Salmond admitted, under oath in court, to appalling behaviour which has been forgotten under the catch-all of “acquitted”.
Dave Penman, general secretary of management union the FDA, has also been great on this subject, appearing as the voice of reason on several podcasts and news broadcasts.
He dared to make this point - gently, but accurately - in the Times.
“By his own admission, the former first minister could be inappropriate. He admitted that one of the complainers had a legitimate grievance over what he called the ‘sleepy cuddle’ incident, and that he had tugged the hair of one woman and stroked the face of another, to wake her up. He said he wished he had been more careful with people’s personal space, though it’s unclear whether by people, he means women.”
Take what he got for it.
But as well as ignoring the former FM’s self-confessed poor personal judgement, there has been much glossing over of his other terrible decisions.
Not much mention of Alba in the hagiographies. That would be the party he launched in the run-up to the 2021 Scottish Parliament elections, in a foot-stamping fit of pique when he didn’t agree with the direction the SNP was taking.
The one that has so far failed to win a single election or, in fact, keep its deposit. All its MPs, MSPs and councillors were elected as SNP candidates and defected.
Tommy Sheridan, having failed to sustain his own vanity political movements, joined Salmond’s.
Schadenfreude fans can enjoy the full stats pack on Wikipedia but it’s enough to know that, in the 2024 general election, Alba stood in 19 constituencies and received a total of 11,784 votes. You don’t need Advanced Higher maths to know that 11,784 divided by 19 is no very much.
Clearly Alba alone could not give Salmond the platform that he desperately needed. When the invasion of Ukraine made appearing on a pro-Putin channel too craven even for him, Salmond went down the DIY route.
This is where Scotland Speaks came in. It’s quite something. I discovered it by chance, when researching the planned demolition of three tower blocks in Glasgow’s Wyndford housing estate.
Deadline be damned, I made tea and watched the extraordinary spectacle of the former First Minister of Scotland sitting beneath a tree in a Maryhill scheme, interviewing three folk about their housing problems.
The show ident, hot off the photocopier and attached with drawing pins, is a particularly plangent detail.
No side to the residents he spoke to, they have done a grand job of trying to preserve these perfectly viable blocks and deserve full credit for their efforts in the face of their landlords’ plans. Nor to citizen journalists who use YouTube and other platforms to great effect. Go all of them.
What left me winded was Salmond, commander of the floor at Westminster and Holyrood, negotiator with Prime Ministers, mover (albeit in a minor way) on the world stage, holding forth from a borrowed kitchen chair, .
His ego was such that he would do this rather than fade gracefully into the background.
This is partly an SNP problem. Other parties send their former leaders to the House of Lord. This gives them a structured political role while keeping them within the party’s whipping structure. The SNP does not do this, for perfectly good political reasons. But it leaves big beasts like Salmond roaming around outwith the zoo.
It’s not that he had no other options. When Salmond resigned as First Minister after losing the referendum - another fact that is flatteringly reframed in many of the obituaries - he was offered high powered, prestigious, generously remunerated jobs in the energy sector (he was an oil economist before he was a politician) and elsewhere.
Would these have been a great use of his education, skills and contacts? Undoubtedly. Would he still have been booked for Newsnight and Question Time? Probably not. Which is why he turned them all down.
Instead he chose a life of YouTube, lost deposits and speeches at the Gjorge Ivanov School for Young Leaders in Ohrid, North Macedonia. That’s a long way to go to be a big cheese in front of an audience who would probably struggle to find Scotland on a map.
It’s obvious what Salmond got out of saying yes to these appearances. Let’s hope the young leaders of Ohrid got something out of it too.
Have I been to the theatre recently? Thanks for asking, yes I have. It’s only taken me 13 years but I have finally seen The Book of Mormon. Despite the questionable use of a frog, I had a most jolly time. The Baddies, an adaptation of Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffer’s children’s book, was not so successful.
Thank you Anna, I'm so glad someone wrote this
Why is it not possible to 'unlike' the article and the comments? I find them petty and very offensive to the memory and to the family of someone who has died so recently.
Why were there neverxsny stories if alleged sexusl abuse during the time Alex Salmond was in Westminster?
It seems too much of a coincidence that these who spoke against him came only from a small group of politicians, possible candidates and civil servants in Holyrood!
And that despite much intense and extensive trawling by Police Scotland to find as many as they could in an attempt to smear the repuration of someone they feared.