Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland's first minister, and Alex Salmond, her predecessor in the job, during a campaign stop in Inverurie, Scotland, in 2015. Photo / Getty Images
A former first minister, Alex Salmond, was acquitted of charges of sexual harassment. Now he is accusing his successor and one-time protégée, Nicola Sturgeon, of misleading lawmakers.
For a decade, they were the indivisible duo who drove the quest for Scotland's independence, steering their party — and themselves — to power along the way.
But in politics few friendships are forever, and that of Scotland's first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, and her predecessor and mentor, Alex Salmond, has not aged well — to the point that its breakdown is now threatening the independence movement just when its prospects seemed brightest.
The two giants of the Scottish National Party are locked in a bitter feud over the handling of accusations against Salmond that culminated in 2020, when he was tried on more than a dozen charges of sexual assault and found not guilty on all counts.
So vicious is the rift that some believe the fate of Scotland's 314-year union with England could rest on a dispute about what Sturgeon knew when about the accusations, and whether she has told the truth.
"For the SNP it is very serious," said James Mitchell, professor of public policy at Edinburgh University, who pointed to Scottish Parliament elections in May and to Sturgeon's hopes for gains in them to justify demands for a second Scottish independence referendum.
"This has happened at the point where the SNP is set to have good election results and when support for independence is at its highest," Mitchell said. "In those circumstances you would expect the party would unite, whereas in fact it has not been so disunited in decades."
The case is so explosive because Salmond said Sturgeon misled Scottish lawmakers about her role and has not given a truthful account of how she handled the accusations against him. If true, that would lead to calls for her resignation.
Sturgeon denies the claims and said that those close to her former friend and mentor are peddling conspiracy theories while making contradictory claims against her.
But like all the worst arguments, this one is personal.
Salmond feels his reputation was destroyed by the accusations against him, which dated back to his time as first minister before 2014 and included one charge of attempted rape.
Some of his supporters think Sturgeon simply threw him to the wolves during a botched internal investigation of him in 2018 (well before the police were involved), in her zeal to show zero tolerance of sexual harassment.
Others theorise she actively wanted him out of the way to prevent his return to politics as a potential rival.
Ruth Davidson, leader of the Scottish Conservatives, has talked of a "cover-up at the heart of government"; and the dispute has embroiled Peter Murrell, chief executive of the SNP, who also happens to be married to Sturgeon.
With two separate inquiries underway — amid claims that evidence is being suppressed and a legal battle over press freedom — the bewildering complexity and endless twists and turns of the case have made no significant impact on public opinion so far, according to John Curtice, a polling expert and professor of politics at the University of Strathclyde.
In terms of the claims of a conspiracy, "the tail has not been pinned on the donkey," he said.
However, he also noted that support for independence has stagnated in recent weeks. "It has long been obvious that the most serious risk to the SNP being successful in the May elections is the SNP itself," Curtice said.
That is partly because the infighting has divided the SNP into warring camps, exposing other divisions within a party once renowned for ironclad unity — for example, over how patient to be in the quest for a second independence referendum.
In a reshuffle earlier this month, Joanna Cherry, a high-profile lawmaker in the British Parliament, was stripped of her role as spokesperson on home affairs and justice, in what many saw as a factional purge of those critical of Sturgeon.
Sturgeon's critics also include Jim Sillars, a veteran of the independence movement who once clashed with Salmond but now sees his successor as the problem.
"The mentality at the highest reaches of the SNP is rather like the divine right of kings: They think that no one can touch them," Sillars said. "This lot have been in power for 14 years. They have enjoyed the elixir of power; they don't want to give it up. They thought Salmond might be a threat and therefore decided to do him in."
Things had been going well for Sturgeon after a succession of opinion polls showed a majority of Scots favoring independence. Her approval ratings in Scotland far exceed those of Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain, whose upper-class English mannerisms tend to grate with Scots.
Johnson's big political project, Brexit, is unpopular among Scots, and in the 2016 referendum on European Union membership, more than 60 per cent of the vote in Scotland was to remain.
And though the coronavirus crisis has been as grave in Scotland as in England, Sturgeon's serious manner and polished presentation have won her plaudits in contrast with Johnson's bumbling persona, particularly in the early stages of the pandemic.
Many of Sturgeon's skills were learned from Salmond — a brash, formidable, sometimes acerbic debater who was leader of the SNP twice: from 1990 to 2000 and from 2004 to 2014.
After constitutional changes reestablished a Scottish Parliament in 1999, Salmond oversaw the transformation of the SNP from a powerless gaggle of lawmakers at Westminster to the dominant political force in Edinburgh.
Scottish nationalism was rebranded as progressive and inclusive, and the party tilted somewhat to the left, favoring European integration, which it once opposed, and welcoming immigrants from the bloc.
Salmond first spotted Sturgeon's talent when she was a student; as she once put it, "he believed in me long before I believed in myself."
In 2004 Salmond dissuaded her from fighting a leadership battle he was convinced she would lose, and instead returned to the top job with Sturgeon as his deputy.
Sturgeon's next opportunity arrived in 2014, after Scots rejected independence in a referendum, causing Salmond to quit as first minister and SNP leader. By then, Sturgeon had established herself as his inevitable successor.
But tensions between the new leader and her predecessor grew after he won reelection to the British Parliament in 2015.
Nor did they subside when Salmond lost that seat again in the 2017 general election and found new ways to command attention, staging a one-man show at the Edinburgh Fringe festival and hosting a TV chat show on RT, the network formerly known as Russia Today.
"He couldn't let go, and she wouldn't find him a role," Mitchell said. "She is a control freak in the way that she conducts the party, in the same way that he was. They are too similar; there was always going to be a problem."
Quite how big that problem will prove to be remains to be seen. Curtice thinks it likely that Sturgeon will ride out the storm and resist any calls for resignation. Given her strong handling of the coronavirus pandemic, she could probably survive even if she were deemed to have broken some ministerial rules.
But Mitchell thinks Sturgeon could be severely damaged by the feud with Salmond, which is starting to change public perceptions.
"Things are beginning to shift in Scotland," Mitchell said, referring to growing scrutiny of Sturgeon's account of events. He said Salmond "was the villain of the piece, but now people are asking questions."
As for Salmond, he may be finished politically, but he is on a mission to restore his reputation, and that makes him a dangerous foe, Mitchell said.
"The problem for her," Mitchell said, "is that he has nothing to lose."
Written by: Stephen Castle
© 2021 THE NEW YORK TIMES
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