Friends and foes' narrative-shaping fails both sides of Alex Salmond

Alex Salmond was a brilliant politician who changed the political landscape forever. He could be excellent company and was capable of great acts of generosity. He could also be a bully and had a reputation for acting inappropriately around female members of staff.

Once upon a time, we could hold two competing truths in our heads. We could celebrate a leader’s strengths without diluting his weaknesses. But the world has become a more binary place. These days, we require them to be heroes or villains. Was Winston Churchill a great statesman or a war criminal? Don’t try to contextualise. Just pick your side, and be aware: your answer is not so much a statement of where you stand on Churchill, but where you stand in the all-consuming culture war.

Salmond has been particularly susceptible to polarised assessment because he represented something greater than his own achievements. Did he know, when he first uttered the words “the dream shall never die” that, for a certain demographic of older, steadfast Yes voters, he would become synonymous with it?

Thus his sudden passing in North Macedonia eight days ago inflicted a pain that went beyond the loss of one individual to the loss of the better future he embodied.

And who was better placed to bear the burden of that pain than the women those Yes voters already blamed for their idol’s diminished stature: the nine complainers at the centre of the sexual offences trial which saw him acquitted of all charges?

Women’s rights

Recasting himself and Alba as champions of women’s rights, Salmond had also become a figurehead for the gender-critical movement: a righteous warrior protecting the country from Nicola Sturgeon’s “progressive” approach to trans rights.

The anger some female GC campaigners harboured towards Sturgeon over self-ID allowed them to gloss over the obvious contradiction in a man described by his own advocate as a “sex pest” leading the feminist charge, and to brush off the significance of inappropriate behaviour in the workplace.

Meanwhile, and not unrelated, Salmond’s self-image as a “big beast” who liked to debate affairs of state over a three-bottle lunch attracted other such “big beasts” from across the constitutional divide – men who see themselves as the last line of defence against the onslaught of “wokeness”.

If the only narrative-shaping that had gone on after Salmond’s death had been a playing up of his good qualities, and a playing down of the bad, I wouldn’t be writing this column.

I would have preferred to save the tougher scrutiny of the former First Minister’s legacy until after he had been buried. But when the hagiography of a public figure is partially based on the vicious slurring of others, then –funeral or no funeral –it needs to be addressed.

In the years I have been writing about the aftermath of Salmond’s trial, and the insistence otherwise, I have never seen anyone challenge the outcome. The jury came to its verdict on the evidence placed in front of it, and there is no reason to think they erred.

Nor have journalists shrunk from reporting on the Scottish Government’s mishandling of the original sexual harassment complaints against Salmond, which a judicial review, brought by him, found to have been “tainted by apparent bias”.

At the same time, you cannot predicate your defence against charges of sexual assault on the idea that your behaviour is “inappropriate but not criminal”, and then – when you are acquitted – expect to be treated as if you are beyond reproach.

You cannot apologise for an “unacceptable” boozy sexual encounter with a subordinate, and then act as if the charges you faced were conjured up out of nowhere by a cohort of conspirators whose only motivation was to bring you down.

‘No bitterness’?

LAST week, Salmond’s lawyers suggested he showed “no bitterness or anger towards his accusers or to the many others who jumped on the bandwagon to condemn him”.

It is true he never publicly endorsed the widespread attacks against the nine complainers his supporters (and those who defended them) made in his name. Or denigrated them as “liars” and “alphabetties”.

But nor did he publicly dissociate himself from those slurs, or ask those supporters to desist. Instead of reflecting on his own behaviour, he went on alluding to plots, cabals and dark forces, and, in doing so, tilled the ground in which they flourished. In the wake of his death, the personal attacks on those women, and those who have defended them, have been amplified.

So, too, has the disinformation around the case: for example, the myth they were all well-known public figures, when four of them were civil servants, and the notion that the Scottish Government revised its sexual harassment policy purely to trap him when, at the height of #MeToo, every organisation in the country was doing the same.

Some of the broader smearing has moved from the nether regions of social media to the mainstream, with respected commentators resorting to tinfoil hat talk and failing to acknowledge that, in botching the initial inquiry, the Scottish government failed both Salmond and the women whose allegations they were investigating.

Most worryingly, Salmond’s death has seen a ramping up of threats to name the complainers whose identities remain protected. Some of this is confined to the Twitter wild west, where anonymous accounts have been pushing the boundaries since March 2020.

But what of the pressure to extend the parliamentary privilege of Westminster to Holyrood?

Parliamentary privilege gives MPs protection from legal liability for their comments, which can be useful if they are trying to uncover miscarriages of justice. But it also carries the risk that sexual offence complainers – who, in England and Wales, are granted automatic lifelong anonymity – might find themselves identified with impunity in the Chamber.

There are valid arguments for the extension of parliamentary privilege to Holyrood, not least the strengthening of MSPs’ ability to whistleblow, and a parity of worth with the UK Parliament.

But last week, Salmond’s friend and former Tory Brexit secretary David Davis, called for it to be included in a package of reforms he would like to see introduced in memory of Salmond.

Fergus Ewing has already suggested it would allow MSPs to expose details of the former First Minister’s “hounding”. Given the obsession, in some quarters, to force their names into the public domain, you can see why they fear they could be collateral damage.

The threat of public outing looms over their heads and the heads of other women who might one day find themselves in a similar position.

This is what makes the relentless invective so invidious. It is not just about the nine Salmond accusers. It’s about every woman forced to cower in a corner while his most misogynistic supporters spew out their daily bile.

It’s about every woman who sees the not guilty verdicts being falsely read as proof of perjury, and decides to put up with sexual abuse rather than risk being trashed as a liar.

Sturgeon’s shock

IT’S also about the wider culture war which pits women against each other (to suit whose agenda?) and strips everyone and everything of its complexity. You could see that in the backlash to Sturgeon’s expression of shock and sorrow at Salmond’s death.

“What a hypocrite,” her critics shrieked. As if – after years of working towards the same goal – she could feel anything other than conflicted. As if the collapse of a close friendship into acrimony – an acrimony that can now never be resolved – wouldn’t make the pain of that erstwhile friend’s passing sharper.

My only contact with Salmond was phoning him occasionally to ask for a quote. By the time I was properly covering politics his star had faded. But I, too, was saddened to hear of his death and to remember him at his glittering peak.

I was moved, too, when I saw his coffin draped in the saltire, and carried up the steps of the aircraft with great dignity by the Macedonian soldiers. It made me think how, instead of talking up his talents, so many of his friends have spent the last few days reprising the least edifying aspects of his life.

In drawing attention to his refusal to own his past behaviour, they are the ones now dragging his reputation through the mire.