It’s 10 years to the day that those pesky Nats failed to secure independence north of the border – and not much has gone well for the SNP since. The once-formidable duo that was Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon broke down soon after, Salmond was accused of multiple cases of sexual misconduct (of which he was acquitted), and now the former first minister has an ongoing court case against the Scottish government about the handling of the allegations made about him. Meanwhile since Sturgeon stepped down in February 2023, she has been arrested, her husband – once CEO of the party – has been charged with embezzlement, the party has overseen an exodus of members (and MPs) and rather baffling questions remain about ‘missing’ independence money and, er, a luxury campervan. You couldn’t make it up…
But instead of keeping quiet and taking stock of the last 10 years of failed secession attempts and poor governance, the ‘Yes’ movement simply cannot resist fighting like Nats in a sack. Now the former FM-turned-Alba party leader has torn into his successor, Dear Leader Sturgeon, in a new interview with the Herald. Slamming his one-time deputy for failing to ‘renew’ the pro-indy argument properly, the man who once took the country to the brink of separation fumed:
There has been 10 wasted years as far as independence is concerned. It has unfortunately been wasted by the SNP government here, with the way people have been led up the hill and back down on numerous occasions… The Scottish parliament has to realise that people in Scotland think a lot less of their parliament now than they did 10 years ago.
We’re now starting outside of the European Union compared to 2014. That’s significant and you can’t ignore that, so there has been that general failure to update the case for independence… Many arguments were deployed against Scottish independence 10 years ago but one I never heard was ‘you can’t run things’ or ‘you’ve wasted money on ferries’ or ‘you’ve spent your time pondering self-identification’.
Burn…
And there’s more animosity where that came from. In an ITV Borders documentary, Salmond raged that he would not have stepped down as party leader if he’d known how the next decade would have worked out under Sturgeon. Lamenting to the Herald the SNP’s failure to better work the result of Brexit in its favour, the former FM concluded: ‘It’s not very good politics.’ And on Sturgeon’s immediate successor, who Salmond labels ‘Humza “the brief”’, the ex-first minister tweeted pithily last week: ‘In his quest for relevance, he is reduced to smears.’ Ouch. For her part, the SNP’s Dear Leader has made no secret of her disdain for her former mentor. The Queen of the Nats previously and pointedly hit out at ‘anyone who puts self interest ahead of the country’s best interests’, snubbing ‘those who treat politics like a game’. Well, it takes two to tango…
New polling on the constitutional question has revealed this week that, um, nothing much has changed since September 2014. Support for independence is broadly the same at 44 per cent for secession versus 56 per cent against – with the unionists holding on to their lead. No progress, no new ideas and, er, no love lost between successive SNP leaders. It’s a pretty poor indictment of Scottish politics, eh?
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