Henry Hill

Salmond’s case will have consequences – he just can’t admit it

The former first minister is challenging the very notion of Scottish devolution

(Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

As Alex Salmond finally testified before the Scottish parliament on Friday, it was clear that he was trying to walk quite a fine tightrope.

On the one hand, the former first minister is alleging a conspiracy so vast that, if true, it would deeply discredit the central institutions of the devolved Scottish state. His claims put the reputations of the Scottish government, the Scottish parliament, and the Crown Office, not to mention the civil service and even the police, on the line.

Yet he shrank from the implications of this. Right from the start, he sought to erect a firewall from the leadership of these institutions and the institutions themselves: ‘The Scottish civil service hasn’t failed; its leadership has failed. The Crown Office hasn’t failed; its leadership has failed.’

Cosy consensus has been a feature of devolution in both Edinburgh and Cardiff

It’s understandable that Salmond is wary of seeming to side with those who claim that Scotland risks becoming, in his words, a ‘failed state’. His remaining supporters would likely take a dim view of his seeming to ‘talk Scotland down’.

Some on the other side of the constitutional question have not been so reluctant. The Spectator’s editor Fraser Nelson has written about how the scandal has shaken his original belief in the creation of the Scottish parliament. George Galloway has gone even further and outright called for its abolition.

Whatever his faults, Galloway is an able political operator and he’s currently trying to corner the hard-line Unionist vote. His public conversion to abolition might therefore be significant. Not because it presages a sudden upsurge of devolution sceptic sentiment among the general electorate, but because it might become a bigger, and problematic, factor in Unionist politics.

This has already happened in Wales where abolition currently outpolls independence.

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