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September 11, 2024 - 3:15pm
Scottish nationalists have never been renowned for their self-reflection. As the BBC’s new documentary Salmond and Sturgeon: A Troubled Union reveals, the allies-turned-adversaries of the programme’s title kept an iron grip on the SNP and tolerated little dissent. Such discipline was accepted and endured in part because of the raw power Alex Salmond and then Nicola Sturgeon brought to their leadership. Even appearing on screen today, they tower over all the bit-part players in what is essentially — as the title suggests — their story.
But the SNP’s unthinking discipline seems to have been less the doing of Salmond and Sturgeon and more the consequence of the utter devotion nationalist politicians and activists have to the cause of independence. Deviation from the party line became tantamount to gross betrayal and treachery. At the height of Salmond and Sturgeon’s pomp — when even the most serene Unionists feared for the future — anonymous briefings were rare, public criticism unheard of, and backbench rebels an extinct species.
It is therefore deeply refreshing to hear Scottish nationalists brutally and publicly go on the attack. Salmond was a bully who abused his position of power, according to one of his ministers and successors as SNP leader, Humza Yousaf (who knew?). Sturgeon was wrong to call for a second independence referendum in the aftermath of Brexit, according to her then-deputy and another future (as well as former) SNP leader, John Swinney.
Not that less prominent politicians or staff are spared, either. Salmond, for instance, has little truck with Sturgeon’s political advisors. Prominent nationalist Jim Sillars, meanwhile, brands Salmond an autocrat. Salmond was so disgusted with his portrayal that he branded the show “venomous and biased” and urged his supporters to stop watching halfway through.
Such a glut of internecine recrimination after an extended period of restraint may be amusing, but it is also revealing. It allows us to glimpse the nationalist mindset: that nothing, no matter how serious or concerning, trumps the cause of Scottish secession. Thus, Yousaf was more than willing to stand by as Salmond barracked and bullied his way through Scottish politics, purely because Salmond was the man best placed to lead Scotland to independence. For Scottish nationalists, it seems, the ends always justify the means.
But the backbiting underway in this documentary also reveals that even seasoned Nats now recognise what most people in Scotland have known for some time: that independence is finished as a mainstream political concern, at least for the time being. And so senior SNP figures are now finally willing to reflect on what went wrong and who was to blame. The cause that bound them together has faltered, and their discipline has shattered with it.
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SubscribeThat’s the funny thing about heroes – they are loved when they defend the village but make poor neighbours in quieter times.
The BBC would always institutionally struggle to say anything that suggests a “wite male” might have been more effective than Nicola Sturgeon – whom they sanctified uncritically for years.