Alex, the Enigma.

Alex Salmond is facing 14 charges of sexual misconduct. Has he been set up and if so by whom?

Alex is an incredibly able politician, probably the most able in the whole of the UK political system, as such he poses a threat to those who would see his main purpose in life realised. That of independence for Scotland.

He recently won a case of judicial review against the Scottish government. In fact, he won the case because the Scottish government withdrew their defence when Salmond’s team insisted on sight of correspondence probably as a specification of documents, which would have proven who knew what, regarding how, and in what manner Salmond came to be under investigation regarding two alleged complaints of sexual harassment.

Much has been said regarding how this all came about and the fact that the person who was responsible for installing the system that was used in this case was the permanent secretary to the first minister of Scotland and that the civil service in Scotland is one and the same civil service that supports both the Scottish government and the Westminster government, leading to much speculation that it was the British government through the Civil service who were responsible for the witch hunt against Alex Salmond.

I do not think that is the case, I think the person responsible is Nicola Sturgeon and here is my rational.

Leslie Evens who is the permanent secretary to the First minister was not chosen for the position by the commissioner of the British civil service, she was chosen by Nicola Sturgeon, from a short leit arranged by the commissioner of the Civil service. It is the duty of the permanent Secretary to work for and on behalf of the Scottish Government like all other Civil Servants in Scotland.  Her immediate boss is Nicola Sturgeon. Leslie evens was tasked, by Nicola Sturgeon to implement a system which would bring to account any politician’s past or present who had been guilty of sexual harassment, Nicola Sturgeon was (it would appear) aware that there had been suspicion that Alex Salmond had been accused of some form of harassment as far back as 2013 in two cases.

It would appear from the judge’s determination in the Judicial review that this new system could have been designed around the Salmond case and in fact the implementation of it was probably used in such a manner that the investigating officer Judith MacKinnon actually encouraged the complaints to be pursued. The system was implemented in an unlawful manner for various reasons one of which was that the investigating officer had been involved and had prior knowledge of the case and had approached the possible complainers, quite possibly encouraging them to pursue the complaints, before she was made the investigating officer, that in itself contravening civil service rules. It is inconceivable that Leslie Evens and in all probability Nicola Sturgeon did not know about this. This new system was Nicola Sturgeons baby signed off by her, this was the first time it had been used why would she not have been kept up to date with what was going on?

When the court made its determination and it was obvious that illegal activities had been employed, then why was Leslie Evens not sacked? was it because Nicola Sturgeon was closely involved? I suspect that was the case. Both Nicola Sturgeon and Leslie Evens made the case that all other issues other than the procedural issue regarding Judith MacKinnon had been discounted by the court but in fact that was not the case as none of the other issues had been adjudicated on because of the Scottish governments abject surrender in the case. It should also be noted that it was the Scottish Government who reported the matter to the police and also that there was an email emanating from the office of Peter Mural, sent out to past and present employees of the Scottish government asking for any experiences of sexual harassment, which could have been taken as a fishing expedition for accusations against Salmond.  

So, has there been bad blood between Salmond and sturgeon for some time? yes of course there has and that was never more obvious than it was at the time it was announced that Alex Salmond was to host a TV show on RT and Nicola Sturgeon openly criticised him for doing so. There was no need for her to say anything, but the thing was, that it gave Alex Salmond a platform to carry forward the independence cause and that was something, that for some reason went against Nicola Sturgeons agenda.

Ok, so let’s look at Nicolas agenda and compare it with what one would have reasonably expected from Alex and let’s go right back to the last referendum in 2014. We lost that referendum, much against the expectation of most of the independence movement and Salmond resigned, succeeded by Sturgeon. Now there were various accusations surrounding the operation of the voting procedure, especially the postal voting and the fact that there had been no exit polls. Now a lot of the resentment could have been sour grapes but there was a lot of evidence that could have been legitimate but there was never an investigation into any voting irregularities, if for nothing else to lay a ghost to rest. Any reasonable person would have expected the SNP to immediately conduct an enquiry into what went wrong with the intention to correct mistakes and continue with a lesser campaign of education and explanation, concentrating on the issues we lost the referendum on. To this day four and a half years later we have not had a single item of effective preparation for a future referendum. That is unless you count the Economic commission chaired by Andrew Wilson which came to the conclusion that a future referendum should be more or less fought on the same monetary union principal that lost us the last referendum. Absolutely crazy and in any case has been kicked into the long grass by giving it to Keith Brown (deputy leader of the party) who is by coincidence a strong believer in preparation for a future referendum. So that killed two birds with the one stone.

Now throughout Sturgeons reign she has marched the troops up to the top of the hill and down again that often that it would have made the grand old Duke of York dizzy, without actual committing to any sort of either preparation or a referendum. She has lost countless opportunities such as the day after the vote to come out of the EU when even the Daily Record came out and supported another referendum and the polls went up to 59% in favour of in dependence.

At every election since the 2015 GE Sturgeon has presided over significant seat losses and in the last snap General Election a loss of over half a million votes. She has been seen to have sided too comfortably with the British establishment, as seen during the Scripal poisoning incident where she immediately parroted the British government stance of Russia being guilty, without a shred of evidence being produced., Even Jeremy Corbyn was more careful by saying that he would reserve judgement until evidence was forthcoming. An inclination to extreme right-wing adherence which was again obvious with the SNP support of the British government’s position, backing up American involvement in regime change in Venezuela the other day. All this together with Sturgeon ‘s propensity to save the Union as she has blatantly and consistently attempted with her Brexit policy. A rather annoying trait she has, is to dress in Margret Thatcher look alike jackets, perhaps an indication of her role model.  

Nicola Sturgeon has become a liability to the independence movement and now she is attempting to remove the one man who could actually take the fight forward.

The original accusations against Salmond were leaked to the press (daily Record) on the 24^th august. The same day as I received a message from a friend who is deeply involved in the inner workings of Holyrood, including contacts with the press. The message said,” Sturgeon has stabbed Salmond in the back”. It came at that time, as no surprise to me and having subsequently thought at length about it, I am still of the same opinion.

Now, as far as the accusations against Salmond are concerned. It will be interesting just how these accusations are presented in court and more particularly how they are answered. Now, make no mistake, allegations of sexual harassment and particularly of attempted rape are very serious and should, if proven be dealt with in the appropriate manner, but I have my suspicions that these allegations could have been the result of a similar fishing exercise that it would seem was the purpose of the initial contact between the investigating officer and the two original complainants. I also am of the opinion that going by Salmond’s statement that he has done “nothing illegal” that there has been some sort of personal contact but perhaps consensual. Only the outcome of the case when brought to court will determine guilt or innocence. It is getting to the stage that nothing short of written consent will be required for personal contact between the opposite sexes to be initiated. With all the recent celebrity accusations going back many years, I have yet to see any definitive procedure for initiating intimate contact.

Nicola Sturgeon is a strong feminist and made a point of showing up at the lead of a gay rights march recently. To my knowledge she has never been near any of the many independence marches that have taken place over the last four and a half years, since she became leader of the party of independence. Perhaps her priorities lie elsewhere, and she is of course perfectly entitled to express her personal preferences in what ever manner she sees fit and chooses, but as the leader of the SNP she has a job to do and I and an increasing number of others are becoming disillusioned with her performance.

There is one thing I am convinced of and that is that Nicola Sturgeon is not fit to lead the SNP and I have also the feeling that she has been involved in character assassination of the one person who could have taken us forward to a victory at another referendum. She has painted the SNP in to a corner, and perhaps she will now be forced to call a referendum, if she does and despite the wilful lack of preparation, I think we will win, if we do, it will not be because, of Nicola Sturgeon, it will be despite, her.