Salmond, Dignity and Death
Gillian Bowditch makes an powerful case that the return of Alex Salmond's body to Scotland should have been handled with more dignity and sensitivity.
I'm not convinced of the argument that the UK ministers should have stepped in since this almost always leads to sniping and complaints from the SNP - the UK government can never do right for doing wrong.
But the SNP, as party or a government should have found a way to cut through the bureaucracy and red tape, as Gillian fairly points out.
"And where was John Swinney in all of this? Once Salmond’s loyal lieutenant, the current first minister could have used his authority to ensure a swift repatriation. There may be no protocol for the event but there was a moral imperative. The funding could have been found."https://www.thetimes.com/article/93df997c-6d95-41d2-a630-399f1b197e29
Alex Salmond deserved more dignity in death
That a private citizen had to pay for his body’s repatriation and not the UK government or former SNP colleagues is a sad indictment of our fractured politics
By Gillian Bowditch - The Sunday Times
Alex Salmond was a gambler, a risk-taker, an opportunist and a showman. The most extraordinary Scottish politician of his generation, he nevertheless made several major miscalculations that catastrophically curtailed his influence and left him sidelined from the cause he spent his life promoting.
A clever, eloquent man who oozed self-confidence, he was also a bully, a manipulator, a bon vivant and a “sex pest”, according to his own lawyer secretly recorded discussing his legal case on a train.
At heart, he was a romantic, fond of quoting the Marquis of Montrose: “He either fears his fate too much, Or his deserts are small, That dares not put it to the touch, To gain or lose it all”.
That is the Salmond we all knew — the man who inspired undying loyalty in some and deep hostility in others. The grammar schoolboy who rose to the highest office in the land at a time when Scotland was more meritocracy than mediocrity. We may not have kent his faither, but we knew his type.
Alexander Elliot Anderson Salmond, to give him his Sunday name, was also the first SNP first minister of Scotland. A figure who will go down in history as the only leader to command a majority in the Scottish parliament, thus bucking a system designed for coalition in a country riven by factionalism.
After leaving office, he could have been a father figure for the nation but, personality aside, two decisions sealed and then sullied his reputation. The first was his surprise decision to stand down following the failure of his independence referendum campaign.
The wheels may have come off the most audacious bandwagon in modern British history but without Salmond, it would never have got going. He turned the SNP from a foam-flecked ragbag of anti-royalist activists into a party of government by ruthlessly excising the lunatic fringe and instilling a level of discipline that would impress a North Korean general.
A few ba-heids aside, Yes Scotland could be proud of the campaign it ran. It failed for reasons that were both strategic and tactical. The lack of a credible, detailed economic plan, which did not depend upon the goodwill of the unionist parties at Westminster or the loss of sovereignty at home, was, unsurprisingly, its ultimate undoing.
The decision to allow fervent “yes” supporters to shout down waverers was a tactical error. It meant debate was stifled and “no” voters quickly learnt not to voice their concerns too openly. It built false confidence among “yes” supporters, ensuring that the let-down, when it came, was all the more devastating.
Yes Scotland ran the better, more connected campaign, but the Scotland it portrayed was not a homeland many Scots recognised. It was a country of growing child poverty, food banks, the bedroom tax and hopelessness. Some believe it ended up becoming a blueprint for the SNP government.
It may have been a necessary sop to the ragbag of socialist and radical left-wing groups that helped power Yes Scotland, but it was patronising to Scots who did not identify with this sub-Irvine Welsh dystopia. The pitch to the middle classes was almost non-existent. Their aspirations for their country were, as is so often the case, simply dismissed as irrelevant.
But the consensus in the media at the time was that nobody expected Salmond to resign, he could have continued with no loss of face. Ever in thrall to the grand gesture, the gambler in him convinced himself that he had bet the house and lost.
The decision in 2017 to accept the Kremlin’s rouble and front a show, with Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh, for the propaganda channel Russia Today, was disastrous to his standing. Nicola Sturgeon, his protégée and successor, was disgusted and made her feelings known. It left him in the political gulag for the remainder of his career.
His death a week ago at the age of 69 while attending an obscure conference in North Macedonia with Ahmed-Sheikh, his Alba Party colleague, at his side was shocking in every sense. But the events of this week have shamed Scotland as a nation.
Ultimately, Sir Tom Hunter, the businessman and philanthropist, stepped in and chartered a private plane to repatriate Salmond’s body. Hunter, resolutely apolitical, said: “Alex Salmond devoted his life to Scotland and the Scottish people and, as such, he and importantly his family deserve the dignity and privacy of a private return to the home of his birth.”
As Ahmed-Sheikh draped a saltire over the coffin in northern Macedonia on Friday and his frail wife Moira greeted her husband’s body as it arrived back in Aberdeenshire a few hours later, serenaded by a piper’s lament, it was impossible not to be moved by the poignancy of the occasion.
Hunter is a good egg. He has often stepped in to do the work that government should do, giving his name to the Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship at the University of Strathclyde and funding the ScaleUpScotland programme, which he hosts at his home Blair Castle in Ayrshire.
It is incredible that neither the UK government nor the Scottish government took charge of bringing Salmond home. Kate Forbes, the deputy first minister, was sent to haggle with the UK Europe minister.
With the eyes of the world on us, and humanity and decency hanging in the balance, Sir Keir Starmer should have intervened and instructed the Foreign Office to arrange to bring the former first minister home to his family. Whatever he thought of Salmond the man, the dignity of the office required nothing less.
And where was John Swinney in all of this? Once Salmond’s loyal lieutenant, the current first minister could have used his authority to ensure a swift repatriation. There may be no protocol for the event but there was a moral imperative. The funding could have been found.
Decisive leadership by Swinney now could have ensured that, in death, the feuds and grudges held by both parties were set aside in the interests of common decency.
But this is what Scotland has become. Once synonymous with the humanity of Burns and the pragmatism of Adam Smith, Scotland’s epic constitutional battle — orchestrated by Salmond — has left us fractured, splintered, and siloed in echo chambers of our own making, literally counting the cost. It’s a legacy he could never have intended.
