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Back in the days of old Fleet Street, The White Hart was the pub most used by Daily Mirror staff. It was better known to its habitués as The Stab-in-the-Back. The sneaky practice of doing in your colleagues and/or friends is by no means confined to the world of politics although it has a particular saliency there. Politicians are the dark lords of a night of long knives, or “sgian dhus” as the late Charles Kennedy put it when he lost his parliamentary seat in the Highlands after 27 years.
In contrast to almost any other occupation, political preferment does not depend on qualifications or performance. A politician largely prospers by being in with the right clique at the right time. They may occasionally have to solicit votes from the public, but these come more because of the party banner they are selected to fight under than for any personal qualities. Most politicians’ careers wither because they fall out of favour with their own side.
Would it make any difference, for example, if the present front bench teams on either side in the Commons were replaced by other mediocrities drawn from the Labour and Conservative ranks?
Most – though not all – party leaders do at least have some qualities which explain how they got to the top. Both Alex Salmond and his one-time protégée Nicola Sturgeon have made their mark by leading the SNP and Scotland to the brink of independence. Their stature makes it all the more thrilling when they lose their senses of proportion and turn on each other, dirks in fists.
Theirs is no playground fight. As Alex Salmond has noted, the campaign to bring him to justice for alleged sexual harassment could have resulted in his imprisonment. Equally, if he can make his charge stick that the current First Minister has broken the ministerial code, or lied to Parliament, we are told Sturgeon would be “expected” to resign or “get her jotters” as one excited MSP put it on the radio.
A true stab in the back must be personal, not a matter of policy. The showdown at Holyrood certainly raises important issues. Attitudinal shifts prompted by #MeToo make sexual offences one of the most consequential crimes a man can be accused of. Against that, the way in which Team Sturgeon appears to have been able to commandeer the Scottish Government, Parliament, civil service, and criminal justice apparatus in pursuit of Salmond calls into question the separation of powers. Gleeful critics even charge that Scotland’s devolved democracy has become “a banana republic”.
But even Greyfriars Bobby in his doggy grave knows that Sturgeon v Salmond was never about justice for his alleged female victims. Salmond won his initial case, and half a million pounds in legal costs, when the courts agreed that the investigation into him was being conducted unfairly. It is generally accepted that documents which the Scottish Government is withholding confirm that prosecuting Salmond would not be successful. When he did face trial last year, he was found not guilty on all thirteen charges.
Team Sturgeon wanted to wipe out Salmond to keep him out of Scottish politics, even though it was obvious to bystanders that he was already a busted flush. He resigned when Yes lost the 2014 referendum and subsequently lost his seat as an MP. He worked hard to damage his own credibility by taking on the role of chat show host on RT, a Russian government propaganda channel. Except for the serious allegations he has made, Salmond is no threat to Sturgeon, his popularity ratings lag far behind hers. She has made the best of her bully pulpit at Scotland’s daily televised Covid briefings.
The funny thing about politicians on either end of a stab in the back is that they come back to political life as often as slasher movie villains. Take Michael Gove. He and Johnson betrayed their friend “Dave” Cameron over Brexit and prospered. Next, as depicted in Peter Brookes’ cartoon of the year, Gove knifed Johnson, pulling out as manager of Johnson’s leadership campaign for a doomed run of his own. Yet Gove is now one of Prime Minister Johnson’s closest aides in the Cabinet.
Oscar Wilde argued that, “a true friend stabs you in the front, not the back”. Full frontal assaults on policy rather than personality tend to do the job more effectively. Michael Heseltine and Geoffrey Howe brought down Margaret Thatcher over Europe. Ed Miliband smashed his brother David’s leadership ambitions in a brutally direct escalation of the Blair-Brown shadow play. Boris Johnson kicked his most senior opponents out to the Tory Party. Sir Keir Starmer seems to be following his lead in his treatment of Jeremy Corbyn and Rebecca Long-Bailey, even if the pretext he has chosen of anti-Semitism is an oblique approach to their ideological differences.
Sturgeon claims there is “not a shred of evidence” of a “conspiracy” against Salmond but has failed to produce all the evidence she promised would prove her claim. Meanwhile the SNP Government-appointed Crown Office has “redacted”, and thus excluded, the key evidence which Salmond wants to bring forward.
It stinks even more rottenly than last year when Salmond’s defending QC Gordon Jackson said, “it smells”. But will it grossly offend the nostrils of the Scottish electorate, as unionists hope, in the run up to the Scottish Parliament elections in May? Will the stench waft far outside the Edinburgh/Westminster bubble? Or do the great Scottish public have more important things to worry about, starting with the pandemic and lockdown?
Expectations that a minister in breach of the ministerial code will resign are obsolete – just look at the continuing career of Priti Patel. In the United States, Donald Trump repeatedly broke the accepted rules, yet he was elected, and twice found insufficiently guilty in impeachment trials. Sturgeon will find it even easier to escape since as First Minister she will be her own judge.
The public has low expectations of their politicians. Sturgeon’s team is playing rough but in the end charges she misled the Holyrood Parliament are down to he said/she said and a faulty memory. Painful as it may be for her, she has plenty of scapegoats to throw under a passing tram including her husband Peter Murrell, the SNP’s CEO and Liz Lloyd, Sturgeon’s Chief of Staff.
Even the worst looks survivable for the First Minister.
Kenneth Williams, as Julius Caesar, cried “Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me” but Scottish voters haven’t all got it in for Nicola Sturgeon or Salmond. Salmond and Sturgeon may disagree on tactics, but nobody doubts that they share the same goal of an Independent Scotland.
This week’s new Ipsos MORI poll suggests that some of the sparkle has been knocked off Sturgeon, but she and the independence cause are still comfortably ahead. The Yes/No balance mirrors the Brexit result of 52 per cent to 48 per cent and continues a year-long run in the lead for independence in spite of a 6-point swing to the Union since November. A third of voters say the feel less favourable towards the SNP but an overwhelming 52 per cent in the constituency section and 47 per cent in the regional vote still plan to back the party. Sturgeon still has an astonishing 64 per cent approval rating, net +32 per cent taking account of those who disapprove of her leadership.
The Scots continue to dislike Boris Johnson and his government intensely. Number 10 was in disarray as to how to fight back, even before the resignation this month of Oliver Lewis after barely two weeks as head of the Prime Minister’s unit for the Union.
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Iain Martin and the team make sense of the news, providing commentary and analysis on the stories that matter in politics, geopolitics, economics and culture.