Alex Salmond. Always My Hero.

Former Ambassador, Human Rights Activist

Before Alex Salmond, Scottish Independence was an impossible dream, a romantic aspiration, outside the realm of practical politics. After Alex Salmond, it is the dominant question in Scottish politics and by far the biggest threat to the UK state.

I would argue that, with every poll for a decade showing overwhelming support for Independence among the under 30s and support for the UK only in a majority in the over 55s, Alex made Independence inevitable.

In Scotland’s national story, he deserves a place alongside William Wallace and Robert Bruce. (In my last conversation with Alex, about two weeks ago, he told me that new historical research made it pretty certain that Robert the Bruce was born in England. I told him that I knew that – in the family castle near Chelmsford, Essex, to be precise – and I had in fact published it about twenty years ago.)

I am really sad he has left us. It leaves a hero-sized hole in my consciousness. Very shortly after he retired as First Minister and Nicola Sturgeon replaced him, I said in reply to a comment on this blog that while I was not sure about Nicola, I would walk through fire for Alex.

In the end I did have to walk through fire, being imprisoned for publishing too much of the truth about the plot to destroy Alex and his reputation. Afterwards Alex very simply said “You had my back. I will always have yours.” We never mentioned it again; we both understood.

I am not going to give a history of Alex’s political career. There are plenty of others to do that. But I do want to recall that Alex was the only leading British politician to oppose the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999 – on the day that Tony Blair called on NATO to intensify the bombing.

Alex vigorously opposed the invasion of Iraq and led campaigns to have Tony Blair impeached by parliament after being proven to have lied over Iraqi WMD, and also campaigned for charges against Bush and Blair at the International Criminal Court. He opposed the devastating bombing of Libya that plunged that country into a chaos from which it has never recovered.

His penultimate tweet referenced Starmer as following in Blair’s warmongering footsteps:

Starmer’s “we stand with Israel” declaration seems eerily reminiscent of a previous Labour Prime Minister’s open-ended commitment of some 20 years ago to stand with the USA on Iraq “come what may”. (1/3) https://t.co/s0oExsqwwc

— Alex Salmond (@AlexSalmond) October 2, 2024

Alex led an extremely tight and efficient SNP government of Scotland from 2007–2014 which had a long list of social accomplishments to be proud of and established Scotland as a more left-wing polity than England, with no tuition fees, free social care for the elderly, better childcare, free NHS prescriptions etc.

His weakness was that he was over-trustful and did not see the British security services coming. I know, because he told me, that Alex regretted allowing Angus Robertson to force through an amendment to SNP party policy in favour of Scotland remaining in NATO. Ironically, Alex did so because he thought it would pre-empt and buy off the US and UK security services, when of course they were actually behind it.

I do not pretend I had more than a nodding acquaintance with Alex before the plot to destroy him came to fruition. When he summoned me to meet him urgently on a cold, damp Edinburgh night I was delighted to go to see my hero. What he told me dropped my jaw.

But what stays with me most about that evening, in a bedroom of the George Hotel in Edinburgh, is that what he told me made it absolutely obvious that the plot against him was initiated in and directed from Nicola Sturgeon’s office. He was plainly in huge emotional pain over this.

He was also focused on Liz Lloyd, whom he believed to be an MI5 agent. He said that Lloyd had no connection to Scottish Independence and had initially been placed inside the SNP as an intern to an MP (or MSP, I forget) by a British Government graduate training scheme.

If you want to revisit today the conspiracy against Alex Salmond, I do recommend you read my affidavits in my own contempt of court hearing (as redacted for publication by the Crown Office).

The state deemed these affidavits so dangerous that Scotland’s corrupt judiciary quite literally ruled that they do not exist at all. They are “so evidently untrue as not to require cross-examination”. They were not accepted as evidence in my own case for which they were my evidence, which is truly remarkable. I was jailed with my evidence not even considered, or tested, as “self-evidently untrue”.

I swear to you and to the entire world, on my life and on every thing that I love or that is holy, that every single word is true. There has never been any evidence that anything in them is untrue. Everything we have learnt about the SNP in the last three years supports the truth of my story. Nothing has contradicted it.

In that last conversation with me, Alex was excited about recent council by-election results for his new party, Alba. It has been obtaining about six per cent, which would be enough to get representation in the Scottish parliament with its proportional system. More importantly, most SNP voters were now giving second preferences to Alba rather than the Greens, which he felt was an important shift.

Alex was very happy that Alba was more openly radical than the SNP. Anti-NATO and anti-monarchy, it represents a more radical route to Scottish Independence.

For a former First Minister to be building up a tiny party from scratch and getting 6% of the vote may be portrayed by some as humiliating. But Alex was really excited and upbeat about it; he relished the challenge and was thinking long term. There were days in his young life when 6% would have been a decent result for the SNP. He was simply bubbling with enthusiasm.

I should also recall the occasion when he hosted Peter Oborne, David Davis and me to dinner at a Mayfair restaurant and we got through three bottles of champagne before we even started to order. Alex was enormously good company and really enjoyed the finer things in life.

Heaven just got more fun. At least Alex will never have to worry about seeing his perjured accusers there.

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