 | ' His candidacy was not about an unprickable ego, backroom power plays, or
frustrating someone he could not control. Instead, it was about nobly answering a
call from the party members to fight for democracy, fight for a worthwhile
parliament, fight for Scotland's very soul.' Tom Gordon and Andrew Collier in the Herald, 16 th July 2004. |  |
THE deal that clinched the bloodless coup was done in a restaurant where the steaks are often served rare. The Champany Inn in Linlithgow will now be etched in the annals of SNP history as the place where Alex Salmond persuaded Nicola Sturgeon to step aside and let the king return from across the water.
It will become the Nationalists' Granita, a Scottish echo of the Islington restaurant
where Tony Blair and Gordon Brown settled Labour's leadership.
To quote the restaurant critic of The Herald magazine, Champany's, in his native
town and run by Mr Salmond's friends, Clive and Anne Davidson, is home to "one
of the most politically incorrect menus on planet Scotland: meat, meat, and more
meat". It is high quality fare, but the underlying imagery of a carve-up is
inescapable.
The meeting took place last Saturday, a day John Swinney will not easily forget.
The outgoing leader of the SNP had arrived early at his party's drab headquarters in
Edinburgh for a regular meeting of the national executive committee.
It would be his last NEC in the chair, and with a long agenda before the summer
recess, and a holiday planned for the following week, he did not want to leave any
loose ends.
The first item that morning was what to do about Campbell Martin, the rebel MSP
for the West of Scotland, who had repeatedly criticised Mr Swinney's leadership.
After the damage Mr Martin had inflicted on the party during the European
elections, Mr Swinney could have been forgiven for smiling at the outcome.
The rebel was booted out of the party for good, the first time a sitting
parliamentarian had been expelled in modern times. It was a dramatic moment, but it would prove only a prelude to later events.
News of the expulsion was relayed to a handful of reporters loitering in the drizzly
car park and, after a few minutes, the cameras were heaved away, the notebooks
holstered: another story over. No-one was left by the time Mr Salmond drove up at
1pm, bearing one of the biggest Scottish political tales of the year.
The night before, the MP for Banff and Buchan had been turning over in his mind
what to do about the SNP's troubles. The European elections had seen its share of
the vote dip to within two percentage points of the Tories.
Mr Swinney, the protégé Mr Salmond helped become leader in 2000, had never
recovered from losing a Westminster seat to the Tories in his first general election,
in 2001. Since then, bad results had followed in the Holyrood, local, and now the
European polls, and Mr Swinney was forced to quit.
With the next general election looming in May 2005, another poor result could
scupper the Nationalists for a generation. After swithering about what to do late on
Friday, Mr Salmond decided on the answer as he drove into the capital.
Four years after quitting the job, he would lead the party once more. His first task
was to broach the idea with Mr Swinney. After he agreed the plan was workable Ð
though without giving him any official endorsement Ð Mr Salmond had the trickier
task of persuading Ms Sturgeon, who had already entered the race, and received his formal blessing.
By now it was late afternoon, and he invited the shadow justice minister to meet
him in Champany's. Discretion was still essential.
When Mr Salmond suggested to Ms Sturgeon that she should step aside and let him
run for the party's top job, she surprised him. She asked for 48 hours to think it
over, a sign she would be no pushover if she accepted and became his deputy.
However, with less than a week until nominations closed, the next day Mr Salmond
proceeded on the basis that she would say yes. At the close of the regular Banff and
Buchan constituency meeting at the Ritchie Hall in his home village of Strichen on
Sunday afternoon, Mr Salmond asked Norma Thompson, the local convener, and a
few other office bearers to say behind.
If it was agreeable to them, he said, he would like to stand as party leader. From
their reaction, he could tell it was more than agreeable, it was the answer to their
prayers. He then produced the nomination papers he had picked up in Edinburgh
and asked them to endorse him.
Significantly, the branch officers noticed that Mr Salmond's wife, Moira, was the
first signature. When he revealed last November that he planned a return to
Holyrood in 2007, there was fervent speculation about his leadership intentions.
At the time, a friend of the Salmonds told The Herald it would never happen
because Moira was unshakeably opposed. Ten years of sharing her husband with
the party was enough.
She had had her fill of it, and someone else was welcome. That she could bear to
endorse him just a few months later was a sign she had "mellowed", according to
one friend last night.
As his closest allies in Banff and Buchan collected more signatures, Mr Salmond
waited for Ms Sturgeon to come back with her answer. She called on Tuesday
morning, as he was leaving a meeting at the Department of Transport in London.
After talking to her closest allies, she had agreed, but wanted Mr Salmond to call
Kenny MacAskill, the MSP she had hoped would be her own deputy, to explain the
reasons more fully.
It could have been painful Ð and Mr MacAskill may still come out of the episode
looking naive Ð but by the end of their conversation, Mr Salmond had picked up the
backing of yet another MSP.
On Tuesday evening, he asked the four MPs who made up the rest of the
Westminster group what they wanted him to do. It was a sign of their nervousness
about the general election that all had been lobbying him to stand since Mr Swinney
stood down. Unsurprisingly, they gave unanimous support.
Once Westminster staff had been put in the picture and sworn to secrecy, one of Mr
Salmond's last calls of the night was to someone he knew without question would
be pleased. Sir Sean Connery, the SNP's most famous and wealthy supporter, had
told Mr Salmond he was "disappointed" when he had ruled himself out the
leadership race the previous month.
His response to his old friend's change of heart was "more than enthusiastic", Mr
Salmond said modestly yesterday. It is probably closer to the truth to say he was
delirious.
With all the pieces in place, his last duty before going public was to inform his
rival candidates. Roseanna Cunningham, the current SNP deputy leader, could not
be contacted on Wednesday because she was snatching a short holiday with her
brother in County Kerry.
So at 8pm, Mr Salmond instead called her campaign manager, Maureen Watt, and
dropped the bomb on Team Cunningham. There was no explanation, and no mention of Ms Sturgeon.
Just the worst campaign news imaginable.
A few hours later, Mike Russell, the third leadership candidate, and Mr Salmond's
former chief executive, got the call. If he was gutted, he didn't show it, and even
went ahead with his own press conference yesterday morning. But he must have
known what Team Cunningham also knew.
Barring a scandal, an act of God, or Sean Connery going to UKIP, Alex Salmond
was poised to become the leader of the SNP. Again. As if to prove their fears
correct, some bookmakers yesterday suspended betting on the outcome of the race, and others slashed his odds from 12/1 to 1/9 favourite.
As he faced the press in Aberdeen yesterday, Mr Salmond brushed aside
suggestions he might be standing because he feared Ms Sturgeon would lose or,
more to the point, Ms Cunningham would win.
His candidacy was not about an unprickable ego, backroom power plays, or
frustrating someone he could not control. Instead, it was about nobly answering a
call from the party members to fight for democracy, fight for a worthwhile
parliament, fight for Scotland's very soul.
He even talked afterwards about being touched by the appeals of grey-haired old
ladies, who pleaded with him to rescue a needy nation. It was so saintly it was
faintly ridiculous.
The truth of the matter is that the SNP is desperate. After years of infighting and
electoral decline, it is desperate for repair, and before the general election.
As the brightest Nationalist talent of his generation, Alex Salmond is simply the
best person for the job. He knows it, and by the widespread joy of party members
yesterday, the SNP at large knows it too.
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