 | 'A poll released at the weekend by the Salmond-Sturgeon camp, commissioned from TNS System Three, showed that 82% of SNP voters wanted Alex Salmond to return as leader. Even taken across supporters of all parties the number supporting Mr Salmond for leadership was 65%.' Robbie Dinwoodie in the Herald, 4 th August 2004. |  |
ALEX Salmond, the former SNP leader, last night claimed that he had a "date with
destiny" to return to the post and beat Jack McConnell to become first minister.
He was in typically bullish mood at his first public hustings against his leadership
campaign opponents, staged in Dunoon last night.
But his rivals criticised him for lack of strategy and for building his campaign on a
deal with a single deputy candidate.
It made for a lively hustings in Queen's Hall between Mr Salmond, Roseanna
Cunningham, the current deputy leader, and Michael Russell, former shadow minister
and former party chief executive.
Mr Salmond rejected the media response to his joint manifesto with Nicola Sturgeon
that the document was short on new ideas, and pointed out that more than 1600 people
had downloaded it from their website at salmond-sturgeon.com.
He insisted: "Anything I say in this campaign will be unremittingly positive. It is
about our ideas for taking the party forward. I won't waste a second talking about
the other candidates. We are talking about how to take the SNP and then Scotland
forward."
Mr Salmond told the meeting: "We are entirely focused on a date with destiny in 2007
when I intend to replace Jack McConnell as first minister, if he is still around."
He has said he plans to remain as a Westminster MP meantime and allow Ms Sturgeon
to lead the party at Holyrood.
Ms Cunningham stressed the difference between aims, strategies, and tactics, saying
the SNP had always to focus on its key aim of independence and the strategy needed to
get there. Shorter term tactics had to operate within that.
"In past years it has been one of our biggest failures that we did not seem to
understand the difference between these three vital components," she told the
hustings.
"One of John Swinney's achievements as leader was to begin to address that problem,
with longer lead times into planning and organisation for election campaigns and an
attempt to make sure that what we did in the party and parliament fitted into those
plans."
This partial success had to be replaced by the development of a strategy which took
the party through next year's Westminister election through to the Holyrood election
in 2007. "That is how we will get to independence," she said.
Mr Russell, on his home patch, half an hour from his Argyll home in Colintraive, made a
more bullish attack on the Salmond-Sturgeon slate, saying: "What the SNP needs at
the moment is not a CV or even two CVs. It needs a strategy.
"The strategy being offered by Alex Salmond depends entirely on his choice being
elected as deputy leader. If that fails, as this appears to be failing, then the strategy
is bankrupt."
The one-term MSP added: "It would be, to borrow a phrase, unpardonable folly for the
SNP to enter the 2005 Westminster election not merely having failed to change, but
telling the electorate that the party does not need to change. There would be no surer
recipe for disaster."
Last night's leadership hustings was the first chance for non card-carriers to see all
the three contenders for leadership. Mr Salmond missed the first hustings, open to
the public in Edinburgh last week, because he was holding a surgery in his Banff and
Buchan constituency.
"I don't cancel surgeries for anything," he said at the time, and pointed out that he
would be able to attend something like 18 of 21 hustings meetings the length and
breadth of the country.
However, he had already been criticised for missing the first members-only meeting
event because he was opening an Indian restaurant in Fraserburgh.
Mr Salmond's decision to stand for the post he vacated four years ago, revealed in
The Herald on July 15, sent party rivals reeling, forcing some to rewrite their
manifestos, but electrified an election campaign that was in danger of passing the
public by.
A poll released at the weekend by the Salmond-Sturgeon camp, commissioned from TNS
System Three, showed that 82% of SNP voters wanted Alex Salmond to return as
leader.
Even taken across supporters of all parties the number supporting Mr Salmond for
leadership was 65%.
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