Back to HOMEPAGE Alex Salmond will soon have to face reality
Magnus Linklater
Holyrood Sketch, The Times
Filed 16 May 08
©Magnus Linklater
This article was originally published in The TImes on May 16, 2008.
It is reproduced here with the kind permission of its author and of the newspaper.
On this, the first anniversary of our First Minister's tenure of office, we were treated to the three faces of Alex Salmond - faces we have grown well used to over the year, though which of them revealed the real man, we are not yet entirely certain.
First, the statesman: solemn, punctilious, diplomatic, dealing with the affairs of the nation with measured calm, treating the issue of the Rangers fans and their behaviour in Manchester as though it were a native uprising in some minor colony. He does it well: even-handed, seeking to form useful alliances in search of a solution; quite the leader.
Then we had Salmond the jester, strutting his stuff on the stage to which he has now grown accustomed, putting on a full-blown performance with his mock serious voice in which he manages to tease his opponents while at the same time suggesting to the outside world that the business of politics is not necessarily to be taken with complete seriousness. You are never quite sure whether he is trying to wrong-foot his critics or play to the gallery. Probably both.
Finally, there is Salmond the wriggler, dodging hard questions, playing with words, talking himself out of trouble with a combination of bluster and rhetoric that just, but only just, offers him an escape route.
The truth is that he is probably all three, the man for all seasons, fending off an opposition that has yet to find a means of nailing him, while at the same time turning to advantage what once seemed an insuperable weakness - the lack of a majority in the Parliament which is meant to be his powerbase. Because his party is unable to push through any substantive legislation it governs by acclaim instead, promising greater things to come. It is a form of virtual government and it is fascinating to watch.
But, as yesterday demonstrated, the cracks in this painted facade are bound to show up sooner or later. They are exposed by a combination of Tory and Liberal Democrats in the shape of Annabel Goldie and Nichol Stephen, a rather effective double act.
Both had decided to take up the apparently innocuous case of physical education in schools, one of those pledges so lightly tossed out by the SNP Government, but now an expensive embarrassment. Two of Mr Salmond's ministers, less adept than him at concealing the facts, had given interviews in which they appeared to resile from the commitment. Maureen Watt, his Schools Minister, has suggested that the promised two hours of PE might include walking to school in the morning. Fiona Hyslop, the Education Secretary, had given a huffy answer by saying that she couldn't be expected to supervise every school which wasn't delivering on the promise, so if some were backsliding it wasn't her fault.
So Mr Salmond swung in to action, neither denying nor actually confirming that either minister had said what they had said. Instead he talked of “working towards” the goal. Now, “working towards” is one of those reasonable phrases that means everything and nothing. It's the kind of non-promise he would once have mocked mercilessly when he was in opposition. These days, however, it is the wizard's cloak behind which an SNP Government works its miracles. Sooner or later they will have to take it off.
For the time being we can only guess at what lies behind it.
©Magnus Linklater |
