Feb 2021. Salmond at the Holyrood Inquiry

Alex Salmond launched an extraordinary attack on Nicola Sturgeon today, claiming that the current SNP leadership is unfit to lead the country to independence. The former first minister described a collective failure of leadership in the civil service, the prosecuting authority and the Scottish government which was undermining his goal of an independent Scotland. “The move to independence, which I have sought all my political life … must be accompanied by institutions whose leadership is strong and robust and capable of protecting each and every citizen from arbitrary authority,” he told the inquiry examining the Scottish government’s botched investigation into complaints against him. At the end of a brutal dissection of his successor’s administration before MSPs, he added: “When you get to the stage that a government behaves unlawfully — it is a huge and heinous thing — you know some consequences should follow from unlawful conduct.”