Nicola Sturgeon: Alex Salmond refused to read independence white paper
In the latest explosive allegations which have reopened deep rifts within the independence movement, Sturgeon accused Salmond of an 'abdication of responsibility' in the months before the historic vote that could have delivered on the SNP's foundational mission.
In an interview with ITV ahead of the publication of her long-awaited memoir, Sturgeon said she had been left in a 'cold fury' when her former mentor said he was going on a trade mission to China without reading a draft of the Scottish government's white paper on independence, a few weeks before it was due to be published.
The 670-page document, which was released in November 2013, was then seen as critical to the Yes campaign's prospects of turning around what was then a significant deficit in the polls before the historic September 2014 vote.
However, Sturgeon, who was then deputy first minister, claimed that she suffered a 'panic attack' due to the pressure of compiling a document in which her boss showed no interest.
'He really didn't engage in the work of the drafting or the compilation of the white paper at all,' Sturgeon told ITV's News at Ten presenter Julie Etchingham, in a major interview to mark this week's publication of her memoir Frankly. 'He was the leader, he was the first minister, and he hadn't read it.
'He'd maybe read bits. I don't even know if he'd read bits of it. I knew I was going to have to sit him down and say, 'Look, you're going to have to read this, and you're going to have to tell me now if there are bits you want to change, because it has to be signed off'.
'He told me he was going on a trade mission to China. I don't think I'd ever felt as much cold fury at him as I did in that moment. It just seemed to me like an abdication of responsibility.'
The suggestion that as first minister, Salmond, who died of a heart attack in October last year, potentially jeopardised the success of the independence campaign led to outrage from his allies.
• Alex Salmond obituary: ambitious politician who fought for independence
It follows Sturgeon's inflammatory suggestion, published in extracts of Frankly in The Times and Sunday Times, that he may have leaked allegations that he was facing an investigation for sexual misconduct to a tabloid newspaper himself.
Sturgeon said that she had become overwhelmed at having to deliver the white paper, which was titled Scotland's Future, which the SNP had promised voters would answer critical questions about how a Scottish state would operate.
'I remember an evening which I just suddenly had this overwhelming sense of impossibility,' she said. 'I can't get this to the point it needs to be at. It's so unwieldy. It's so difficult.
'And I just remember having what I can only describe as a panic attack. I was sobbing on the floor of my office at home and just my heart was racing.'
Salmond went on his trade mission to China on November 3, 2013, when the white paper had been in development for several months. It was published 23 days later, with Sturgeon and Salmond launching it side by side.
While there were several doubts raised about the claims within the document, not least the projections of lucrative oil revenues which later turned out to have been wildly optimistic, the event was broadly seen as a presentational success.
Although Scots voted against independence by a margin of 55 per cent to 45 per cent, the document was seen as a factor in closing the gap in the polls which in late 2013 had shown a far wider lead for the unionist campaign.
Sturgeon's claims that Salmond had not been engaged with the contents of the document provoked conflicting accounts from senior figures who were involved in the Yes campaign. One described Sturgeon's allegations as 'mental'.
'What is she talking about? Of course Alex was engaged in it,' one source said. 'There were umpteen meetings in the run up to its publication discussing it.'
However another gave credence to Sturgeon's version of events.
'It is not a surprise Nicola is saying this,' the former advisor said. 'Within the narrow confines at the top of the SNP it was talked about, and has been discussed since. It reflects what I heard at the time, there was a disconnect, she was doing all the heavy lifting.'
Salmond and Sturgeon were once seen as the closest of political allies but the pair fell out after sexual misconduct allegations against him, which first emerged publicly in 2018. Salmond was later cleared of any criminality following a trial in 2020.
In extracts of her book, Sturgeon claimed it would have been 'classic Alex' to have leaked details of the investigation as he was practiced in the 'dark arts' of media manipulation and knew they would have become public anyway.
Her remarks provoked a furious backlash among friends and allies of Salmond, who accused Sturgeon of launching unfounded attacks on a man they see as a titan of the independence movement, who is now unable to defend himself.
David Clegg, the journalist who broke the story for the Daily Record and is now editor of The Courier, said at the weekend that Sturgeon's claims that Salmond was behind the initial leak were 'not credible'. He maintains he does not know who leaked the story by anonymously sending secret documents to his newspaper.
In her ITV interview, Sturgeon said she had been hit by a 'wave of grief' after learning of Salmond's death, at the age of 69, despite the pair having not spoken in years.
'Even today I still miss him in some way — the person that I used to know and the relationship we used to have,' she said.
'But I thought I had made my peace with it, that I'd got to a point where I felt nothing. And then I got a call to tell me that Alex Salmond had died. I started crying on the phone and I just was hit by this wave of grief … and it was complicated because obviously we weren't just no longer friends, we were political enemies.
• Sturgeon: I came perilously close to a breakdown
'There was no prospect I was going to be able to go to his funeral or anything like that and it was a kind of strange, strange feeling.'
Kenny MacAskill, who served in the SNP cabinet throughout the run up to the referendum, disputed Sturgeon's claims about the white paper. MacAskill succeeded Salmond as leader of the Alba Party, which he set up after his departure from the SNP, following his death.
'The white paper was drafted by a team of civil servants,' MacAskill said. 'All cabinet secretaries were given copies to review. Alex Salmond oversaw every aspect of the government even though he allowed ministers to just get on with their job.
'The issue he kept some responsibility for was the constitution. Alex Salmond was also a master of detail. Many issues in the paper were fraught and complex with much discussion. The idea that he avoided oversight is simply laughable. Alex was in charge and always on top of matters. Yet again Nicola Sturgeon seeks to rewrite history. '
Chris McEleny, a former general secretary of the Alba Party, said Sturgeon's latest claims about independence exposed her book as a work of 'amateur fiction'.
'Alex took us closer to independence than we've ever been, whereas Nicola destroyed the independence movement and has few achievements to look back on,' McEleny, who was close to Salmond during the final years of his life, said.
'That Nicola's upset that Alex went on a trade mission and left her to complete a task she was responsible for sums up her lack of personal political accountability.'
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