In reply to media queries as to whether he will continue to lead the Westminster group of SNP MPs after the May General Election, Angus Robertson, longstanding current leader of the SNP group of six MPs, has said that Alex Salmond has personally assured him that ;he will not seek to replace him.
Mr Salmond, however, did not add that he would refuse a coronation.
The SNP procedure is that the MP group selects its own leader. In a group of six, there;s not much room for manoeuvre; but the group of 50+ MPs the SNP expects, with reason, to have after 7th May, will be a very different context.
Many of the flood tide of incomers will have known Alex Salmond as a long time champion of Scottish Independence and the saviour of their party when John Swinney resigned the party leadership and the consequent internal election looked like seeing the SNP fragment into terminal factionalism.
To the majority of the newbie horde, Salmond would be the natural candidate – and he has a chauffeured car paid for by the SNP to reinforce his status as grandee. Salmond officially leading the cry at Westminster and available to the media at any time for comment in that capacity – is the result that the current SNP leadership, behind the scenes, desperately does not want to see.
There is no doubt that Mr Salmond’s addiction to the oxygen of publicity would see him unable to resist the seductions of the Westminster media pack. A renegade runaway with microphones and cameras on tap any time he wants them and an ego the size of the O2 arena, is- on performance to date, giving the control freaks in the SNP a serious attack of the heebie jeebies.
The increasingly nominal-looking First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, cannot be giving interviews once a week to insist that she is the SNP leader.
A distinct froideur was noticeable and recorded on news cameras at the end of the SNP conference rally at the SECC in Glasgow at the weekend. Mr Salmond had earlier been unable to resist calls to take the main stage, when he was supposed to speak from a side stage at a fringe event. He took the applause and unhesitatingly strode out for the command position.
In the final line up of party high heid yins on the stage for the First Minister’s fly-past, the hug with Alex was visibly uncomfortable and as Nicola moved away down the line she looked no less than scunnered – and Alex looked like a naughty boy who had knowingly stepped out of line.
Poor Angus Robertson is probably reconciled to the inevitable – but is the party?
Its escape-card is the Gordon constituency. If Gordon did not elect Il Divo, it would be the best possible gift to the SNP leadership.
The ultimate back stop will be new party rules to govern the emergence of a leader of the Westminster group of MPs.
Expect these to be put in place.
If SNP MPs cannot now even disagree in private party meetings without being chastised by the Chief Whip, there is no way that the group leadership at Westminster is going to be left to the welter of newbies to decide.
