Nicola Sturgeon denies ‘conspiracy to destroy’ Alex Salmond

Scotland’s former first minister Nicola Sturgeon has denied the existence of a conspiracy to destroy her mentor Alex Salmond.

In a fresh extract from her memoir, published in the Sunday Times, Sturgeon accuses Salmond of failing to show any contrition for his “inappropriate” behaviour towards women.

In 2020 Salmond was cleared of 13 sexual offence charges, including attempted rape, but during the trial his lawyer admitted his client could “have been a better man.”

The ex-SNP leader and Alba Party founder died of a heart attack in North Macedonia in October last year, aged 69.

“It felt to me”, writes Sturgeon, that Salmond “would have rather destroyed the SNP than see it succeed without him.”

She adds: “He impugned the integrity of the institutions at the heart of Scottish democracy – government, police, Crown Office.

“He was prepared to traumatise, time and again, the women at the centre of it all.”

In the memoir, entitled Frankly, Sturgeon describes the moment when Salmond first informed her of the allegations against him.

“The substance of the complaints, one in particular, shocked me. I felt sick”, she writes.

At first, she says, Salmond had appeared “upset and mortified” and had “effectively admitted the substance of one of the complaints,” calling it a “misunderstanding” for which he had apologised.

However, Sturgeon goes on, it quickly became evident that her predecessor as first minister wanted her “to intervene and to stop the investigation in its tracks or divert it into some kind of siding.”

Her refusal to do so, she says, “made the break-up of one of the most successful partnerships in modern British politics all but inevitable.”

“I had to face the fact that he was determined to destroy me. I was now engaged in mortal political combat with someone I knew to be both ruthless and highly effective,” she writes.

Losing him as a friend, Sturgeon continues, resulted in her going through “a grieving process.”

“I had occasional, vivid dreams in which we were still on good terms. I would wake up from these feeling utterly bereft,” she says.

Sturgeon succeeded Salmond as SNP leader and first minister in 2014 until she resigned in March 2023.

Sturgeon also writes about the Scottish government’s botched investigation into the complaints against Salmond.

In 2019, a judicial review had concluded that the process was unlawful, unfair and tainted by apparent bias.

He was later awarded more than £500,000 in costs.

“In Alex’s narrative, he wasn’t just a victim any more,” writes Sturgeon, “he was now a vindicated victim.”

It later emerged that messages had been exchanged between women complainers – a Scots law term for someone alleging that they are a victim of crime – and also between SNP staff members.

Sturgeon writes that Salmond inaccurately “spun these as evidence of people conspiring to bring him down”.

Rather, she said, the messages were between loyal supporters expressing “deep shock” and “women who considered themselves victims of his behaviour” who were “seeking support and comfort from each other.”

Sturgeon accuses Salmond of trying to “distort and weaponise” genuine shock or trauma in a way that was “truly disgraceful,” adding “it strikes at the heart of why I find it so hard to forgive him”.

“A conspiracy against Alex would have needed a number of women deciding to concoct false allegations, without any obvious motive for doing so.

“It would then have required criminal collusion between them, senior ministers and civil servants, the police and the Crown.”

This, she says, was “a fabrication, the invention of a man who wasn’t prepared to reflect honestly on his own conduct.”

Reflecting on Salmond’s death, while attending a conference in the North Macedonian city of Ohrid, Sturgeon writes that the emotions she felt suggested she had not come to terms with their estrangement.

“I know I will never quite escape the shadow he casts, even in death”, she concludes.

The extract is the second to be published from Sturgeon’s memoir.

In the first, published in The Times on Saturday, the former first minister described her arrest by police investigating the SNP’s finances as the worst day of her life.

Sturgeon describes being questioned by detectives as part of Operation Branchform.

She also writes about her “utter disbelief” about police raiding the home she shared with her husband Peter Murrell in April 2023.

The former first minister was later exonerated and has since separated from Mr Murrell who has been charged with embezzlement.

Elsewhere in the extracts, the former SNP leader describes the pain of suffering a miscarriage and sets out her views on sexuality, which she says she does not consider “to be binary”.

Frankly will be published on Thursday 14 August.