THERE are not many parties in the world that, a couple of months or so before a crucial election, would let their leader and former leader get into a public legal battle likely to lead to the effective political death of one of them. Yet that is what we are seeing in the SNP, in the struggle between Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon as it moves towards a climax this week.

Last Friday, Alex gave a persuasive performance as an honest man wronged. He went through six hours of interrogation by a committee of the Scottish Parliament, all calm and controlled except he had a hacking cough and needed a rest from time to time. The high standard he set will have to be at least matched by Nicola tomorrow if she is to quell all the whispers at Holyrood about her job being on the line.

We are witnessing events that will, for their intrinsic interest and their human drama, go down in the history books anyway. It is all the more astounding that they are taking place against the background of an election campaign about to enter its final stages. Lawyers rather than politicians may have set the pace, but by tomorrow we should be able to see if this is a good thing for our democracy or not.

Certainly that democracy has been coming under increasing strain as pressure for a rerun of the independence referendum mounts. Nicola does not believe this is really possible at the moment, or indeed desirable without a secure lead in the polls for Yes. Is that there, or is it not? Here is a question on which reasonable men might differ – except there are too few reasonable men embroiled in the argument. An example is in the rise of a clique that has been sounding off like nobody’s business. It consists of Andrew Neil and two of his younger protégés, Fraser Nelson of The Spectator and Iain Martin of The Times. It has given them the chance to pour bile on the Scottish homeland they have left far behind. As you will now learn, they are unlikely to come back.

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The National: Andrew Neil seems to have left his Scottish homeland far behindAndrew Neil seems to have left his Scottish homeland far behind

I’ll let Neil speak for the three of them: “These are dark, even dangerous days in Scotland. The stramash between the country’s two most famous politicians … has resulted in vital public documents being censored or banned, important information being suppressed, the media cajoled and cowed, the legal system brought into disrepute, the Scottish Parliament neutered and even bloggers being threatened with jail.”

The core of their message is that Scotland is not just a political system with its problems, as all political systems tend to have, but a “banana republic”with a system of its own created by the worst political instincts, infinitely demanding yet unwilling and unable to take responsibility for itself. Instead it demands money from the English. The old Unionist Scotland might have had its faults, the trio imply, yet nothing so terrible as those on parade before us in the new devolved Scotland.

Salmond has during his career been no slouch in lurid polemics himself, so he would not have been especially put out by all this. The terrible trio were not at Holyrood themselves, but two members of the committee posing the questions, Andrew Allan and Maureen Watt, rather took the side of the First Minister. Though Salmond could by no means be sure of a sympathetic reception, he remained cool, calm and cogent, above all convincing.

During the proceedings much was made of what Salmond had called the “deliberate malicious, prolonged and concerted effort” to get him locked up in jail. The sharpest questions concerned the evidence for this effort and the motives of those who had engaged in it. Salmond would not answer these questions, saying he rested content to have been cleared of all charges “by two courts, two judges and a jury”. Even so, these are not matters we have heard the last of, because they connect with other questions likely to be raised with Nicola Sturgeon tomorrow afternoon.

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This is because Salmond’s silences are not just a matter of personal preference but also of his obedience to an instruction from the Crown Agent. The Crown Agent had ruled that certain documents bearing on the case should be redacted, and he more generally interfered with the presentation of evidence by insisting some of it should be kept secret.

Meanwhile, the First Minister and members of her circle over the weekend tried to build up the idea of the silences as a point to be made against Salmond for contentious claims on which he offered “not a shred of evidence”. He did not have to give a direct answer on that during Friday’s session, but if he had been able to he surely would have pointed out that he remained silent because she and the Crown Agent had forced him to.

It needs to be remembered that Nicola has herself not yet presented a complete or convincing account of certain crucial episodes in this saga. In particular, she forgot about the meetings between her and Alex and others in March and April 2018, during one of which the first mention was made of Salmond’s alleged misdemeanours. It remains unclear what exactly she knew at that stage and when exactly she had learned it.

That would allow us to judge whether at any stage she misled Parliament. And that will decide whether or not she should immediately resign. Salmond was at any rate sure she had broken the ministerial code which governs conduct in these matters. But the evidence for this lay in censored passages of his evidence. What a guddle.

While the two of them were still on good terms, Salmond warned Sturgeon that the investigation was unlawful and advised her to take the matter to mediation. She never did. Instead it went to the Court of Session, where the Scottish Government’s own lawyers soon saw they were likely to lose the case. Indeed the verdict said it had acted “unlawfully, and with apparent bias”. This, according to Salmond, was a “catastrophic” and in particular a costly outcome which should have been avoided come what may.

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There was no verdict on Friday’s proceedings either, but Salmond can be said to have won the case. It was the Scottish Government that stood out for illegality, even now not candidly admitted, let alone punished, in the sense that no politicians or civil servants have got the sack.

Salmond did say in his own evidence that a number of officials should “consider their position”, beginning with the permanent secretary to the Scottish Government, Leslie Evans. It was she that devised the bungled and illegal investigation while also persisting with the doomed judicial review. But unless Parliament demands to see the documentation he has identified, it seems unlikely other heads will roll.

I would love to find a damning riposte to Andrew Neil and his fellow renegades, but I don’t think this is it.