NICOLA Sturgeon has said there are “big questions” about how appropriate Alex Salmond’s return to public office would be, suggesting it could send the wrong message.
The SNP leader also vowed that she would serve a full five-year term if re-elected as First Minister, but she refused to say if she might seek another term in office after that.
Speaking to journalists, she said a poll yesterday showing Salmond’s Alba Party could expect 3% of the Holyrood list votes served as a reminder that we should not presume the outcome of the election.
READ MORE: Alba party membership surpasses Scottish LibDems in just one week, founder says
“I don’t want to spend too much time talking about a party that doesn’t look on early polling as if it’s going to get any MSPs elected, but I said last weekend – and I could choose more politically diplomatic language I’m sure, but sometimes you just have to say it as you see it – that I think there are big questions about the appropriateness of Alex Salmond’s return to public office.
“I know some of the women that made complaints against him and I therefore know that having him put himself forward like this is not making things easier for them.
“If you have somebody who has behaved by, in some ways his own admissions inappropriately towards women, albeit not criminally, and nobody is arguing that, he can’t even seem to accept that that was inappropriate, let alone apologise for it then I do think that does pose risks of sending entirely the wrong message to people and to women in particular.”
Sturgeon has been First Minister since 2014 and said she was “putting herself forward for a full term of office” in the post.
That would see her serving almost 12 years at the head of the Scottish Government – longer than the 11 years Margaret Thatcher spent in Downing Street as Tory prime minister.
But Sturgeon refused to commit to fighting another campaign as SNP leader in 2026.
READ MORE: Shetland candidates speak out as Holyrood hopeful stands on anti-gay marriage platform
She said: “I am fighting this election campaign, I am putting myself forward for a full term of office as First Minister, should the people of Scotland elect me. And that is entirely up to the people of Scotland.
“And frankly I will think about the next election when we get closer to that. One of the things I have learned... is to take every election as it comes and not take the voters or the country for granted.”
Sturgeon also said it would be for the Scottish Parliament to judge when the time was right for indyref2 to be held.
“In terms of when that is actually the case, I think the World Health Organisation’s views on when we’re in and out of a pandemic are certainly part of that, but there’s nothing I’m going to do having lived through this for the past year, and being faced with, as all government leaders have been, with some of the most difficult decisions imaginable, getting the country through this is going to continue to be my focus.”
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