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Haggis, Neeps and Liberalism #9

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Who does Alex Salmond think he is?

With all three main party leaders having now agreed to participate in televised debates in the run-up to the next general election, Scotland’s Opportunist-in-Chief is threatening to throw his toys out of the pram
unless he’s included in any debate shown north of the border.

But Salmond is indulging in pure gesture politics once again. As my colleague Stephen Glenn has pointed out before, Salmond has no right to expect to take part in a leaders’ debate when he won’t even be a candidate at the next Westminster election.

He leads the fifth biggest party at Westminster (behind the Democratic Unionists) and will be fielding candidates in less than 10 per cent of constituencies UK-wide. Salmond would be far better off insisting on a debate between the four cottish party leaders. That would probably suit him better, given the sheer invisibility of the Scottish Labour Party leader.

In an entirely unscientific survey at the Lib Dem conference in Bournemouth, not a single person I asked could name the Scottish Labour leader. OK, these were all Lib Dems and were all from south of the border, so
they’re not the target voters that the appropriately named Iain Gray* has to convince, but they all were politically aware people who might be expected to know who the various party leaders in Scotland are.

But back to Salmond.

He actually got something right earlier this week. He’s been insisting that the devolved government in Scotland should be represented within the UK delegation at the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen later this year.

Scotland Secretary Jim Murphy had claimed that Salmond was being offered the same terms as his predecessor Jack McConnell in terms of Scotland’s input into such events. Except that was untrue, as photographic evidence emerged of McConnell attending the 2002 Earth Summit in Johannesburg.

Scottish Lib Dem leader Tavish Scott was right to back the view that Scotland should have a ministerial presence in Copenhagen, given that responsibility for tackling the issue is shared between the UK and Scottish governments. Salmond may be guilty of grandstanding over the TV election debates, but on this issue he got it right.

* Even I had to check that he spells his name Gray rather than Grey.

Bernard Salmon blogs at The Sound of Gunfire.


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