Overview
- The Sunday Mail, which published WhatsApp and text exchanges on Sunday, reported messages that show senior SNP staff discussing complaints against Alex Salmond and how to handle the fallout.
- Extracts include talk of finding more potential complainants, doubts by some participants about whether their experiences were criminal, and celebratory language when Salmond was charged.
- Calls for action escalated as former SNP justice secretary Kenny MacAskill and ex-minister Fergus Ewing urged police and a judge-led probe, while Scottish Labour pressed First Minister John Swinney for answers.
- The SNP said these matters had been examined for years, and Nicola Sturgeon’s representatives rejected claims of a conspiracy, with her spokesman dismissing Joanna Cherry’s memoir as a work of fiction.
- The row revives a fraught history that saw the Scottish Government’s 2018 internal probe ruled unlawful and tainted by apparent bias in 2019, followed by Salmond’s acquittal on 13 charges by an Edinburgh High Court jury in 2020, and it lands weeks before the May 7 Holyrood election.