Can someone please tell Alex Salmond he's making a fool of himself? - Telegraph

Alex Salmond has got the idea into his head that everything he says is hilarious

Peter A Bell's insight:

Iain Martin offers us a petulant, bilious little diatribe based on mindless hatred of Alex Salmond; dumb anti-SNP prejudice; and prideful ignorance of the Scottish political scene rather than any meaningful observation and analysis. As if we didn’t get enough of this kind of crap from Poor Old Cockers!

The bitter animosity towards Salmond is quite inexplicable other than in terms of some serious personality defect afflicting those who indulge in this kind of rancid hatemongering. There simply isn’t anything particularly offensive about the man. Unless you are the kind of British nationalist fanatic who reacts to any democratic challenge to the divinely ordained British state with spluttering, spittle-flecked, crimson-faced, blood vessel-popping indignation.

As those who do not abandon all rationality at the mere mention of his name will readily acknowledge, Salmond is a particularly astute political operator. Under his leadership the SNP has become the established party of government in Scotland and, in terms of membership, the third largest political party in the UK. Against the combined anti-democratic might of the British parties and their collaborators in the media, Salmond delivered the referendum on independence which the British establishment was determined to deny the people of Scotland.

In the referendum campaign, Salmond wisely took a step back, deferring to the biggest mass grass-roots movement in recent history. A movement which, nonetheless, he can take some credit for triggering. A movement which continues, strengthened and emboldened, despite the pyrrhic victory of the shameful anti-independence campaign.

With Salmond as its political figurehead, Scotland’s independence movement grew to an unprecedented 45% support - approximately doubling relative to the start of the referendum campaign.

At a personal level, Salmond stepped down as party leader and First Minister in a move that was every bit as calculated as the manoeuvring which resulted in the UK government signing the Edinburgh Agreement - a document whose constitutional implications continue to be lost on self-styled political “experts” in the British media, intellectually crippled as they are by a combination of blind belief in British exceptionalism and mindless hatred of anything which threatens the old order and the old ways.

Salmond now stands poised to be one of the most powerful figures in UK politics as a prominent part of a large contingent of SNP MPs holding the balance of power in a Westminster parliament which is on the verge of disintegration. That SNP contingent will be in a position to demand the meaningful powers for the Scottish Parliament that the British parties are determined to withhold.

Nobody who is actually aware of what is going on in Scotland doubts for one moment that, due to the irresistible weight of public demand, there will be another referendum within five years and that the result will be a resounding vote for independence.

And clowns like Iain Martin genuinely believe that this catalogue of successes amounts to failure and defeat. It’s pretty clear who is making a fool of themselves here. And it’s not Alex Salmond. It’s ranting British nationalist buffoons such as Iain Martin.

See on telegraph.co.uk



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