Salmond’s revenge mission against Sturgeon isn’t over

Alex Salmond recently joked that if he wanted to destroy Nicola Sturgeon, ‘that could have been done’. The former first minister clarified this weekend that he had only meant to point out that he hadn’t called for her resignation when asked to by the Holyrood committee investigating the Scottish government’s handling of allegations against him. But he has quite clearly not reached the end of his plans for revenge against his former protégé.

I interviewed Salmond on Times Radio, and he told me that his current ‘disagreement’ with the First Minister is that she should be getting on with negotiations for independence. He said:

‘My disagreement is that I think this is the opportunity to push forward with negotiations on independence, while the trumpet is sounding a certain note from Whitehall would strike me as an excellent opportunity. ‘Now, that doesn’t mean that the referendum will be next month, or even in six months’ time, because you know it took – let’s see, three years from the 2011 result to 2014 to stage a referendum.