ALEX SALMOND

A chill wind is blowing through political parties and corporate boardrooms with ties to Moscow.

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Alex Salmond has accused Nicola Sturgeon of appearing to do "nothing at all" to deliver independence after Michael Gove ruled out another referendum before the 2024 general election. The Alba Party leader said Ms Sturgeon's Government was wasting time "having discussions about discussions", while Westminster was already plotting to "rig the ballot". The former First Minister said it was "time to force the Scottish issue now" and get on with delivering a referendum rather than "have Michael Gove

Scotland’s most senior law officer and his deputy are to resign, meaning Nicola Sturgeon will need to find replacements to rule on the legality of a “wildcat” independence referendum. James Wolffe, the Lord Advocate, and Alison Di Rollo, the Solicitor General, will stand down once new law officers are appointed, they confirmed on Sunday. Alex Salmond had called in February for Mr Wolffe to stand down over his role in the Scottish Government’s handling of harassment complaints against him, and he had also become embroiled in controversy over the “malicious prosecution” of two former Rangers administrators.

Alex Salmond has warned that Nicola Sturgeon is squandering a golden opportunity to win independence by allowing separation to slip off the political agenda. The former First Minister said his successor should be exploiting the UK Government’s “weakness” and “forcing the issue” of independence now, and warned that “the chance may be missed” if she continues to delay. Ms Sturgeon has said that her main priority is dealing with the coronavirus pandemic and that she will only ramp up her drive for a new referendum once the immediate crisis is over.

Nicola Sturgeon has downplayed her plans to hold a second independence referendum as she urged Scots to re-elect her based on her experience and leadership during the pandemic. In an election day message to voters, the First Minister claimed the SNP was the only party with a “serious programme for Government” and claimed her “overriding priority” if re-elected would be to keep people safe. On the final day of campaigning on Wednesday, she sought to exploit anger at the UK’s Brexit deal within the fishing industry during a trip to Aberdeen, and then travelled to Alford, in the Aberdeenshire West constituency, which the nationalists are hoping to win from the Tories. She also made trips to Dumbarton, where the SNP is vying to take Labour deputy leader Jackie Baillie’s seat, and her own Glasgow Southside constituency, where she is deafening a majority of more than 9,000 against Anas Sarwar. She said: “As First Minister I haven’t got everything right over this past desperately difficult year but I have worked my hardest every day and brought total commitment to the task of keeping Scotland safe. "If I am given the privilege of being re-elected as First Minister my promise to Scotland is to continue to bring all my experience and focus to the overriding priority of keeping you and your family safe. "Thanks to the people of Scotland who have given up so much to tackle the pandemic, the incredible work of our NHS, and the brilliant vaccination programme we can be optimistic that better times lie ahead. “In this election, only the SNP is offering a serious programme for government for these serious times.” She highlighted a string of SNP manifesto pledges, including free NHS dental care, before launching an attack on Boris Johnson and the Tories, warning that despite over the health service being fully devolved, "our NHS is definitely not safe in their hands". She only briefly mentioned her plan to hold a new independence referendum by 2023 in her plea to voters, saying Indyref2 would be held only “once the Covid crisis has passed”. Meanwhile, Alex Salmond made a final appeal to independence supporters to help him back to Holyrood to deliver a “supermajority” of MSPs in favour of separation. Polls have suggested that his new Alba Party may not win a single seat. However, he has claimed it is on course to win representation at Holyrood and has set a target of winning at least eight seats. He urged members of the “independence family” to back his party with their second votes, claiming supporting the SNP with regional ballots was a waste of time as Ms Sturgeon’s party would get “nothing at all on the regional list”. The SNP won four regional MSPs in 2016, with Holyrood’s voting system meaning the better a party does in constituencies the harder it is to win regional seats. He said: “An SNP vote is sometimes described as a wasted vote. It's actually worse than that, an SNP vote on the second ballot paper actually lets unionist Labour and Tory MSPs in by the back door.”

Scotland holds an election Thursday that could hasten the breakup of the United Kingdom.

The Scottish Tories have the best manifesto for the Holyrood elections, according to a 'blind test' of voters who were presented with key policies without being told which party they belonged to. A Savanta Comres survey, published on the eve of the crucial Scottish Parliament elections, found that 21 per cent of voters preferred the Conservative manifesto. This compared to 15 per cent for the SNP, 14 per cent for the Greens, 13 per cent for Labour and 12 per cent for the LibDems. The same poll also found that the SNP was on course to record its worst result in a Holyrood election since 2007, and would return just 59 MSPs, well short 65 required for an overall majority. However, other surveys have predicted that Nicola Sturgeon's party would comfortably achieve their aim of winning most of the parliament’s 129 seats. The SNP is set to claim a victory in the election as a mandate to hold a new referendum on independence, as long as seats for the Greens and Alex Salmond's Alba party mean there is a pro-independence majority overall at Holyrood. However, the UK Government believes that if Ms Sturgeon falls short of a majority on her own it will make it far easier to win a battle for public opinion over whether a new referendum should go ahead, although Boris Johnson has no intention of allowing one regardless of the result.

What happens when a political party has no viable opposition? It creates one from within.

Nicola Sturgeon may have to go to Alex Salmond and his new political party Alba to hold onto a pro-independence government after this week's election says the former Scottish editor of the Telegraph, Alan Cochrane. Barring a major upset, it looks as though the Scottish National Party will emerge as the biggest party in the Scottish Parliament after Thursday's election. But what is at stake is whether they get the 65 seats they need to have an overall majority. Speaking on Chopper's Politics, which you can listen to on the player above, Mr Cochrane explained that he thought that the polls were missing potential votes for Alex Salmond's new Alba party. "The polls are suggesting he's not going to do at all well, but I suspect, as do many of the psephologists, that the polls are missing his votes. I think he'll get a couple of seats, I think he'll certainly be elected in the North East which is his old stamping ground." "I was talking to some strategists yesterday and he's more popular in the North East of Scotland than say Nicola Sturgeon with nationalists. So he'll get a seat there, and if he gets two or three others he could be in a position to influence the overall nationalist independence majority in the parliament." That would see Alba and Alex Salmond in talks with the SNP and Nicola Sturgeon about giving a majority to the independence cause, leading to the pair having to work together again. Together they led the campaign for Scotland to become independent from the UK, with Mr Salmond then head of the SNP and Ms Sturgeon his deputy. They then spectacularly fell out in 2018 after Ms Sturgeon refused to intervene in a Scottish Government probe into sexual harassment complaints against Mr Salmond. They further soured when he publicly accused the First Minister of lying to Parliament over her handling of the claims against him. On how the option of the pair joining forces again would go down, Alan Cochrane says "Nicola will absolutely hate that. She will hate having to deal with Alex, because they have been at daggers drawn now for years." Listen to Christopher Hope's full interview with Alan Cochrane, on Chopper's Politics podcast, along with author Kevin Meagher and electoral expert Martin Baxter, using the audio player at the top of this article or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favourite podcast app.

Nicola Sturgeon is looking to extend her time as First Minister in this year's Scottish Parliament elections and is hoping to secure an outright majority to bolster her calls for a second independence referendum. The elections, which take place on Thursday May 6 following a year's postponement due to coronavirus, will see 129 MSPs voted in to sit in the Scottish Parliament, including 73 representing constituencies and 56 representing eight regions of the country - seven for each region. An SNP majority, requiring 65 seats, would give the party the mandate to push for a second independence referendum, which is expected to be called in 2023. However, the Scottish Conservatives have launched a campaign under their new leader, Douglas Ross, to prevent this, hoping to capitalise on the success of the 2016 election campaign under Ruth Davidson. Here are all the details you need to know about the seats which may determine the outcome of the election and why they matter. Key constituencies to watch Dumbarton Dumbarton, which is currently held by deputy Scottish Labour leader Jackie Baillie on a wafer-thin majority of just 103 votes, is a major SNP target seat. The seat has been held by Baillie since 1999 - one of a handful of constituencies which have been represented by the same MSP for the entire lifetime of the Scottish parliament. The most marginal seat in Scotland, the SNP have been creeping ever-closer in recent years, and the constituency is now a lonely red dot in a sea of yellow on the electoral map. Baillie has been reasonably high-profile of late due to her role in the Alex Salmond Holyrood inquiry committee and a stint in charge of Scottish Labour while the party sought a new leader, and whether or not she loses the seat to SNP opponent Toni Giugliano will speak to her party’s wider fortunes. Scottish Labour election manifesto Glasgow Southside Easily the SNP’s safest seat - which Nicola Sturgeon won in 2016 with a majority of over 9,500 and more votes than all other candidates combined - the constituency has become interesting because it is also being contested by Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader. The first time in British political history that two major party leaders have stood directly against one another, the result will shed early light on whether Sarwar has been successful in starting to turn Scottish Labour’s fortunes around. A high number of ethnic minority voters, who traditionally have backed the SNP in large numbers, has been seen by some as a wildcard in a race involving the first Muslim leader of a major UK party. Sarwar lives in Glasgow Southside and has repeatedly stated that while it may be Sturgeon’s constituency, it is his home. He is almost certain to be elected to Holyrood anyway because of his position on the Glasgow regional list, and has repeatedly criticised Sturgeon for dropping the ball in her own backyard. Almost half of children in the constituency live in poverty, he claims, and there are rampant issues with housing, crime and unemployment. With the SNP putting Sturgeon at the centre of their campaign and less than half of constituents turning out to vote in 2016, the result will show what voters make of her record.

Nicola Sturgeon is looking to extend her time as First Minister in this year's Scottish Parliament elections and is hoping to secure an outright majority to bolster her calls for a second independence referendum. The elections, which take place on Thursday May 6 following a year's postponement due to coronavirus, will see 129 MSPs voted in to sit in the Scottish Parliament, including 73 representing constituencies and 56 representing eight regions of the country - seven for each region. An SNP majority, requiring 65 seats, would give the party the mandate to push for a second independence referendum, which is expected to be called in 2023. However, the Scottish Conservatives have launched a campaign under their new leader, Douglas Ross, to prevent this, hoping to capitalise on the success of the 2016 election campaign under Ruth Davidson. Here are all the details you need to know about the seats which may determine the outcome of the election and why they matter. Key constituencies to watch Dumbarton Dumbarton, which is currently held by deputy Scottish Labour leader Jackie Baillie on a wafer-thin majority of just 103 votes, is a major SNP target seat. The seat has been held by Baillie since 1999 - one of a handful of constituencies which have been represented by the same MSP for the entire lifetime of the Scottish parliament. The most marginal seat in Scotland, the SNP have been creeping ever-closer in recent years, and the constituency is now a lonely red dot in a sea of yellow on the electoral map. Baillie has been reasonably high-profile of late due to her role in the Alex Salmond Holyrood inquiry committee and a stint in charge of Scottish Labour while the party sought a new leader, and whether or not she loses the seat to SNP opponent Toni Giugliano will speak to her party’s wider fortunes. Scottish Labour election manifesto Glasgow Southside Easily the SNP’s safest seat - which Nicola Sturgeon won in 2016 with a majority of over 9,500 and more votes than all other candidates combined - the constituency has become interesting because it is also being contested by Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader. The first time in British political history that two major party leaders have stood directly against one another, the result will shed early light on whether Sarwar has been successful in starting to turn Scottish Labour’s fortunes around. A high number of ethnic minority voters, who traditionally have backed the SNP in large numbers, has been seen by some as a wildcard in a race involving the first Muslim leader of a major UK party. Sarwar lives in Glasgow Southside and has repeatedly stated that while it may be Sturgeon’s constituency, it is his home. He is almost certain to be elected to Holyrood anyway because of his position on the Glasgow regional list, and has repeatedly criticised Sturgeon for dropping the ball in her own backyard. Almost half of children in the constituency live in poverty, he claims, and there are rampant issues with housing, crime and unemployment. With the SNP putting Sturgeon at the centre of their campaign and less than half of constituents turning out to vote in 2016, the result will show what voters make of her record.

Alex Salmond has claimed that he could have "destroyed" Nicola Sturgeon's political career if he had wanted to during their long-running feud over sexual harassment allegations against him. The former First Minister told an American magazine that "if I wanted to destroy her, that could have been done". The New Yorker reported that Mr Salmond, who has set up a rival party to the SNP and has repeatedly criticised the First Minister's independence strategy, chuckled for several seconds before making the remark. Meanwhile, Ms Sturgeon said that her political opponents - and potentially Mr Salmond himself - had attempted to "break her" during the controversy into whether she had broken the ministerial code over her dealings with her predecessor while a Scottish Government probe into complaints against him was ongoing. Ms Sturgeon’s political career was in jeopardy after Mr Salmond publicly accused her allies, including her own husband, of conspiring to put him in jail. He also claimed Ms Sturgeon misled parliament over when she became aware of the allegations against him.

Nicola Sturgeon is now unlikely to win an outright Holyrood majority because flaws in the case for Scottish independence are being exposed, the UK's leading pollster has said. Sir John Curtice said he now believed there was less than a one in three chance that the SNP would claim a majority in Thursday's election – a result that had been seen as highly likely weeks ago. If Ms Sturgeon is unable to win most of the seats in the Scottish Parliament, it would weaken her claim of an undisputed mandate to call a new referendum on leaving the UK by 2023. While she would still try to force a new vote if there is a pro-independence majority once smaller parties are taken into account, this would fall short of the precedent set by Alex Salmond in 2011. The Telegraph understands that senior SNP strategists are concerned they could lose four vital constituencies to unionist parties and that pollsters are underestimating the ability of Mr Salmond's Alba Party to take second votes away from the SNP.

FILE - In this Thursday, Sept. 18, 2014 file photo, Scotland's First Minister Alex Salmond poses for photographs in Turriff, Scotland. The former First Minister is setting up a new pro-independence party that will field candidates in the countrys upcoming elections. The governing Scottish National Party, which Salmond led for two decades until 2014, hopes to use the vote as a springboard to another referendum on Scottish independence, and is leading in opinion polls. The new party is the latest twist in a bitter feud between Salmond and with his successor as SNP leader, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon. Salmond was Scotland’s first minister between 2007 and 2014, playing a major role in transforming the separatist party into Scotland's dominant political force.

A Scottish parliamentary investigation says Sturgeon misled lawmakers about sexual harassment allegations against her predecessor. Lawmakers have been investigating the Scottish governments handling of sexual harassment allegations against former First Minister Alex Salmond. A report published Tuesday says Sturgeon gave lawmakers an inaccurate account of what happened at a key meeting with Salmond in 2018 and "misled the committee on this matter. (Andrew Milligan/PA via AP)LONDON – A Scottish parliamentary investigation concluded in a split decision Tuesday that First Minister Nicola Sturgeon misled lawmakers about sexual harassment allegations against her predecessor. … But I am clear in my mind that I acted appropriately and that I made the right judgements overall," Sturgeon told lawmakers.

FILE - In this Feb. 10, 2020, file photo, Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon speaks during a 'Scotland's European Future after Brexit' event at the European Policy Center in Brussels. Sturgeon did not mislead lawmakers or act improperly over sexual harassment allegations against her predecessor, a senior lawyer said Monday, March 22, 2021 in his report into a scandal that is roiling Scottish politics. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo, Pool, File)LONDON – Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon didn't mislead lawmakers or act improperly over sexual harassment allegations against her predecessor, a senior lawyer said Monday in his report into a scandal that has roiled Scottish politics. Hamilton’s probe centers on the Scottish government’s handling of sexual harassment allegations against Alex Salmond, who served as Scotland’s first minister before Sturgeon took office in 2014. The political and personal feud has pitted Sturgeon against her former friend and mentor Salmond, and is wracking Scotland’s governing Scottish National Party.

Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon speaks at the Holyrood Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh, Scotland, Thursday March 18, 2021. Scottish leader Nicola Sturgeon has dismissed suggestions that she misled lawmakers, saying she stands by testimony she gave to the Scottish parliament committee investigating her governments handling of sexual harassment allegations against her predecessor Alex Salmond. (Andy Buchanan/PA via AP)LONDON – Scottish leader Nicola Sturgeon has dismissed suggestions that she misled lawmakers, saying opposition members of a legislative panel had made up their minds before they heard her evidence. If Sturgeon is found to have misled parliament, she could be forced to resign for breaking the rules governing the conduct of government ministers. In his testimony to the committee, Salmond criticized the government of his one-time friend for undermining democratic principles and the rule of law.

First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon takes the oath before giving evidence to the Committee on the Scottish Government Handling of Harassment Complaints, at Holyrood in Edinburgh, Scotland, Wednesday March 3, 2021. The inquiry is investigating the governments handling of sexual harassment allegations against former leader Alex Salmond, and allegations that Sturgeon misled parliament. Its antagonists are Salmond and Sturgeon, two former allies and friends who have dominated Scottish politics for decades. AdHe accuses Sturgeon of lying about when she learned of the allegations and breaking the code of conduct for government ministers. "I’ve learned things about Alex Salmond over the past few years that have made me rethink," she said.

The handling of the coronavirus pandemic by Scottish leader Nicola Sturgeon has drawn praise, in contrast to the sometimes-chaotic approach of U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson. That has catapulted the idea of Scottish independence from the U.K. back up the political agenda. The four parts of the U.K. England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland acted together to impose a nationwide lockdown in March. If Sturgeons Scottish National Party wins the anticipated majority, she is likely to demand a new independence referendum. I would love to have independence, but I think maybe now is not the time.___Follow AP coverage of the virus outbreak at https://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak