ALEX Salmond has come under multiple attack from peers, accusing him of menacing and anti-English behaviour during the referendum campaign.
During a Lords debate on devolution, former Scottish Secretary Baroness Liddell described the referendum campaign as the "worst election I have ever seen"; divisive, aggressive, thoroughly unpleasant, which did not represent the good people of Scotland.
"And, yes," added the Labour peer, "in some places there was an anti-English feeling and Mr Salmond and Ms Sturgeon were the joint architects of that."
Lord Birt, the Crossbencher, who is a former Director General of the BBC, told peers that while many in the Yes camp had behaved with propriety and conviction, others "acted dishonestly and with menace"; no better example of this, he claimed, was the First Minister's "singling out" of the BBC's Political Editor Nick Robinson.
"To distract from his difficulties - as usual playing the man and not the ball - the First Minister orchestrated an argy-bargy with Nick Robinson...a correspondent universally respected for his insight, independence and integrity."
In response, an SNP spokesman said: "Scotland's referendum campaign has been almost universally acknowledged as the most vibrant flowering of democracy seen in modern times; something that obviously doesn't sit well with this motley collection of unelected Lords."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article