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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: It’s been a busy week for the Scottish National Party.  The country’s draft budget was set out by its Finance Minister with huge changes to council funding and next week doesn’t look like it will be any quieter as well with Nicola Sturgeon as First Minister planning to set out Scotland’s Brexit plan.  Well the former First Minister and now the SNPs international spokesman of course, has just got back from Brussels and he joins me now, a very good morning to you Mr Salmond.  Where shall we start?  You have just got back from Brussels, you’ve been given an honour I know and you’ve also been told that Scotland will have some kind of hearing, some kind of seat at the negotiations, can you give us any more idea what form that will take?

ALEX SALMOND: Well what Jean-Claude Junker said is that Scotland had earned the right to be heard in Europe and the right to be listened to in Brussels, that was his public statement and I thought that was a very effective one, as I’d expect from President Junker.  

DM: How would you interpret that though, the right to be heard?  You can go in and have a conversation and then Westminster representatives come in the room after you and go, well we represent the entirety of the UK, you don’t have to listen to Scotland?

ALEX SALMOND: Well of course Westminster representatives can’t do that at the present moment. I know for a fact that David Davis, the Brexit Secretary, has been trying to meet President Junker for months but the position of the European Union is obviously they’re not going to have that discussion until after Article 50 is invoked and then through a formal negotiation, so Westminster representatives aren’t walking into any room in Brussels at the present moment and when the Prime Minister’s in rooms in Brussels nobody will speak to her.  

DM: So maybe they could do with using the good offices of you SNP members who seem to have been given, what you are telling me Mr Salmond is that you are getting a more sympathetic hearing and better access.

ALEX SALMOND: Well let me make this formal offer to the UK government, we’ll do our best to facilitate their contact with other European leaders but of course the reason there’s tension between Westminster and the rest of Europe is obvious.  Firstly we’re embarked on this disastrous Brexit proposal and secondly Westminster doesn’t even have a strategy as to how to do it.  I listened to Liam Fox on the Andrew Marr show this morning and he said that the government was proceeding methodically.  Well there must be some method in their madness because it seems to me, and to everybody else on this continent, they are going round in circles.

DM: Give us a sense, Mr Salmond, what Scotland is going to ask for?  It is very clear you want not just access to the single market, you want continual membership of that single market, how do you square that circle then if the rest of the UK, if the entirety of the UK leaves the European Union and depending on the way the negotiations go, it is announced by the EU, by the other 27, well you’re not having that access.  What does Scotland do, what are your contingency plans?

ALEX SALMOND: Well you’re right to make the distinction between access to the single marketplace which everybody in the world has, the Patagonian Association of Shoe Manufacturers have access to the single market and membership of it, which is the crucial thing, which only 600 million people on this planet have and that’s a huge economic advantage the UK shouldn’t give up.  So when Nicola Sturgeon unveils her strategy this week, the first UK leader to have a strategy, then she’ll be saying three things: 1) we want the UK to stay within the single marketplace, if that’s not possible and the government rules that out, we want Scotland to stay within the single marketplace as part of a special deal, an arrangement and if that argument is dismissed, swept aside contemptuously by Westminster, then the First Minister of Scotland has made it clear that it is very likely there will be an independence referendum within the next two years.  

DM: Just let me ask you this  technical point because we will be hearing the decision of the Supreme Court on Article 50 in the new year, if it does decide that the government has to give parliament, has to give MPs some kind of say in that triggering, would it be your interpretation that the Scottish parliament also has a right to have a debate and a vote on the triggering of Article 50?

ALEX SALMOND: Well the Scottish parliament can debate and vote regardless of what the Supreme Court says but one of the points at issue in the Supreme Court is whether the government requires a legislative consent motion, that’s a formal process of approval from the Scottish parliament and we’ll just have to leave that to the Supreme Court as to what they want to decide.  The Lord Advocates arguments in my view are very persuasive, Scotland’s senior law officer, but it seems likely and the general opinion is that the Supreme Court are going to send it back for legislation in the Westminster parliament and then I think if the government continues in this chaotic way then I think things are going to get very interesting and very hot for Theresa May and her government.  Note this morning of course we’ve had the first sign in the opinion poll this morning that people across the UK are starting to prioritise maintenance of the single marketplace over control of immigration and in Scotland of course the majority is massive, it’s two or three to one.

DM: And a couple of quick questions on the Scottish budget last week, Mr McKay your finance minister acting like a Tory Chancellor according to Kezia Dugdale for the Labour party and has cut, what, £327 million from local councils.

ALEX SALMOND: And acting like a rampant socialist according to the Tories because we’ve asked people that are a bit better off in Scotland to pay a bit more in council tax to help fund public services.  I think it was an excellent budget from Derek McKay and I noticed in that same opinion poll – and it was only a sub-sample of course but the Scottish sub-sample showed the SNP at 56%.  Now I don’t know if that’s correct or not but it’s an indication that the SNP still have massive support across Scotland, that the Tories and Labour parties combined can’t even match.

DM: Do you not feel on the issue of income tax, a slight variation now coming, you haven’t used the full powers to put up taxes formally but not following the rest of the UK in the movement of the threshold for paying the 40% rate, as that widens is that not going to be a difficulty hanging on to some fairly skilled and managerial people?

ALEX SALMOND: No, I think that that’s a better way to ask people who are comfortably off in society, who earn a bit more, to contribute a bit more to public services.  That’s a far better way than doing it through the headline rate which tends to be indiscriminate in its effects, as is the change in the council tax bands to make them more progressive, I think that’s a better way to proceed.  Remember the Scottish National Party for the last ten years, and I think absolutely rightly, have pursued the policy of the social wage so there are all sorts of rights and entitlements in Scotland – free education, no bridge tolls, free personal care for the elderly that every single person in society gets which makes Scotland a highly attractive place to live in for all sections of society but in that context I think it’s right and proper that you ask people who are a bit better off to pay more to fund public services and that’s what Derek McKay did.

DM: And just lastly, Mr Salmond, your view on the year ahead?  I’ve been asking people internationally, we know about your thoughts about President-Elect Trump, you have always in the past said he’s unfit to be President, you actually say he’s a sociopath, should we start digging the bunkers?

ALEX SALMOND: Let me say that I think it was more useful for Scotland this week that I was meeting President Jean-Claude Junker than President-Elect Donald Trump. I think it would be reasonable to say with the Jean-Claude than with the Donald.

DM: And on that note, thank you very much indeed Mr Salmond.

ALEX SALMOND: And merry Christmas, Dermot.  

DM: And a happy Hogmanay.