Salmond’s Nazi slur ‘could have cost him his job if he’d said it in Germany’

Alex Salmond would have been facing calls for his resignation if he had made his controversial Nazi slur in Germany, according to one of that country’s leading commentators.

The First Minister has been plunged into a major row after describing BBC political adviser Ric Bailey as a “Gauleiter” – a name used for a regional Nazi party leader.

It followed the corporation’s decision to stop Mr Salmond appearing on a sports show ahead of the Six Nations rugby clash between Scotland and England at Murrayfield on Saturday.

“It’s about as bad as it gets,” said Reiner Luyken, senior international correspondent with the Die Zeit newspaper.

“In Germany, if a politician of Salmond’s standing was to call someone a ‘Gauleiter’ in that way, he would have consider his position – there would be calls for his resignation. I don’t think anybody would survive the political fall-out from it.”

The term Gauleiter is “entirely and completely connected with Nazis”, he said. “They were nasty pieces of work, so if you call someone a Gauleiter in Germany, it sounds far harsher in Germany even than in Britain.”

A spokesman for Mr Salmond said he had been concerned about editorial decisions taken by BBC journalists being overruled by “bureaucrats” on political grounds. Mr Salmond plans to raise the issue with Lord Patten, chairman of the BBC Trust, when the pair hold talks in Edinburgh on Thursday.