Alex Salmond 1954-2024.

One of the most gifted and energetic politicians of his generation

Alex Salmond in his prime.

I first met Alex Salmond, who died on after giving a speech in North Macedonia on Saturday, in 1989 just before he became leader of the Scottish National Party. He was different from many of his contemporaries being unashamedly self-confident and almost bullish in a country where such qualities were never really valued. A wee bit over fond of hissel’ as taciturn Scots used to say. Never a man to hide his lights under a bushel. But he succeeded in infecting the Scottish National Party, a rather inward-looking organisation, with his self-confidence and refusal to be cowed. Somehow he took this party from electoral irrelevance to the dominant political force in Scotland, and came close to realising his dream of Scottish independence too. Like his idol, Charles Stewart Parnell, he ended up spurned by his party and leading a small band of political outsiders. But his impact on UK history was enduring.

It is hard to believe that I will no longer wake up on Monday mornings to the sound of Alex Salmond on the phone, either berating me for my latest offence against journalism or telling me what I should be saying about the latest political scandal. The former SNP leader and First Minister of Scotland was of the old school: combative and relentless, always on the phone, never stopping, never at rest—a 24/7 politician. We always said he would never cease promoting the cause of Scottish independence while he still had breath in his body. He didn’t. Alex Salmond died in Macedonia, as he had lived for most of his life, on a platform, giving a speech on independence.

The Scottish political world is in genuine shock. Alex Salmond was never the healthiest of politicians—he was massively overweight, for a start. But his energy seemed to belie his body image. He seemed an unstoppable force.
Alex Salmond first came to national attention in 1982 when he was expelled from the Scottish National Party as part of the left-wing '79 group. He had been an oil economist for the Royal Bank of Scotland and was regarded as a bit of a mischief-maker by the party establishment. But he was soon returned to the fold as the MP for Banff and Buchan in 1987.

The UK media took notice when he disrupted Nigel Lawson’s Budget speech that year in protest at the imposition of the poll tax in Scotland. Three years later, he became leader of the Scottish National Party, which in 1990 was still a narrow nationalist organisation, determinedly Eurosceptic and deeply suspicious of devolution, which was regarded by the faithful as a devious BritNat diversion from the true path of Scottish independence. The SNP had boycotted the cross-party Scottish Constitutional Convention, which had been campaigning for the restoration of the Scottish parliament. Salmond soon changed all that. He placed his party and his personality firmly behind devolution, joining with Labour leader Donald Dewar and Liberal Democrat David Steel in delivering the landslide result in the 1997 devolution referendum.

Salmond also formulated the SNP’s new policy of “independence in Europe.” This was premised on the idea that, because Scotland and England were committed to membership of the European Union, independence could be reframed—shorn of its old associations with separatism and division. Instead of leaving the UK, Scotland would be joining Europe—equal at last with England in the new Europe of the regions. Indeed, Salmond often talked of Scotland becoming nominally independent in a “new UK,” with the Queen remaining head of state, and both countries remaining borderless within the European Single Market.

Labour thought that devolution would “kill nationalism stone dead.” It did the reverse. In the 2007 Scottish Parliament election, Salmond finessed his way into Bute House by doing a deal with Scottish Conservative leader Annabel Goldie to form a minority administration. It was a classic example of Salmond pragmatism—or opportunism, as his detractors regarded it. Most commentators thought the fragile SNP administration would fall within months. However, working in collaboration across the parties, it somehow worked and is now regarded, even by many non-nationalists, as one of the most effective administrations since the Scottish Parliament was created in 1999. Certainly, the voters approved, and Salmond won a landslide majority in the 2011 Scottish parliamentary election. He even defeated the d'Hondt electoral system and delivered an overall majority of seats in a PR parliament.

Salmond then persuaded Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron to agree to a referendum. The Edinburgh Agreement in 2012 ceded to Holyrood the power to hold a legally binding referendum. Cameron clearly thought it would be a unionist walkover, since support for independence was running at less than 30% in the opinion polls. But he hadn’t reckoned with Salmond’s populist appeal and boundless energy. The 2014 Independence Referendum turned into a near-death experience for the Scottish state as the Yes campaign ignited political engagement in Scotland.

In the end, Scotland voted to remain in the UK by 55% to 45%, but only after the UK party leaders had dashed across the border, promising to deliver a new constitutional settlement for Scotland in the now infamous “Vow.”

Salmond resigned the day after the defeat, handing over the reins to his protégé, Nicola Sturgeon. No one could have predicted the acrimonious split that followed. The independence movement was shattered by a lurid sexual harassment case against Alex Salmond, the product of a disciplinary procedure instituted by Sturgeon at the height of the #MeToo campaign.

Salmond successfully challenged the Scottish government in the Court of Session in January 2019, winning a judgement that the disciplinary process that had accused him of sexual misconduct had been “tainted with apparent bias.” He was awarded costs of £512,000.

But hardly had he left the Court of Session when he was arrested and charged with 14 counts of sexual harassment and attempted rape. Salmond was acquitted on all counts in the High Court in March 2020, but the stain on his character remained. Even as he died, he was pursuing legal action for damages against the Scottish government for what he called a “malicious” conspiracy to destroy his career and have him wrongfully imprisoned.

The full facts of the Salmond affair have never been made public and probably never will—nor the identities of his accusers. But Salmond was convinced that a claque of senior SNP figures had concocted the charges in order to prevent him from returning to active politics in 2018.

The division at the top of the SNP, and Nicola Sturgeon’s failure to deliver independence despite successive election victories, contributed massively to the decline and fall of the Scottish National Party. The independence movement was divided and at war with itself. Salmond went on to form a breakaway Alba party, which failed to win any seats at the general election in July. His old party lost 38 MPs and all prospect of winning the repeat referendum on independence that Nicola Sturgeon had promised before she resigned in February 2023.

Alex Salmond took the SNP from electoral irrelevance to the governance of Scotland. He was the most astute, gifted, and energetic politician of his generation. It may be a cliché to say that we’ll never see the like again—but that doesn’t make it any less true.

A version of this column also appeared in the Spectator.

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