What to make of the sudden passing and, inevitably, the complicated legacy of Alex Salmond? His death, at the age of 69 after making a speech in North Macedonia, is a genuine shock. The emotions are complex.
I didn’t like the man, and he didn’t like me much either. But it was always impossible – and would have been imprudent – to ignore or deny his extraordinary talents. He was one of the great political schemers of his generation, sinuous in his strategising, sharp and clear-sighted in his analysis. He almost single-handedly reshaped the SNP into the potent modern electoral force it has been for the past two decades. He also bent Scotland to his will, taking the nation closer than anyone expected to choosing independence. A deluxe politician.
But never a great man, I fear. Arrogant, smug. An alpha male who was always most comfortable among similar types – big businessmen, masters of the universe – downing whiskies into the wee hours while putting the world to rights with swaggering certainty.
Not my type of person. The rumours about his treatment of women had been around for years before, in January 2019, he was arrested and charged with 14 offences, including two counts of attempted rape, nine of sexual assault, two of indecent assault, and one of breach of the peace. He was cleared, but the evidence of his behaviour that emerged during his trial was enough to leave a permanent stain on his reputation.
If there are no statues to Salmond, as there are to the founding first minister Donald Dewar, this is part of the reason. He was, despite his electoral success and prominence, a hugely – and quite deliberately – divisive figure, separating Scots during the independence referendum into “Team Scotland” and “Team UK”. As a very Scottish No voter, I still bristle at that distinction.
But he was a political dynamo. His SNP remains the only party ever to win an overall majority at the Scottish Parliament, in 2011, following Labour’s long dominance north of the border. It was an astonishing achievement that led directly to the independence referendum in 2014. Arguably his greatest achievement, though – certainly the one that appeals most to me – was his shepherding of the SNP minority government between 2007 and 2011.
Salmond’s instincts were pro-business and pro-growth: a thriving private sector would generate the revenue for extensive public services. It was an approach jettisoned by his successor Nicola Sturgeon, which gradually eroded the Nats’ reputation for effectiveness and competence among voters.
That relationship between Salmond and Sturgeon, master and pupil, has been the defining one of modern Scottish politics. Between them, they dominated the scene for almost two decades and the SNP for longer. Sturgeon says she learned politics “at Alex’s knee”, which is simply a statement of fact. Had she paid more attention to the hard decisions and the willingness to address reality that he so often displayed, perhaps the party would be in a different position today.
Salmond certainly believed this. When he stood down as first minister in 2014 following the referendum, I asked a close friend of his what he would do next. A suite of well-paid, non-exec directorships? A grand old man of the nationalist movement, with the occasional wise intervention? “Alec doesn’t care about money. He’s about status,” was the reply.
And so it proved. Horrified by the direction in which Sturgeon was taking the SNP, – the relentless focus on identity politics at the expense of more mainstream issues – and the sense that her approach would make independence less rather than more likely, he set up Alba, a political party that was much more hardline on independence. He spoke out repeatedly against the Sturgeon model. He hated the gender recognition reforms and the woolliness. Anything that got in the way of securing independence was a distraction. He also needed the attention.
Alba had not been a success, but the decline in support for the SNP threatened to change that vector. Polls showed the party on course to win a handful of seats in the 2026 Holyrood election, an outcome that surely would have been engineered to include one A Salmond. In his absence, the party now faces an uncertain future.
Salmond’s death is a big and, weirdly, quite shattering moment. I was watching Scotland vs Croatia when I heard the news, which seems appropriate. Team Scotland, as I always have been, whatever he thought.
Alex Salmond was a great political figure – and his passing leaves that debate poorer.
