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“Amonumental figureUK SNPMPSNP SNP SNP BRTSNP SNP Your browser does not support the element. of and Scottish politics” was the tribute paid by Sir Keir Starmer, the prime minister, to Alex Salmond, who died on October 12th, aged 69. That is half-right.Mr Salmond, who was suddenly taken ill after giving a speech at a conference in North Macedonia, was instrumental in driving the from the periphery into government in Holyrood. A charismatic and committed campaigner, he helped embed a for Scottish independence among a large minority of the population. But his failures, both personal and political, shrivelled his own reputation and reduced that of his party. He changed Scotland, but his impact on the union he wanted to dismember was smaller.At his zenith, when he was Scotland’s first minister from 2007 to 2014, Mr Salmond could claim to be the most feared politician in Britain. In his early years in nationalist politics, he had been a left-wing firebrand; upon election to the House of Commons in 1987, he was branded an “infant Robespierre” by one Tory . But by the time he took the into government in 2007, during his second spell as party leader, he had learned to use his rhetorical gifts in service of a cannier strategy.He exploited the advantages of incumbency and devolution to their fullest, spending money on popular causes such as the end of a tuition fee for Scottish university students and criticising Westminster for anything that constrained the Scottish government. He carefully fused left and right, courting media barons and oil companies while spending lavishly, championing social liberalism while espousing a “Braveheart”-style nationalism.In the Scottish parliamentary election in 2011 he secured a majority, establishing the as the dominant political force north of the border. That victory paved the way for an agreement with David Cameron, the then prime minister, to hold a referendum on Scottish independence in 2014. The victory for the pro-union campaign, by 55-45, ended Mr Salmond’s tenure as first minister: he resigned, to be succeeded by his protégée, Nicola Sturgeon.The referendum campaign also revealed holes in the nationalist argument that have not been filled in ten years later. Mr Salmond trained as an economist but could not satisfactorily answer questions about Scotland’s post-independence economy, most notably what currency it would use. And having lost the referendum, the found itself unable to articulate a plausible Plan .In recent years Mr Salmond’s career went full circle, moving him inexorably back towards the fringes. He lost his seat in the Commons in 2017. He hosted a show on , a Russian state broadcaster, from then until the start of full-scale war in Ukraine in 2022, dismaying his fellow-nationalists. He was in a trial in 2020 but his name was badly tarnished as a result; his own defence counsel told the jury that they wouldn’t have been there if Mr Salmond had been “a better man”.His relationship with Ms Sturgeon was irreparably damaged by the handling of the harassment allegations against him—a breach in unity that was exceptional at the time but prefigured a period of increasing party . In 2021 a vengeful Mr Salmond founded a new nationalist party, Alba, which has had a vanishingly small impact: all of its candidates drew insufficient votes to keep their deposits in the 2024 general election.Mr Salmond’s untimely death has little immediate political salience, in other words. But it does tell a wider story. His achievement was to make the cause of Scottish nationalism a central part of the political landscape north of the border: around 45% of Scots still support independence. But the referendum defeat in 2014 deprived nationalists of a clear path to this goal. Ms Sturgeon has herself been toppled; the is still in power in Holyrood but faces a difficult election in 2026; Mr Salmond ended up a marginalised, almost trivial figure. As a political epitaph, “so close, so far” captures it.
