Alex Salmond obituary: A master campaigner and tactician who reshaped Scottish politics

He transformed his party, taking it from the fringes of Scottish politics to the centre of power

Alex Salmond began his rise to power with an early start in politics, standing as the SNP candidate in mock elections at Linlithgow Primary School and winning a landslide victory by offering half-days for all pupils and promising to replace school milk with ice cream.

He would eventually go on to lead the SNP into government for the first time and take the country to the brink of independence.

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He transformed his party, taking it from the fringes of Scottish politics to the centre of power, ousting Labour from its traditional dominance and coming close to realising the Nationalists’ dream of independence.

Born the son of two civil servants on Hogmanay 1954, he attended Linlithgow Academy, where he was nicknamed "Fish" and then studied at Edinburgh College of Commerce from 1972-3, gaining an HNC in Business Studies, before going on to St Andrews University, where he graduated with a degree in economics and history.

It was while he was at St Andrews that he joined the SNP after an argument with an English girlfriend.

University friends also recall him sometimes staying up all night playing Diplomacy, a board game which requires strategy and negotiation as well as bluff and backstabbing - a good training for any politician.

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After university, he wanted to become a TV reporter, applying for a job with the BBC and making it a good way through the process and reportedly being devastated when he didn’t quite make it. It is also said he considered becoming a Church of Scotland minister.

But instead he followed his parents, Robert and Mary, into the civil service, going to work in 1978 as an assistant economist in the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries for Scotland, part of the then Scottish Office. There he met fellow civil servant Moira McGlashan, 17 years his senior, and the couple were married in 1981.

Mr Salmond soon moved on to the Royal Bank of Scotland where he worked for seven years, including five years as oil economist.

Meanwhile, his activity in the SNP was growing. He started his political life as a committed left-winger and was a leading member of the socialist 79 Group inside the SNP. Along with other key figures in the group, he was briefly suspended from the party in 1982. But the episode did not impede his political rise and he was elected to parliament as MP for the Banff and Buchan constituency in 1987.

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At that time he was one of just three SNP MPs at Westminster, but he was determined to make his mark and the following year he grabbed headlines by interrupting Conservative chancellor Nigel Lawson's Budget speech to protest about tax cuts for the rich while the Government pressed ahead with the poll tax.

In 1990, he was elected leader of the SNP after a contest with Margaret Ewing, daughter-in-law of Nationalist icon Winnie Ewing.

He brought a new dynamism to the party and at the 1992 general election it increased its vote by 50 per cent, though failed to win any more seats. When Tony Blair became prime minister in 1997 and brought forward legislation to create a Scottish Parliament, Mr Salmond campaigned alongside Labour and the Liberal Democrats to bring about devolution, which he saw as a stepping stone to independence.

But the SNP's performance in the first Scottish Parliament elections in 1999 - winning just 35 seats to Labour's 56 - was seen as disappointing and the following year he quit as leader, standing down as an MSP in 2001 to concentrate on his role as an MP at Westminster.

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When his successor, John Swinney, resigned in 2004, Mr Salmond ruled out a return but then changed his mind and announced he would stand with Nicola Sturgeon as his running mate and won 75 per cent of the votes, becoming leader for the second time.

He returned to Holyrood as MSP for Gordon in the 2007 elections and led the SNP into government for the first time. The party had won just one seat more than Labour and formed a minority administration which survived against the odds for its full term with remarkably few defeats.

In the 2011 Holyrood election Mr Salmond led the SNP to a storming victory, winning an unprecedented overall majority in the Scottish Parliament and paving the way for the 2014 independence referendum.

As voting day neared, opinion polls showed the Yes campaign edging ahead, but in the end the result was 55-45 against independence. Mr Salmond announced his resignation the next day. He said 20 years leading the SNP was "not an unreasonable shift at the coal face".

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But those who thought he would step back from frontline politics were mistaken, with Mr Salmond announcing his intention to return to Westminster by standing in the 2015 general election.

He won the Gordon seat, and returned, alongside 55 SNP MPs, to the House of Commons, standing down as an MSP at the 2016 Scottish elections.

As the party’s foreign affairs spokesman, and with a UK-wide profile thanks to the independence referendum, Mr Salmond became one of Westminster’s biggest names.

As the 2016 EU referendum rolled around, he was often seen giving television interviews, and could even be heard on his own weekly radio phone-in show.

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Many suspected Mr Salmond still had the ear of Ms Sturgeon, although despite never being short of opinions, he insisted moves towards a second independence vote were hers to make.

Even before Brexit, he seemed certain that Scotland’s fate had been fixed: “The destination is set. We’re now just arguing about the timetable,” he said in 2015.

In 2016, after the vote to leave the EU, he made no secret of his preference for a second vote sooner rather than later – pre-empting the first minister’s autumn 2018 to spring 2019 timetable.

The following years would see a fracturing of the relationship between Mr Salmond and Ms Sturgeon, culminating in the launch of his rival Scottish independence party, Alba, in 2021.

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The pair’s relationship broke down following complaints about Mr Salmond’s behaviour while first minister from two Government employees.

The handling of the complaints would subsequently be found to have been “tainted by apparent bias”, according to a judge at the Court of Session who awarded Mr Salmond more than £500,000.

After he was cleared of accusations of sexual assault against nine women, including a charge of attempted rape, Mr Salmond accused senior figures in government of a plot to jail him, which Ms Sturgeon described as “absurd” in a hearing of a specially convened Holyrood inquiry.

Speaking in a BBC documentary, Salmond And Sturgeon: A Troubled Union, which was broadcast last month, Mr Salmond said he was unsure if his relationship with Ms Sturgeon could ever be mended.

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“I don’t really do hurt feelings very much … but it’s a big regret that Nicola and I are no longer on speaking terms,” he said.

Reflecting on her relationship with Mr Salmond and its breakdown, Ms Sturgeon said he was “for a long time, a very positive force in my life”, adding: “But I think I had to learn how to be myself.”

As recently as September of this year, Mr Salmond said he regretted his decision to step down the day after the referendum vote, describing it as a “mistake”.

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