Alex Salmond irreversibly changed Scottish politics

Just hours before he passed away, Alex Salmond tweeted that ‘Scotland is a country, not a county’. It was a response to First Minister John Swinney’s participation in the Prime Minister’s Edinburgh summit at the weekend – and Salmond smelled a rat. A phalanx of English regional mayors being given equal prominence to his country’s FM didn’t work for him. He likely would have refused to attend had he still been in post, or at least created such a stink beforehand that his role in proceedings would have been enhanced. Somehow or other, he would have sent a message to the people of Scotland that he was on their side against the English machine.

Salmond had a political and strategic intellect which established him as the pre-eminent Scottish politician of my lifetime. Indeed, along with Margaret Thatcher, Martin McGuinness, Tony Blair and Nigel Farage, I would regard him as one of the five most impactful domestic politicians of the last half century.