The complex legacy of Alex Salmond

In reflecting on the life of Alex Salmond, I should begin by paraphrasing his successor as First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon. I cannot pretend that the last few years of the breakdown in his relationship with the mainstream of the party he once led did not happen, but we cannot help but reflect on a remarkable political life.

Salmond was central to the birth of the modern SNP. As former political editor of the Herald Murray Ritchie put it, he took an ‘ill-disciplined, fractious and impecunious fringe party and established it as the dominant force in Scottish political life’, noting: ‘This in a country where Labour had been in control for half a century.’ But while Salmond-as-leader is going to be the point of reference for many in the coming days, it is important to remember where the SNP came from before he came to the leadership in 1990 – defeating the establishment candidate, the late Margaret Ewing.