Salmond’s critics can’t ignore his lasting legacy
When he lost his Gordon seat in the 2017 general election, Alex Salmond told his count and those watching – friend and foe – that ‘you’ve not seen the last o’ my bonnet and me’. The line comes from Sir Walter Scott’s Bonnie Dundee, an ode to John Graham, the 1st Viscount Dundee, who led the 1689 Jacobite uprising to restore James VII and the House of Stuart. Quoting the lyric was pure Salmond. Not only was he fond of weaving poetry into his public statements – an art sadly lost to most political rhetoricians – it reflected his self-mythologising as a modern-day Scottish rebel against the British establishment. Salmond
