Alex Salmond: a clever career but a toxic legacy

Salmond was a significant political figure who dominated Scottish public life for over a decade. But he was no titan.

Alex Salmond via Shutterstock

The death of a politician is guaranteed to provoke a frenzy of tributes and hagiography. On the part of his devoted followers, it is sincere; in the case of his rivals and opponents, it is often hypocrisy, performed to placate public opinion and to conceal relief that a competitor is no longer a threat. In other words, it is a posthumous continuation of the dark art of politics, executed on the same calculations as obtained when the departed was still active in the public square.

The death of Alex Salmond inspired at least two national newspapers to employ the term “titan” in banner headlines on their front pages. Salmond was a very effective operator, his electoral success counterbalanced by some remarkable political solecisms: he was a significant political figure who, for more than a decade, dominated public life in Scotland; but he was not a titan.

The responses to his demise have ranged from the extravagant eulogizing of the political class to a minority of iconoclastic commentaries highlighting his more egregious deficiencies and blunders. Any objective assessment will place him somewhere between the two extremes. Politicians today increasingly fixate upon what they call their “legacy”, a concept that often fits very ill with their actual careers: there is frequently a disparity between career and legacy, and Salmond was an example of that dichotomy. His career, in the sense of advancing his personal status and agenda, was largely successful; his legacy was disastrous.

In career terms, Alex Salmond’s achievements were impressive. He entered the House of Commons at his first attempt, in 1987, defeating Albert McQuarrie, “the Buchan Bulldog”, for the seat of Banff and Buchan, and becoming deputy leader of the SNP that same year. Three years later, he became leader. In terms of personal ambition, that was an undoubted achievement; but the broader reality was that Salmond was just one of four Scottish nationalist MPs – the notorious “taxi-load” – going to Westminster. At the 1997 general election, their number was increased to a modest six. 

Yet, a decade later, Salmond was heading a minority devolved government in Scotland. It is not mean-minded disparagement of his record to point out that Salmond did not kick open the door to a massive expansion of the SNP’s political presence, leading to government, through his personal abilities: the door was opened for him by Labour, in one of the most extreme acts of self-harm that even that tormented party has ever indulged in. Persuaded by Donald Dewar, Tony Blair agreed to a referendum on Scottish devolution which was won by the Yes vote, leading to the establishment of a Scottish parliament at Holyrood in 1999.

Labour somnambulists, having run Scotland as a one-party state for half a century, believed they had accomplished a great coup. George Robertson famously claimed that devolution would kill nationalism stone dead. Donald Dewar became First Minister of Scotland, having devised a voting system designed to prevent any party from gaining an overall majority at Holyrood. When he died the following year, a statue was erected to him, as “Father of the Nation”, in Glasgow, bearing the portentous inscription: “There shall be a Scottish parliament.” 

That was Scottish Labour’s epitaph: it lost power to Salmond and the SNP in 2007 and, if it should finally succeed in returning to office at the Scottish elections in 2026 – an outcome until recently thought probable, but increasingly being put in doubt by the rate at which Keir Starmer is alienating the Scottish electorate – Dewar’s Baldrick-style cunning plan will have deprived Labour of power for 19 years. Donald Dewar is not much spoken about in Scottish Labour circles these days, though his statue continues to provide an amenity to Glasgow’s pigeons.

The moral to be derived from that chronicle of personal vanity and political ineptitude is that Alex Salmond did not miraculously evict Labour and capture the governance of Scotland: it was gifted to him by his brain-dead political opponents. In the meantime, Salmond left the Scottish parliament in 2001, after a series of personality clashes, leaving the SNP under the lacklustre leadership of John Swinney (“Tremble, Mogadon shareholders!). When Swinney had to resign, following disastrous election results, Salmond returned as leader. However, as he was not an MSP, Nicola Sturgeon acted as parliamentary leader at Holyrood until Salmond was re-elected.