Alex Salmond, who turned the Scottish National Party’s dream of governing into reality even though he never saw his vision of an independent country come to fruition, has died. He was 69 years old.
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(Bloomberg) – Alex Salmond, who turned his Scottish National Party’s dream of power into reality even though he never saw his vision of an independent country come to fruition, has died. He was 69 years old.
Salmond collapsed on Saturday after giving a speech in North Macedonia, The Times reported. No cause of death was given.
Salmond became Scottish leader, or first minister, in 2007 when he led a minority SNP government in an independent Scottish parliament, the first time a pro-independence party had won a majority in an election. Four years later, he led the SNP to a historic victory by winning an absolute majority under a voting system designed to create coalition governments.
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That paved the way for Scotland’s 2014 referendum on independence, although Scots ultimately voted against leaving the UK.
Salmond resigned from the SNP in 2018 and was succeeded by her protégé Nicola Sturgeon, following allegations of sexual harassment, which were later cleared. He formed the independent Alba Party, which he led, in 2021 and continued to campaign for Scottish independence.
His passing was mourned by peers and former opponents, including Prime Minister Keir Starmer, his predecessor Rishi Sunak and Scottish Labor leader Anas Sarwar.
Few people have embodied the political identity of Scotland better than the pair of Salmond and Sturgeon, the leaders of the independence movement. However following their failed bid to persuade Scots to leave the UK, their relationship deteriorated, along with the possibility of a second vote on Scottish independence. Sturgeon is stepping down as Scottish leader in 2023 and the couple told the BBC earlier this year that they were unlikely to reconcile.
Salmond, an economist and oil expert, fell out with many British prime ministers, starting with Conservative leader Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s as people blamed her for rising unemployment and unfair taxation, and ending with David Cameron, who led the party back to power in 2010. another time of trouble.
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He has made it clear to Cameron that he wants to wrest Scotland from the UK government in London and get the benefit of the North Sea’s power.
In between, Salmond took on the Labor Party of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, the main opposition party in Scottish politics since the re-establishment of the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh in 1999 after three centuries.
Born in Linlithgow, west of Edinburgh, on New Year’s Eve 1954, Salmond came to prominence as a spokesman for the “79 Group,” an organization of SNP members committed to a socialist, Scottish republic. In 1982, he and other leading members of the group were temporarily expelled from the group, only to be allowed to join it the following year.
Salmond, the son of two civil servants, worked as a government economist between 1978 and 1980 after graduating from St. Andrews University. Between 1980 and 1987 he worked for the Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, where he was responsible for producing its monthly oil index.
He was first elected to the UK parliament in 1987, aged 32, when he defeated incumbent Conservative MP Albert McQuarrie in the north-east Scottish fishing and farming constituency of Banff and Buchan.
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He first came to prominence at Westminster in 1988 when he was suspended for interrupting Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson’s annual budget speech, breaking the convention that speeches should be heard without intervention. Salmond made his protest when Lawson announced his plan to lower the top income tax rate to 40%.
Salmond became leader of his own party in 1990 and campaigned in the 1992 general election under the slogan “Free 93.” He left the post after a decade after his leadership was criticized by other party members for supporting the Labor government’s plan to give Scotland limited powers of self-government.
Salmond became SNP leader for a second time in 2004. In June of that year, after the resignation of John Swinney, he said publicly that “if I am nominated, I will decline.” If I am written, I will postpone. And if I am elected, I will resign.”
A month later he changed his mind when it seemed that Sturgeon, well known as his protein, was about to lose. Salmond eventually resigned from London-based politics at the 2010 general election to focus fully on his role as leader in Edinburgh.
Salmond wrote a regular horse racing column for the Scotsman newspaper until 2004 and was a keen golfer. He married Moira McGlashan, a Scottish Office civil servant 17 years his senior, in 1981. They had no children.
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