Alex Salmond: charismatic politician who nearly broke up the Union

One of the most consequential – and divisive – politicians of his generation, Alex Salmond, who has died aged 69, transformed the Scottish National Party from a fringe party into a "formidable political force".

As leader of the SNP from 1990, and later first minister, he "normalised" the cause of Scottish independence, and came within a few percentage points of breaking up the United Kingdom, said The Guardian. The result of the referendum in 2014, at 45% to 55%, was closer than many had predicted; but it was a loss even so, and he resigned, to be replaced by his former protégée and political partner, Nicola Sturgeon. Three years later, Salmond lost his Westminster seat too. Then allegations of sexual misconduct started to resurface and, in 2018, Sturgeon's administration at Holyrood launched an official inquiry into allegations that he had sexually harassed two civil servants in 2013.

Incensed that Sturgeon had not publicly defended him, and insisting that he would clear his name, Salmond took the SNP government to court over its handling of the case. The inquiry was ultimately deemed unlawful, owing to the fact that the official tasked with leading it had had prior contact with the complainants. By then, though, more women had come forward, and Police Scotland had become involved.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

In March 2020, he went on trial, said The Daily Telegraph. Nine women had made charges in all. Salmond's lawyer admitted that his client was "touchy-feely", and had had "sleepy cuddles" with a colleague. Salmond said that he wished that he had been "more careful" about people's personal space. But he claimed that the charges were exaggerated or fabricated, and told colleagues that he was the victim of a plot to keep him out of SNP politics. The jury acquitted him of 12 charges, with the 13th (of sexual assault with intent to rape) "not proven". But his reputation was damaged by the facts that he had not disputed, and by his barrister being overheard seeming to say that he could be regarded "as a sex pest".

Nicola Sturgeon was criticised for misleading MSPs about what she had known about the complaints and when, but a separate inquiry found no evidence that she had engaged in a conspiracy against her former boss. He refused to give up, however: last year he launched a new malfeasance lawsuit against the government, and warned that a "day of reckoning" was coming.

Alex Salmond was born in Linlithgow, West Lothian, in 1954, and brought up in a political household: his parents, both civil servants, were working-class nationalists "with a small n", he said. He attended the town's academy, then read economics and history at the University of St Andrews, where he joined the SNP. He would later co-found the 79 Group, which called on the SNP to take a radical leftist approach. Contemporaries remembered him as a fierce debater, a mischief-maker, and an avid player of Diplomacy, said The Scotsman – the board game that rewards strategic thinking and ruthless cunning.

After graduating, he hoped to join the BBC as a reporter. When that didn't pan out, he went to work as an economist in the Scottish Office, said The Times, where he met his future wife, Moira McGlashan. Seventeen years his senior and "Conservative-leaning", she kept out of the public eye when he went into politics. They had no children. The left-wing firebrand then spent seven years working as an economist for the Royal Bank of Scotland, "where he devised a much-prized economic index, the Royal Bank/ BBC Oil Index".

In 1987, as one of his party's rising stars, he became MP for Banff and Buchan, a seat he held for the next 23 years. One of just three SNP MPs at that time, he made waves in 1988 when he interrupted Nigel Lawson's Budget speech to denounce his tax cuts as an "obscenity", and was suspended for a week. He made further headlines as a prominent critic of the poll tax (which was introduced in Scotland a year earlier than in England and Wales), and, in 1990, he succeeded Gordon Wilson as the leader of the SNP.

Seeing that the party needed to broaden its appeal, he rebranded it as centre-left, and pro-European. Then, in the late 1990s, he persuaded his party – which had previously opposed devolution – to support New Labour's creation of a Scottish Parliament, arguing for a "gradualist" approach. In the first Scottish elections in 1999, the SNP came second to Labour, led by Donald Dewar.

In 2000, Salmond stood down as SNP leader to return to Westminster, where he became a trenchant critic of Tony Blair's foreign policy. It was often said that he was most comfortable at Westminster. But then in 2004, following a slew of poor election results, his replacement, John Swinney, resigned. At the last minute, Salmond cut a deal with Sturgeon that would see him return as first minister with her as his number two. In 2007, the SNP beat Labour, and he became leader of a minority government. Overnight, he changed the sign on the civil service HQ from Scottish Executive to Scottish Government, said Lesley Riddoch in The Guardian. He removed bridge tolls, abolished tuition fees and scrapped prescription charges. And with energy reserved to Westminster, he used planning laws to veto nuclear plants and promote onshore wind farms. In 2011, despite a proportional representation system that seemed to exclude the possibility, the SNP seized an outright majority. Soon after, David Cameron agreed to the referendum. Support for independence was then hovering at about 32%.

Salmond successfully pushed for Cameron to accept that the voting age should be 16, he also negotiated the exclusion from the vote of Scots living in England. Cameron had assumed that a No vote would help kill off the SNP, but the independence campaign had seemingly galvanised many voters and, in 2015, it took 56 of Scotland's 59 seats at Westminster. But in 2017 the SNP lost support, and Salmond was among the MPs unseated. Sturgeon, who blamed the push for "indyref2" for the setback, hoped that he'd take some kind of elder statesman role; instead, in defiance of his aides' advice, he started hosting a chat show on the Kremlin-funded RT television channel.

Following his acquittal, Salmond set up a breakaway party, Alba, with other nationalists who objected to Sturgeon's Green alliance and adoption of gender politics. It won just 1.7% of the vote in the 2021 Scottish election, and failed to win any seats. Yet its poll results had recently been improving; ever the optimist, Salmond had high hopes of returning as an MSP in 2026.