Normally politicians neatly fit into the politics that surrounds them. In the case of Alex Salmond, it was the other way around. He didn’t fit in – so he set out to reshape his surroundings.
In doing so he made himself the gravity, the central force, around which the rest of Scottish politics circulated. And he did it for the best part of 30 years.
The loss of that formidable force, the sudden and shocking loss of the figure who wrote a seismic section of Scotland’s modern story, is why his death is so hard to come to terms with. Larger than life personalities like Alex always make death feel very distant, they always seem destined to be around forever. His untimely loss feels raw to a nation that has grown to know him from afar, but the intimacy of grief will be hardest felt by his loving wife Moira, their family and his many, many friends.
I did not know him well and yet he has been a major part of my life. That might seem like a strange thing to say but I think it’s a very common feeling for many of us in the SNP and the wider independence movement. Because we all felt that our political education was fuelled by the stories of Salmond and the legendary legacy he had created before he even became First Minister.
We were attracted to a fiery figure who delighted in making mischief in a political culture that at times risks becoming painfully polite.
Those stories included when, as a new MP in Westminster and surrounded by all sides, he took on the Tories and shouted down the Chancellor on budget day for introducing the hated poll tax. He was the first among many subsequent SNP politicians who found themselves thrown out of the chamber but the standing up for Scotland brand stuck.
The lessons also included how he carefully crafted a strategy to dislodge a dominant Labour Party who had for generations treated the central belt of Scotland like a personal fiefdom.
The qualities which drove his leadership were a rare mix of powerful personality and razor like political instincts. He was a digital politician in an analogue age, a character so colourful that his opponents were brushed aside to the black and white fringes of obscurity. A heavyweight political bruiser who had the fastest of feet.
A people person who commanded any and every room, but with the necessary thoughtful distance to think strategically. Any of those gifts are rare enough in themselves but it is rarer still that they were gifted and poured into one person. We all identified those qualities, and it’s fair to say that Alex wasn’t slow or shy in knowing them too.
And by his own admission he was no saint and death shouldn’t canonise him – just as anyone else, the totality of his life should be remembered. He commanded fierce friendship but equally created fierce foes. All of those legacies can and should be listened to and heard.
One of the last times I saw him was on the BBC’s Question Time. On these shows you’re under strict instruction to be there at least an hour before the recording starts. Alex flew in from London and landed into the studio 10 minutes after the programme had already started. He strode onto the TV set with the self-confidence of a man who knew that the show only really started when Alex turned up.
It was that same self-belief though that drove his path to becoming the first nationalist First Minister of our country, that allowed the Scottish Parliament to find its feet and to come of age. And it was that singular self-belief that brought us so close to winning our nation’s independence.
And it’s that confidence, in ourselves and in each other, that I think is probably the most lasting legacy he leaves. His belief in independence was formed by the simple but fundamental understanding that Scotland is capable enough, clever enough and confident enough to be a normal self-governing country – that we can be a nation like any other. For those of us who still walk on the independence path he carved, that is a powerful inheritance.
In the last few days, Alex’s use of Ted Kennedy’s famous words that ‘the dream shall never die’ has gone far and wide. But there is another Kennedy quote that is equally fitting. He once wrote – ‘We know the future will outlast all of us, but I believe that all of us will live on in the future we make.’
Alex Salmond shaped much of the Scotland we now know. Our job is to finish the work he began, to decide our own future and to build a nation of our own making.
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