Alex Salmond’s death will leave a huge gap in Scottish politics

Alex Salmond had what all politicians desire but few ever attain, an instinct for knowing what ordinary voters want and what arguments can win them over to previously unattractive positions. This instinct only occasionally let him down. His cheery and often cheeky disposition would immediately disarm natural scepticism from doubters, his bounding enthusiasm and belief in trying to sell a positive vision would put opponents on the back foot, leaving them the low ground of negativity that would eat away at their cause.

I cannot claim to have known him as well as fellow nationalists and yet as a competing parliamentarian he always made me feel as if we were best of buddies, but for our politics. Whereas other leaders such as Donald Dewar and Henry McLeish could be aloof and patronising, Salmond would relish hearing my views so he could challenge me on them. We sparred occasionally in parliament and on television and he was not averse to playing the man instead of the ball, but so long as you stood up to him you gained his respect and friendship that meant he was always pleased to give you the time of day or a round of golf.

His popular appeal grew because he presented for many an upbeat can-do narrative around Scotland’s possibilities.

Having had genuine private sector experience as a Royal Bank of Scotland oil and gas economist he was relaxed in the company of business people, be they local newsagents, minor manufacturers or large corporates with international reputations. It was his avuncular but incisive conversational style that, I believe made him the greatest asset in Scottish political campaigning.

This was best demonstrated by the placing of his name with the phrase “Alex Salmond for First Minister” on the ballot paper for the regional list vote in the 2007 and 2011 Holyrood elections. The ploy was a typical audacious gamble, but the personal popularity of Salmond ensured the SNP regional vote increased first by 10.1 per cent in 2007 and by a further 13.5 per cent to an astonishing 44 per cent in 2011. In comparison the regional votes of every other party fell campaign after campaign, diluting their number of MSPs.

By attracting the second votes of electors who had first backed other parties in the constituency vote, the Salmond-led campaigns delivered the necessary number of regional list MSPs to obtain first, the one-seat advantage over Labour in 2007, and then the unprecedented overall majority in 2011 that Salmond used to claim a moral case for an independence referendum.

With Annabel Goldie’s Conservatives achieving their lowest ever vote share of 12.4 per cent, David Cameron crumbled and agreed to a referendum in the hope it would lance the nationalist boil, yet it nearly went all wrong.

Again Alex out-thought and out-manoeuvred his opponents, flying kites about demands he would want, such as having three propositions on the referendum ballot paper, so that in the end he got the question he wanted all along, as well as a long campaign and the electorate of his choosing. In the end, despite the tactical advantages he had won, he was unable to convince enough Scottish voters to break up the three-hundred year bond that made them both Scottish and British and he took the defeat hard.

Unfortunately he (and Nicola Sturgeon) chose not to attend the service of reconciliation at St Giles Cathedral following the vote that had been set up to pull the two campaigns together and retrieve some harmony in what had been a divisive and for some a bitter and intimidating experience. Although it possibly seemed a small thing at the time I believe it was one of his biggest political miscalculations as he and the SNP then went down the road of continually stoking division when Scotland needed to move on and have a period of healing.

His resignation as First Minister helped establish a train of events that put him under severe strain in the coming years and in the end the division and bitterness blew up in the SNP itself.

Yet for all him becoming a political outcast to the SNP leadership he had mentored and whose careers he made possible, his political insight often remained more attuned than they could collectively muster.

His legacy on issues such as free student tuition fees may yet be unpicked, but not without his name being quoted in the process – a greater bulwark to solving the financial problems faced by our universities than existed just a few days ago.

More importantly for nationalists, must be the fear the cause of Scottish independence, already in the doldrums after a crushing humiliation in this year’s general election, is set back irrevocably. It will be argued by some that Alex Salmond had become a spent force and even after creating Alba he could contribute little to bringing about Scotland’s secession from the UK. I would disagree.

While there is no likelihood of a referendum in the immediate future, were one to have come about in the next ten years I believe he would have remained an asset to the nationalist campaign. No one, not Sturgeon, not Yousaf nor Swinney could hold a candle to Alex Salmond as strategist and a campaigner and their cause will be all the weaker without him.

Brian Monteith is a former member of the Scottish and European parliaments