Alex Salmond was a former Scottish first minister who led the Scottish National Party (SNP) to Scotland's first independence referendum in 2014. He died in 2024, aged 69.
Mr Salmond left a career in finance to take his movement from the fringe to the mainstream. His politics melded North Sea oil, tax cuts, welfare largesse and flag-waving; later, when it was opportune, came anti-woke crusades. He sought to break the British ruling class but hankered to be the toast of the country club. He liked drink, cigars, women, horses and Rupert Murdoch. Colleagues described him as charming, vain, grudge-harbouring and bullying; a man of the people who travelled by helicopter, with many followers and few true friends.
Mr Salmond and Nigel Farage were mutual admirers. "I have a sneaking regard for anyone who takes on powerful establishments," Salmond said of Mr Farage. "The best operator in Scottish politics by a country mile," Mr Farage said of Salmond.
Two years before Brexiteers declared sovereignty a panacea for Britain's problems, the SNP under Salmond promised that everything would be possible if only Scots "take control". Before the Brexiteers denounced economists who queried their project as part of "Project Fear", the SNP used the same mocking epithet for those who asked what currency their new state would use. The 2014 independence referendum is now seen as an early harbinger of the populist wave that subsequently swept Europe and America.
transfer, n.: A promotion you receive on the condition that you leave town.