Alex Salmond, Champion of Scottish Independence, Dies at 69

Alex Salmond, who turned his Scottish National Party’s dream of power into reality even though he didn’t see his vision of an independent country come true, has died. He was 69.

(Bloomberg) — Alex Salmond, who turned his Scottish National Party’s dream of power into reality even though he didn’t see his vision of an independent country come true, has died. He was 69.

Salmond collapsed on Saturday after delivering a speech in North Macedonia, the Times newspaper reported. No cause of death was given. 

Salmond became Scotland’s leader, or first minister, in 2007 when he led a minority SNP government in the semi-autonomous Scottish parliament, the first time the pro-independence party won the most votes in an election. Four years later, he led the SNP to a historic victory by winning an overall majority under a voting system designed to create coalition governments.

That paved the way for Scotland’s 2014 referendum on independence, even though Scots eventually voted against leaving the UK. 

Salmond resigned from the SNP in 2018 and was succeeded by his protege Nicola Sturgeon, following allegations of sexual harassment, of which he was later cleared. He formed the pro-independence Alba Party, which he led, in 2021 and continued to campaign for Scottish independence.

His passing was mourned by current and former peers and adversaries, including Prime Minister Keir Starmer, his predecessor Rishi Sunak and Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar. 

Few people have encapsulated Scotland’s political identity more than the pairing of Salmond and Sturgeon, the figureheads of the pro-independence movement. Yet following their failed bid to persuade Scots to leave the UK, their relationship deteriorated, along with the prospects of a second vote on Scottish independence. Sturgeon resigned as Scotland’s leader in 2023 with the pair telling the BBC earlier this year that they were unlikely to reconcile.

Salmond, an economist and oil analyst, sparred with numerous 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 into office in 2010 during another period of austerity.

He made it clear to Cameron he wanted to wrest control of Scotland from the UK government in London and gain North Sea energy revenue.  

In between, Salmond took on the Labour Party of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, the main political opposition in Scotland 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 first came to prominence as a spokesman for the “79 Group,” an association of SNP members devoted to a socialist, republican Scotland. In 1982 he and other leading members of the group were briefly expelled from the party, being allowed to rejoin 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 Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, where he was responsible for creating its monthly oil index.

He was first elected to the UK parliament in 1987, aged 32, when he defeated the incumbent Conservative lawmaker Albert McQuarrie in the northeast Scotland fishing and farming constituency of Banff and Buchan.

He first made his mark at Westminster in 1988 when he was suspended for interrupting the annual budget speech of Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson, breaking the convention that the speech is heard without interventions. Salmond made his protest when Lawson announced his plan to cut the top rate of income tax to 40%.

Salmond became leader of his party in 1990 and campaigned in the 1992 general election under the slogan of “Free by 93.” He resigned the post a decade later after criticism of his leadership by some party members over support for the Labour government’s plan to give Scotland limited powers of self-rule.

Salmond became SNP leader for a second time in 2004. In June that year, following the resignation of John Swinney, he said publicly “if nominated, I’ll decline. If drafted, I’ll defer. And if elected, I’ll resign.”

A month later he changed his mind when it appeared that Sturgeon, widely seen as his protege, was about to lose. Salmond finally quit London-based politics at the 2010 general election to focus fully on his role as leader in Edinburgh.

Salmond wrote a regular column about horse racing in the Scotsman newspaper until 2004 and was an enthusiastic golfer. He married Moira McGlashan, a Scottish Office civil servant 17 years older than him, in 1981. They had no children.

(Updates with more details starting in fourth paragraph.)