Scotland’s erstwhile First Minister and leader of the Scottish National Party, Alex Salmond, has been laid to rest after his funeral in Strichen in Aberdeenshire, his adopted home.
As everyone who is interested knows, he died of a heart attack while opening a ketchup bottle at lunch in North Macedonia where he had been attending a conference. Few of us get to choose how we’re going to go, and I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t have been his preferred exit. But there we have it. He was only 69.
It was publicised as a private service for close friends and family only, and yet it was attended by many who seem to fall outside that cohort, including John Bercow, former Speaker of the House of Commons, who I wouldn’t guess falls into either category.
My suspicion is that the “private funeral” tag may have been spin by the Scottish government to spare the blushes of his former comrades, and later persecutors, in the SNP. Nicola Sturgeon, John Swinney, Humza Yousaf and the rest of that gang were noticeable by their absence.
Clearly none of them would have been welcome, and why would they be? They had turned on their former mentor and leader and seemingly tried to undermine him for reasons yet to be fully explained. Their failure to do so here can be added to a long list of SNP failures in government.
Not that Salmond was fault free, and by his own admission could have been a better man. But then again couldn’t we all?
Be that as it may, it’s pretty obvious that any hope of Scottish independence in the foreseeable future has been buried alongside Alex Salmond. He was, and remains, head and shoulders in standing above his more recent associates in his party, none of whom can deliver what he and they have promised. They’re just not up to the job.
Arguably he only made two major mistakes in his later political career. The first was that, having persuaded his colleagues in the SNP that the gradual approach to achieving independence was the way to go, he assumed that they had the nous and ability to demonstrate competence in government which would convince the Scottish electorate of their cause.
How mistaken he was. Quite the opposite has occurred. The SNP has demonstrated time and time again that it is dangerously inept in administration. No wonder the Scottish people have rejected their independence agenda.
There has been no credible case presented for how the economy would work in an independent Scotland, what currency would be adopted, and what might happen to pensions and mortgages, among many other matters. Middle Scotland, however you might wish to define it, has been unimpressed and quite rightly unprepared to take a leap in the dark.
The second fundamental mistake he made, and one which he admitted he regretted with hindsight, was resigning as First Minister after his party’s defeat in the independence referendum in 2014. It was no doubt a sore loss for him, but in handing over to Nicola Sturgeon he sealed the fate of both the SNP and the independence movement.
It would have been far better had he swallowed his disappointment, stayed in post, and taken all the barbs and taunts thrown at him on the chin. Instead he left the country with a succession of lesser leaders, and now Swinney is merely the overseer of a managed decline. “It’s all over now”, as the Rolling Stones once opined.
There will be no recovery for the SNP or the Scottish independence movement in my lifetime, nor I suspect in the lifetime of anyone who is reading this. It is mired down in internal squabbles, accusations of cronyism and corruption, and assorted police investigations and looming court actions, and will wither away until a new cohort of leaders emerges in the future. And I don’t see any sign of that at the moment.
Alex Salmond was Scotland’s independence’s last hope, and now that he is gone that hope has gone too.
Stuart Crawford is a political commentator, former SNP member, and retired army officer. Sign up for his podcasts and newsletters at www.DefenceReview.uk