The Chief
The Chief is the name of a mountain just outside Squamish on the road to Whistler in British Columbia, Canada, but Martin Kettle uses the leitmotif here as a way of paying tribute to Alex Salmond in the wake of the Scottish independence referendum.
Like the great Irish home rule leader Parnell, Salmond brought his nationalist cause to the threshold of triumph – but his departure was surely not forced on him today
By Martin Kettle- The Guardian
‘Paradoxically, his power within his party and his country was never greater than on the day he gave it up, following the shattering independence referendum defeat.' Photograph: Murdo Macleod
Alex Salmond is arguably the biggest and most successful active political figure not just in Scotland, but even in the country he longs to leave. He has dominated Scottish politics so completely for the last decade that the void he leaves behind is larger today than it would have been at any time in his career.
Paradoxically, his power within his party and his country was never greater than on the day he gave it up, following the shattering but expected (even by him, one suspects) independence referendum defeat.
Yet it is a mark of the changes that have overtaken the Scottish National party he has led so surely and successfully for 20 of the last 24 years that the SNP now possesses a cadre group of plausible prospective successors, of whom Salmond’s deputy Nicola Sturgeon is self-evidently the frontrunner to take over.
Such has been Salmond’s pre-eminence in Scottish politics today that it is hard to look back and imagine the time when he was not the commanding figure he is now. Yet not only did such time exist, it also existed for much of the time between 1990, when he took over the party reins from the much more fundamentalist nationalist leader Gordon Wilson, and 2000, when he relinquished the post to John Swinney.
The pivotal moment in Salmond’s career was his decision to return from Westminster – which he loved – to Holyrood to contest the leadership once again in 2004. This move back to Scotland was an opportunist masterstroke of the kind that has marked his successes of the last decade.
The big nationalist defeat in Thursday’s historic independence referendum – in which, remarkably, 45% of Scots voted to leave the United Kingdom – is in many ways the first, and certainly the largest, serious reverse that Salmond has suffered in his astonishingly successful second period as SNP leader.
Salmond’s dominant period began because the Labour party, which had seemed to be the essential party in Scottish politics before and after devolution in 1999, had neglected its core supporters in Scotland. Salmond, who has always generally been on the left of the SNP, as well as being on its less fundamentalist wing, rapidly seized his moment.
The combination of the Iraq war, which punctured Tony Blair’s personal standing, and New Labour’s growing domestic unpopularity, opened the way to Salmond’s audacious win in the Holyrood election of 2007. Salmond fought that campaign for what he called “the Scottish way – to avoid being sucked into the Blair agenda south of the border”. It was the forerunner of the increasingly social democratic rhetorical agenda that he has pursued ever since – an agenda which has been the golden thread of his time in office, which enabled him to lead the SNP to overall majority status in 2011 and which this week saw him capture Labour’s greatest citadel, Glasgow, in the referendum. There is little doubt that, had he wanted to, he could have led the SNP to a third victory in 2016.
Salmond has sometimes drawn a parallel between himself and the great Irish home ruler leader Charles Stuart Parnell, a man who brought constitutional home rule to the verge of success before being forced out of politics. In Parnell’s case, that departure was enforced. He was cited in a divorce case, tried to hang on to his post, and was finally ousted.
Nothing about Salmond’s departure – which was surely not forced upon him today – compares in any way with Parnell’s. But the comparison between their shared electoral brilliance, their strong leadership skills and the way they brought their respective nationalist causes on to the threshold of triumph, is a striking one.
Almost a century and a quarter after his fall, Parnell remains to this day one of the most revered figures in Ireland’s political history. In any future independent Scotland, Salmond is likely to rate something of the same status as the leader the Irish simply called “the chief”.
Alex Salmond is arguably the biggest and most successful active political figure not just in Scotland, but even in the country he longs to leave. He has dominated Scottish politics so completely for the last decade that the void he leaves behind is larger today than it would have been at any time in his career.
Paradoxically, his power within his party and his country was never greater than on the day he gave it up, following the shattering but expected (even by him, one suspects) independence referendum defeat.
Yet it is a mark of the changes that have overtaken the Scottish National party he has led so surely and successfully for 20 of the last 24 years that the SNP now possesses a cadre group of plausible prospective successors, of whom Salmond’s deputy Nicola Sturgeon is self-evidently the frontrunner to take over.
Such has been Salmond’s pre-eminence in Scottish politics today that it is hard to look back and imagine the time when he was not the commanding figure he is now. Yet not only did such time exist, it also existed for much of the time between 1990, when he took over the party reins from the much more fundamentalist nationalist leader Gordon Wilson, and 2000, when he relinquished the post to John Swinney.
The pivotal moment in Salmond’s career was his decision to return from Westminster – which he loved – to Holyrood to contest the leadership once again in 2004. This move back to Scotland was an opportunist masterstroke of the kind that has marked his successes of the last decade.
The big nationalist defeat in Thursday’s historic independence referendum – in which, remarkably, 45% of Scots voted to leave the United Kingdom – is in many ways the first, and certainly the largest, serious reverse that Salmond has suffered in his astonishingly successful second period as SNP leader.
Salmond’s dominant period began because the Labour party, which had seemed to be the essential party in Scottish politics before and after devolution in 1999, had neglected its core supporters in Scotland. Salmond, who has always generally been on the left of the SNP, as well as being on its less fundamentalist wing, rapidly seized his moment.
The combination of the Iraq war, which punctured Tony Blair’s personal standing, and New Labour’s growing domestic unpopularity, opened the way to Salmond’s audacious win in the Holyrood election of 2007. Salmond fought that campaign for what he called “the Scottish way – to avoid being sucked into the Blair agenda south of the border”. It was the forerunner of the increasingly social democratic rhetorical agenda that he has pursued ever since – an agenda which has been the golden thread of his time in office, which enabled him to lead the SNP to overall majority status in 2011 and which this week saw him capture Labour’s greatest citadel, Glasgow, in the referendum. There is little doubt that, had he wanted to, he could have led the SNP to a third victory in 2016.
Salmond has sometimes drawn a parallel between himself and the great Irish home ruler leader Charles Stuart Parnell, a man who brought constitutional home rule to the verge of success before being forced out of politics. In Parnell’s case, that departure was enforced. He was cited in a divorce case, tried to hang on to his post, and was finally ousted.
Nothing about Salmond’s departure – which was surely not forced upon him today – compares in any way with Parnell’s. But the comparison between their shared electoral brilliance, their strong leadership skills and the way they brought their respective nationalist causes on to the threshold of triumph, is a striking one.
Almost a century and a quarter after his fall, Parnell remains to this day one of the most revered figures in Ireland’s political history. In any future independent Scotland, Salmond is likely to rate something of the same status as the leader the Irish simply called “the chief”.
