Alex Salmond
Alexander Elliot Anderson Salmond was a Scottish politician who served as First Minister of Scotland from 2007 to 2014. A prominent figure in the Scottish nationalist movement, he was Leader of the Scottish National Party on two occasions, from 1990 to 2000 and from 2004 to 2014. He then served as leader of the Alba Party from 2021 until his death in 2024.
A graduate of the University of St Andrews, he worked as an economist in the Scottish Office, and later, the Royal Bank of Scotland. He was elected to the British House of Commons in 1987, serving as the Member of Parliament for Banff and Buchan from 1987 to 2010. In 1990, he successfully defeated Margaret Ewing in the SNP leadership contest. Salmond led the party through the first election to the Scottish Parliament in 1999, where the SNP emerged as the largest opposition party. He was elected as the Member of the Scottish Parliament for Banff and Buchan in that year's election. He resigned as leader in 2000 and stood down as an MSP the following year, when he was appointed leader of the SNP's Westminster group. Salmond was re-elected as leader of the SNP in the 2004 leadership contest, after running on a joint ticket with Nicola Sturgeon. She led the SNP at Holyrood until Salmond was elected to the Scottish Parliament in 2007 for Gordon. The SNP placed first, ahead of the governing Labour Party in the 2007 election by one seat, with Salmond securing a confidence and supply support from the Scottish Greens, resulting in Salmond's appointment as first minister.
Salmond led an SNP minority government in his first term. His government passed landmark legislation, including the abolition of university tuition fees, the scrapping of prescription charges and commitment to renewable energy. Salmond was the first nationalist first minister and in his first term he failed to obtain support for a referendum on Scottish independence due to insufficient support. At the 2011 Scottish Parliament election the SNP won with an overall majority, a feat previously thought almost impossible under the additional member system used in elections for the Scottish Parliament. As of 2024, this is the only election in which a party has won a majority in the Scottish Parliament. Salmond used this mandate to hold a referendum, which led to the signing of the Edinburgh Agreement and the 2014 referendum. The Yes Scotland campaign, which his deputy Sturgeon led, was defeated in the referendum. As a result, Salmond resigned and was succeeded by Sturgeon.
Returning to Westminster, Salmond was elected MP for Gordon in the 2015 general election. He was the SNP International Affairs and Europe spokesperson from 2015 to 2017. He left the House of Commons at the 2017 general election after losing his seat to the Scottish Conservative Party candidate Colin Clark. In August 2018, Salmond resigned from the party to fight allegations of rape and sexual assault, which he denied. In January 2019, he was charged with 14 offences, including attempted rape and sexual assault, but he was awarded compensation of £500,000 by the Scottish Government in August 2019 and later acquitted of all charges after trial in March 2020. In 2021, he criticised Sturgeon for her government's flawed investigations into these allegations which resulted in a political scandal. Salmond later was announced as the leader of a new pro-independence party, the Alba Party. The party failed to gain any seats in the 2021 national and 2022 local elections. He led the party until his death in 2024.
Early life and education
Alexander Elliot Anderson Salmond was born at his parents' home at 101 Preston Road, Linlithgow, West Lothian, Scotland, on 31 December 1954. He was the second of four children born to Robert Fyfe Findlay Salmond and Mary Stewart Salmond, both of whom were civil servants. Robert Salmond, who served in the Royal Navy during the Second World War, had originally worked as an electrician, and his family had been resident in Linlithgow since the mid-18th century. Salmond's grandmother, Abigail Ireland, married Alexander Salmond, one of six children to Robert Dobie Salmond and Margaret Elms, the daughter of Margaret Duncan and Henry Elms, a native of England.Salmond's middle names come from his family's tradition of naming their children after the local Church of Scotland minister, in this case Gilbert Elliot Anderson of St Ninian's Craigmailen Parish Church in Linlithgow. He remained a member of the Church of Scotland his whole life.
From a young age, Salmond suffered very bad asthma. His parents were loving and caring and although he did not grow up poor, "money was tight" and the importance of education was emphasised in the family. Salmond was a skinny child, often referred to by his father as a "skink", as in cullen skink.
Salmond was educated at Linlithgow Primary School, before attending Linlithgow Academy from 1966 to 1972. He studied at Edinburgh College of Commerce from 1972 to 1973, gaining an HNC in Business Studies, and was then accepted by the University of St Andrews, where he studied Economics and Medieval History. During his time at St Andrews, Salmond lived in Andrew Melville Hall. He was elected as vice-president of the students' representative council in 1977 and was also nominated to join St Andrews Community Council that year. Salmond graduated with a 2:2 Joint Honours MA in Economics and Medieval History in May 1978.
Early career
After graduating in 1978, he entered the Government Economic Service as an assistant economist in the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries for Scotland, part of the now defunct Scottish Office. Two years later he joined the staff of the Royal Bank of Scotland, where he worked for seven years, initially as an assistant economist. In 1982 he was appointed oil economist, and from 1984 he worked as a bank economist as well as continuing to hold the position of oil economist. While with the Royal Bank, he wrote and broadcast extensively for both domestic and international outlets. He also contributed regularly to oil and energy conferences. In 1983, Salmond created a "Royal Bank/BBC oil index" that is still used.Early political years
Salmond became active in the SNP when he joined the Federation of Student Nationalists at the University of St Andrews in 1973. His conversion is generally credited to his then girlfriend, Debbie Horton, an English student from London, who was secretary of the St Andrews University Labour club. After an argument in December 1973, she told him: "If you feel like that, go and join the bloody SNP". The next day Salmond did. The following day he and a friend attended the sparsely populated AGM of the university branch of the Federation of Student Nationalists. Being the only two fully paid-up members of the SNP at the university, they were duly elected president and treasurer. Although a left-winger at the time he joined, Salmond had considerable doubts as to whether or not the Labour Government would legislate for a devolved Scottish Assembly.Salmond started his political life as a committed left-winger inside the SNP and was a leading member of the socialist republican organisation within it, the 79 Group. He was, along with other group leaders, suspended from membership of the SNP when the 79 Group was banned within the larger party. In 1981, he married Moira French McGlashan, then a senior civil servant with the Scottish Office.
Following the SNP's National Council narrowly voting to uphold the expulsion, Salmond and the others were allowed back into the party a month later, and in 1985 he was elected as the SNP's Vice Convener for Publicity. In 1987 he stood for Parliament in Banff and Buchan and defeated the incumbent Conservative MP, Albert McQuarrie. Later that year Salmond became Senior Vice Convener of the SNP. He was at this time still viewed as being firmly on the left of the party and had become a key ally of Jim Sillars, who joined him in the House of Commons when he won a by-election for the seat of Glasgow Govan in 1988. Salmond served as a member of the House of Commons Energy Select committee from 1987 to 1992.
Leadership of the Scottish National Party
First tenure: 1990–2000
When Gordon Wilson stood down as SNP leader in 1990, Salmond decided to contest the leadership. His only opponent was Margaret Ewing, whom Sillars decided to support. This caused considerable consternation amongst the SNP left as the two main left leaders were opposing each other in the contest. Salmond went on to win the leadership election by 486 votes to Ewing's 146.His first test as leader was the general election in 1992, with the SNP having high hopes of making an electoral breakthrough. Whilst considerably increasing its share of the vote, it failed to win a large number of seats. Sillars lost his, causing him to describe the Scottish people as '90-minute patriots'. This comment ended the political friendship between Salmond and Sillars, and Sillars would soon become a vocal critic of Salmond's style of leadership.
The SNP increased its number of MPs from four to six in the 1997 general election, which saw a landslide victory for the Labour Party. After election, Labour legislated for a devolved Scottish parliament in Edinburgh. Although still committed to a fully independent Scotland, Salmond signed the SNP up to supporting the campaign for devolution, and, along with Scottish Labour leader Donald Dewar and Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Jim Wallace, played an active part in securing the victory for devolution in the Scotland referendum of 1997. Many hardline fundamentalists in the SNP objected to committing the party to devolution, as it was short of full political Scottish independence.
Salmond's first spell as leader was characterised by a moderation of his earlier left-wing views and by his firmly placing the SNP into a gradualist, but still pro-independence, strategy. Salmond was one of the few politicians in the UK to oppose the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999. He was opposed to the conflict because it was not authorised by a United Nations Security Council resolution, which was a controversial subject at the time. Despite this, Salmond was heavily criticised in the media for describing Tony Blair's decision to intervene militarily as an "unpardonable folly".
Several years as party leader earned Salmond an unusually high profile for an SNP politician in the London-based media. In 1998, Salmond won the Spectator Award for Political Strategist of the Year. Following an appearance on the entertainment programme Call My Bluff, Salmond used one of the 'bluff' cards that are used as props in the show in the run-up to the first elections to the Scottish Parliament. To counter his frustration at having to sit in silence through what he claimed was an inappropriately political speech by Tony Blair at a charity lunch, he held up the bluff card as the Prime Minister began querying Scotland's economic prospects should independence occur. Throughout his time in politics, Salmond has maintained his interest in horse racing, writing a weekly column for The Scotsman and appearing a number of times on Channel 4's The Morning Line. During the election campaign, Salmond was photographed feeding a young supporter a Solero ice cream during an event at Stirling University, creating a photograph that would become iconic.