The very nature of Salmond's leadership brings great dangers
ALEXANDER Elliot Anderson Salmond was born on Hogmanay – and with a personality and profile like the one he has, you would think that he had to be born on a day like that.
Last week I wrote of Salmond the student.
Twenty two years later I was to encounter him again; but during the interim our careers were to follow widely different paths.
While my working life was mundane and similar to that of many others in the Highlands – Kishorn, Nigg, even fish-gutting and cheese-making – Alex Salmond was on the upwards trajectory from the very start.
Soon after graduating, he was an influential economist with the Royal Bank of Scotland and then, in 1987, he was first elected as an MP. From then on he was rarely out of the news.
For my own part, my appearance in Holyrood in 1999 had never been a foregone conclusion. Indeed I went to watch the votes being counted in Wick with two speeches in my pocket; one expressing my gratitude for the trust placed in me by voters, the other graciously accepting defeat.
In the end I was on the train to Edinburgh.
My first re-encounter with Alex Salmond took place as we waited in the Chamber for the Queen to arrive and formally open the first session of the new Scottish Parliament. I was wearing a St Andrews University graduate tie – and suddenly Salmond spotted it and came hurrying over.
"I like the tie – but I don't know who you are..." and he cocked a questioning eyebrow at me. Lesson number one – clearly his high profile political career had obscured older memories of when we had been in student politics together. Or perhaps this could be explained by the "wee man" chip on my shoulder: I mean, how could he possibly remember everyone?
But we were hardly finding our feet in the Scottish Parliament when scarcely a year later, and to everyone's astonishment, Salmond suddenly announced that he was standing down as his party's leader. Why was this? Today, nearly 12 years on, politicians and commentators still scratch their heads.
At the time the rumour mill, always particularly scurrilous when it comes to politics, had it that his resignation was all about gambling debts. But there was never a single shred of evidence for this suggestion and it was soon forgotten.
My own feeling is that it may have had something to do with the Scottish Government leadership during those first months.
As an opposition leader, Salmond simply wasn't able to lay a glove on the then First Minister, Donald Dewar. And when Dewar was off sick the same was true of his deputy Jim Wallace: "nil point" as they say in the song contest.
It is worth remembering that today's political juggernaut simply didn't have it his own way back then. Maybe Salmond simply said to himself "stuff this for a game of soldiers – I'm off back to Westminster for an easier life". Maybe one day we'll know the answer.
But when Salmond surprised us all again and returned, first as leader in 2004, and then back in Edinburgh again as an MSP and First Minister in 2007, it was as a politician who outclassed virtually all his opponents, as the aforementioned juggernaut that I had first glimpsed at St Andrews University. It was as if the period leading up to his earlier resignation had never happened.
Building on his party's advance in 2007 with a truly historic outright victory last May, right up to today, Salmond's performance has been absolutely first class. No matter how many people may wish that this wasn't the case, it simply cannot be taken away from him.
"And I hear you are going – you are to stand down. Jamie, why?" Again the quizzical raised eyebrows and direct wide-eyed stare. I wish that I'd had the quick wit to remind him that he'd once stood down, but the moment passed.
Being a front bench spokesman, and because of the way the players are seated in Holyrood, at the five o'clock vote I usually found myself sitting beside Salmond. We always had time for chatter and banter in between the complexities of voting, and for this reason I got to know him again, as well as, maybe better than, I had as a student.
And it is this knowledge that tempts me to make a prediction, one that might well turn out to be wrong, but I'll chance it anyway.
Despite having a front bench team of ability, Salmond's iron control – no one dares to step out of line – and his larger-than-life persona make him virtually irreplaceable. At the very top of his game, if Salmond was to depart for a second time, then I simply cannot see the person in his party who could fill the gap. The danger for Salmond's party is that it can all too often look like a one man band. Take him out, and things could be very different.
There is an interesting historical parallel – and curiously enough it is also to do with nationalism.
Described as "the strongest man in the House of Commons", in the late 1880s Charles Stewart Parnell, the leader of the Irish Nationalist Party, was sweeping all before him. He was at the very summit of his career and never had Irish home rule, or even Irish independence, looked closer.
But in November 1890, Parnell's long-term relationship with the wife of another nationalist MP became public, and with astonishing speed his leadership collapsed in ruins and his party split. It was to take almost 20 years for the party to recover its position.
We live in different times today when an extra-marital relationship need not destroy a political career – and I do not for one instant suggest that there is some scandal lurking that may bring down Scotland's First Minister – but the parallel is there.
Two men, high above the rest, and at the apogee of power – and for one of them a sudden personal disaster – followed by a collective disaster for his party. Nearly two decades in the wilderness.
Here is my prediction – not that scandal lurks for Salmond, but that the very nature of his leadership brings great danger with it. The next months and years are going to be of crucial importance for Scotland: whatever happens, like Charles Stewart Parnell, Alex Salmond's place in history is secure.
