It’s hard to write an obituary for someone you can’t quite believe is dead.
But we must look the truth in the eyes, and it is so.
Alex Salmond would have wished to die, some decades from now, in the country he fought for all his life, and preferably not before it had recovered its independence. But if he was to depart this life in a foreign land, where could be more apt than Macedonia – the birthplace, after all, of Alexander The Great?
Or to be more precise, North Macedonia, because as everyone who ever spoke to him would tell you, Salmond’s command of historical detail was as meticulous as his grasp of political detail. He loved to share his knowledge of history, which was as deep as it was wide, with anyone in earshot. You could passingly mention some obscure figure and then be treated to an extensive and captivating lecture that would be the envy of any professor of the subject, and it was best to abandon any hope of getting a word in edgeways for the next half-hour or so.
I would not presume to elevate myself to the level of his friend. We met in person only four or five times, when he interviewed me for his TV show and at last month’s “10 Years On” event in Glasgow, and over some long lunches in Bath’s grand Royal Crescent Hotel and the city’s equally fancy Ivy restaurant. Alex loved the finer things in life, none more so than good food and drink in company, and if he took you to lunch it was advisable to write off the rest of the day.
But he treated everyone as a friend either in fact or in waiting. In truth he just loved people. In the hours since his passing we’ve been retweeting innumerable personal anecdotes from those who knew him well or met him in passing, and he treated everyone in the same warm and courteous way, be they the great and the good or a random stranger, and whether an ally or an opponent.
He had countless opportunities and ample justification to retire quietly and enjoy his remaining years relaxing in the leafy peacefulness of the Aberdeenshire countryside. Instead he tirelessly dashed around the country and the globe, talking to anyone who would listen, in grand metropolitan theatres or wee church and village halls in the middle of nowhere, in any circumstances and at any hour.
(It wasn’t unusual to get a phone call from him well past midnight, often from a car on the way to or from yet another far-flung engagement, with some dramatic revelation or tip-off, or the details of an ingenious new plan or project.)
Nor was it from a lack of options. Salmond was what we Scots call a “lad o’pairts”, who succeeded in every field he entered throughout his life, from oil economist to politician to live chat-show host and TV presenter.
His “controversial” RT show – controversial only because the small-minded and visionless drones in control of the country’s domestic broadcasters failed to provide it with a more mainstream outlet – invited figures from every part of the political spectrum and gave them the space to speak properly in a way long since lost to current-affairs TV, because he believed in the ideal of open and civilised political discourse.
Much of the commentary since his death has been focused on the assertion that he was “divisive”, a criticism of extraordinary idiocy to make about a politician. Division is the key intrinsic nature of politics – the voting chambers of the House Of Commons are actually called the Division Lobbies – and as such is inescapable, but it was in reality the polar opposite of Salmond’s approach.
He sought consensus and co-operation at every turn, seeing it as the only basis for a healthy future, even to a fault – I had a good few arguments with him that it was time to withdraw Alba’s olive branch to the SNP, but he exhausted every last possibility of unity, however remote, in the face of the most extraordinary provocation.
His fortitude, of course, in the face of the grotesque, evil conspiracy against him which formed much of that provocation, was perhaps the most heroic achievement of his life. As someone subjected to only the tiniest fraction of what he endured by way of false accusation, I can attest to the huge stresses it places on you, and a lesser man would have been crushed to ashes not only by the pressures of a trial but by the heinous and painful betrayal of his former protegé and unworthy successor (whose name and face will not soil this article), and his treacherous former colleagues.
The SNP had the breathtaking audacity to weep crocodile tears on Twitter about their “former leader” – a fact nobody reading the party’s website would know, since every trace of his name was erased from it years ago.
The SNP’s current caretaker, who also issued a minimal generic acknowledgement through gritted teeth last night, would doubtless approve of our redactions of the above image, because he’s been at the very heart of the subsequent desperate attempts to conceal that betrayal.
Indeed, Swinney’s last act in relation to Salmond was a cynical attempt to use the Scottish Government’s monetary muscle to crush his civil claim against them before it could be heard in court, knowing that Salmond had been financially ruined by the cost of his defence against the false allegations assembled by the party.
But were we to list the full catalogue of gross, unforgivable and criminal injustices done to Alex Salmond by the SNP in the last years of his life (and which surely contributed to shortening it so cruelly), this article would never end, and it is the eternal fate of those who achieve true greatness to be stabbed in the back by jealous failures.
And let’s be in no doubt that we lived in the presence of a true great. We should not let familiarity and contemporaneity dull the fact that we shared a timeline with someone every bit the equal in Scotland’s history of Wallace and Bruce. Alex Salmond spilled no blood, but changed the nation in ways that will never be undone, however wretched the machinations of the pygmies who inherited and squandered his legacy.
I am hugely proud and grateful to have known him even a little. We first spoke when he stepped in after the BBC had had the Wings YouTube channel closed down, publicly intervening with no less than the corporation’s Director General and swiftly bringing about the channel’s restoration when all other avenues had run into a brick wall.
It was an act wholly typical of a man who also offered public and private support of all kinds to numerous other campaigners, including Craig Murray and Dave Llewellyn, and to countless worthy causes.
Again, we’ve retweeted many testaments to that effect since yesterday afternoon. He was never slow to come to the aid of those who needed it, seeking neither credit nor quid pro quo, and never scared to say unpopular things if he thought they needed to be said or to champion unfashionable causes, not just those currently in the fancy and favour of the chattering classes.
He wasn’t infallible and he wasn’t a saint, nor did he ever claim to be either. Those who have qualified their memorials with weasel words judging him by the pious standards of a different and less honest time deserve only contempt. The road Alex Salmond walked had no mercy for the weak or hesitant, and every one of them would have fallen whimpering by the wayside after half a dozen steps in his shoes.
But strength was only one facet of his personality. His humanity – a vanishing quality in politicians – was a greater one, as was his indefatigable positivity, and perhaps most of all his irrepressible and generous sense of humour and fondness for some good old-fashioned Scottish flyting.
(I remember one late-night phonecall with him and his ever-present right hand Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh, where we were pondering some events or other and he contemplated aloud if there was a graver error for a politician than resigning too soon. “Coming back too soon?”, I replied, and he laughed uproariously for about three minutes.)
I can’t begin to offer comfort to all those who had the good fortune to know him far better than I did, and who will be feeling his loss even more acutely than the rest of us – most particularly and obviously his wonderful wife Moira, who I finally had the great pleasure of meeting in Glasgow last month – save to say that Wings will do everything in its power in the days and weeks and months to come to help secure the justice and vindication that he didn’t live to see for himself.
He was very fond of quoting that other mighty and world-renowned Scot Robert Burns, and someone sent us some lines last night that are all we have left to say about his sudden, tragic and unbearably untimely passing.
“An honest man here lies at rest,
As e’er God with His image blest:
The friend of man, the friend of truth;
The friend of age, and guide of youth:
Few hearts like his, with virtue warm’d,
Few heads with knowledge so inform’d:
If there’s another world, he lives in bliss;
If there is none, he made the best of this.”
Goodbye, Alex. Our hearts are sore without you.
