I doubt we will see the like of Alex Salmond again - Susan Dalgety

Former first minister Alex Salmond – a ‘consequential figure in Scottish public life’

I am still shocked by his death, its brutal suddenness while opening a bottle of ketchup.

The unseemly wrangle over who should pay for his body to be brought home from North Macedonia, where he had been attending a conference, only resolved when billionaire philanthropist Sir Tom Hunter stepped in and provided a private jet.

The row over whether his erstwhile protégé Nicola Sturgeon will be banned from attending the funeral service of the man she once warmly described as her friend and mentor.

He died as he lived. Larger than life. Attracting controversy, sowing division.

I did not like Alex Salmond, or to be more accurate, I didn’t like his public persona, nor the private individual described to me by people who worked closely with him, and whom I trust implicitly.

He had the air of a bully, of a man who thought himself cleverer than anyone else in the room, his party, or even the country.

I hated his determination to break up my country. One of the biggest failings of the SNP and the wider nationalist movement is their inability – or downright refusal – to empathise with those of us who do not want to leave the UK.

Salmond, in the final weeks of the 2014 independence referendum campaign laughingly brushed aside our fears as irrelevant, so confident was he that he was about to make history.

He was not a stupid man, far from it.

Even his political opponents acknowledged his tactical prowess. But he seemed not to care that if he won the referendum by a narrow majority, Scotland would be bitterly divided nation.

The last decade of his life was dominated by the psychodrama between him and Nicola Sturgeon.

Their Shakespearean feud may have been cat nip for political journalists and the source of endless gossip for the nation, but it damaged Scotland. And in the end, destroyed his legacy.

He will not be remembered as the brilliant political strategist who almost broke up Britain. Instead he will go down in history as a former first minister who was tried for a range of sex offences and found not guilty, and who died opening a sauce bottle.

As for his nemesis, Nicola Sturgeon, it’s too early to say what her legacy will be, but it is bound to feature a police forensic tent outside her home and Adam Graham/Isla Bryson, the double rapist she tried to convince the public was a woman.

Who could have predicted such an ending for the pair in the heady days of summer 2014?

But tomorrow is a day for his family and friends to remember Alex Salmond, the man they knew and loved, not the person the rest of us saw, and some feared.

Whatever your opinion of him, he was a consequential figure in Scottish public life.

He clearly loved his country. And if he had succeeded in breaking up the UK, he would have become as important a historical figure as Oliver Cromwell. I doubt we will see his like again.