Veteran Scottish politician Alex Salmond, architect of 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum Dies Aged 69as reported this Saturday on BBC. Salmond, who was chief minister in the Edinburgh government between 2007 and 2014, died suddenly after falling ill at the end of a speech in North Macedonia, according to the British public broadcaster.
The politician, who served as an MP in the Scottish and London parliaments, resigned from the Scottish National Party (SNP) in 2018 amid internal tensions and in 2021 he founded the pro-independence party Alba, which has one deputy in the regional parliament, dominated by the SNP.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer described Salmond as “monumental figure in Scottish and British politics”, who “leaves a lasting legacy”. Scottish Labor spokesman Anas Sarwar paid tribute to “a central figure” in Scottish politics for decades, whose “contribution to the Scottish political landscape cannot be underestimated”.
Conservative leader and former British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told X that “Alex Salmond was a huge figure” andn British politics. “Even though I disagree with him on the constitutional issue, there is no denying his ability to debate or his passion for politics. May he rest in peace,” he said. Salmond was a well-known political figure in the United Kingdom and identified with the cause of Scottish independence, which he championed from his youth.
The high point of his career was when he managed to negotiate with the Conservative government of the time of David Cameron to celebrate a plebiscite on Scottish independence, in which UK permanence won with 55% to 45% of the vote.
