It matters not what your politics are. Alex Salmond is the most astute politician in the British Isles and his influence goes way beyond Scotland’s borders and his legacy will last well beyond his retirement. This blog feels he still has much to offer and expects to see him back.
There is no doubt that the YES campaign believed not only that it could win but that it was winning. It came very close. If ten per cent of NO votes had switched to YES, Salmond would have been home and dry. Those votes would have been his if the Nationalist party had taken more trouble to prepare a coherent plan for a proper currency and undertaken the groundwork to set up something which would have been credible to business and the markets and above all their voters. The muddle on offer, which would have been voted down in the House of Commons even if the veto was lifted by the Cabinet and Opposition, meant a vote for Salmond was a leap into the unknown. Warnings poured in from business, economists, bankers et al and voters took fright.
Yet what was achieved is actually bigger than the notion of Scottish independence itself. Salmond has set in train a process though which the creaking centralised and only partly democratic system of government in the UK and especially in England, will be replace by a devolved system on federal lines for the whole Union and all its parts. This will substantially increase the power of each nation to determine the shape of all the issues which affect everybody’s daily life. A voluntary Union in which Scotland will find itself playing a major role on a much broader canvass than would have been possible on its own. All that will be down to Salmond. Without him nothing would have happened.
So the message from this blog to Alex Salmond is this. Rise from your disappointment. It is much better than you think. You may have lost the battle, but shortly it will be seen by all that you have won the war. For all of us.