Alex Salmond (31 December 1954-12 October 2024) was the leader of the Scottish National Party from 1990 to 2000 (succeeding Gordon Wilson and preceding John Swinney) and from 2004 to 2014 (succeeding Swinney and preceding Nicola Sturgeon) and Leader of the Alba Party from 2021; he also served as First Minister of Scotland from 17 May 2007 to 18 November 2014 (succeeding Jack McConnell and preceding Nicola Sturgeon).
Biography[]
Alexander Elliot Anderson Salmond was born in Linlithgow, West Lothian, Scotland in 1954, and he joined the Scottish National Party in 1973 and worked as an economist at the Royal Bank of Scotland. His SNP membership was briefly suspended in 1982 for his member in the leftist 79 Group, which sought to transform the SNP into an active left-wing party, but he went on to serve as MP for Banff and Buchan from 1987 to 2010, an MSP for Banff and Buchan from 1999 to 2001, an MSP for Aberdeenshire East from 2007 to 2016, and MP for Gordon from 2015 to 2017. As leader of the SNP from 1990 to 2000 and from 2004 to 2014, he transformed the SNP into the second-largest party in the country, and, as First Minister of Scotland from 2007 to 2014, he oversaw the abolition of university tuition fees, the scrapping of prescription charges, and commitment to renewable energy. The 55%-45% failure of the 2014 Scottish independence referendum led to Salmond's resignation as SNP leader and First Minister, and he was unseated by Tory Colin Clark at the 2017 general election. In 2018, he resigned from the SNP to combat sexual misconduct allegations, and, in 2019, he was charged with 14 counts, including rape and sexual assault. However, he was acquitted of all charges in 2020 and criticized his successor Nicola Sturgeon for her government's flawed investigations into the scandal before forming his own Scottish nationalist party, the Alba Party, in 2021. The Alba Party consisted of fundamentalist nationalists, disgraced Scottish politicians from the SNP and other parties, and socially conservative SNP supporters opposed to transgender rights; it failed to win a single seat at the 2021 Scottish Parliament elections or the 2022 local elections. He died shortly after giving a speach to a school for young leaders in Ohrid, North Macedonia in 2024.