Alex Salmond wasn’t to everyone’s taste but no one can deny his stature

Scottish politics can ill-afford to lose such a big personality

Alex Salmond said he accepted 'the democratic verdict of the people' (PA)

As of this afternoon there is a huge, bluff, chuckling, Alex Salmond-shaped hole in Scottish public life. The leader of the SNP is not to everybody’s taste. His robust style, vernacular language and bloke-ish penchant for gambling and Indian food leave some portions of the population (many of whom wear a bra) cold. But there is no doubt that he has been a towering presence at the most exciting time in living memory.

In his second stint as party leader (as a Westminster MP he was in charge from 1990-2000, then returned in 2004 to rescue the SNP from the smart but colourless John Swinney), he has overseen a landslide election victory and engineered an independence referendum which came closer to working than many would have believed possible. It is hard to imagine the parliament, and the party, without him.

In fact he was less of a presence in Scotland during the campaign than those living south of the border might have realised. His lack of appeal to female voters in particular led to his deputy, Nicola Sturgeon, being almost more visible than her doughty boss. There is nothing cuddly about him: he refuses to play the family Christmas card game and reveals hee haw (as he would put it) about his private life. His wife Moira, 17 years his senior, mostly stays at home in his constituency in the north-east and breeds Barbary ducks.

When he did take a lead, it was not always to the Yes side’s benefit. His clunky, ill-judged performance in the first televised debate against Alistair Darling angered many of the non-SNP Yessers who took to social media to proclaim that they were on the Yes side in spite of Salmond, not because of him. His failure to have a lucid, argument-closing reply to Darling’s predictable first question about currency was a low point in the campaign.

He pulled it back on the second debate, bold but not quite swaggering, pushing Darling’s buttons, answering then moving on. This was the Salmond we know, who some love and who everyone will, to a greater or lesser extent, miss. He is a big personality and Scottish politics does not have very many of these.

The long tradition of the talent migrating south to Westminster did not end when the Scottish Parliament opened in 1999 and Gordon Brown, Alistair Darling and Douglas Alexander, the big hitters who could punch him back, were deployed elsewhere. Salmond himself was both an MP and an MSP for several years, resigning his Westminster seat only when he was re-elected as party leader.

It is for that reason, as well as his nimble debating skills and excellent backroom political judgement, that he is such a loss. Sturgeon is a committed and talented politician, a tireless worker and a great sport. People warm to her in a way they rarely do to Salmond, who is not a natural baby-kisser. But he has presence, a quality conspicuously absent on the benches of Holyrood.

This, of course, makes him easy to parody. One of the guilty pleasures of the referendum campaign was the Angry Salmond Twitter account, in which the “First Minister” held forth on his general greatness and utter hotness while making deliciously unPC pronouncements about how, come independence, everyone would have non-stop adventures and better sex. His nickname, Wee Eck (a common Scottish diminutive for Alex) has become all the more appropriate since he adopted the 5:2 diet and shrank before our eyes.

A nation waits with interest, sadness, and some trepidation, to see what he does next.