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Alex Salmond deid.


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Sad to learn this. I 've seen reports stating he took ill after making a speech in Macedonia this morning, but he or someone on his behalf was on X just over 4 hours ago.

He brought the Independence debate to the forefront of the Scottish people's attention, and got many young folks interested in politics.

Is he the only Holyrood leader to ever command an outright majority in the Scottish Parliament?

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19 minutes ago, MazzyStar said:

Had awful political views but still liked to pretend to be a socialist, and probably led the way for many other people who are nothing but centrists to masquerade as “left wing”. 

I think you're giving him too much credit here.

Happy to be proven wrong here, but I can't recall him ever claiming to be a socialist.

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8 minutes ago, Dundee Hibernian said:

Sad to learn this. I 've seen reports stating he took ill after making a speech in Macedonia this morning, but he or someone on his behalf was on X just over 4 hours ago.

He brought the Independence debate to the forefront of the Scottish people's attention, and got many young folks interested in politics.

Is he the only Holyrood leader to ever command an outright majority in the Scottish Parliament?

Sturgeon ruled the majority after Salmond's resignation, but Salmond is the only Leader to have won a majority in a holyrood election.

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23 minutes ago, O'Kelly Isley III said:

I think a few posters on here would do well to look up the meaning of respect for the dead before hitting 'Submit Reply'.

It’s P&B, the death threads are usually some of the most comic. 
 

As for Salmond, he certainly gave me hope of Independence, something that seems further away these days. It was a truly exciting time, can’t believe it’s ten years on now.

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Just now, Wee-Bey said:

I think you're giving him too much credit here.

Happy to be proven wrong here, but I can't recall him ever claiming to be a socialist.

From the start the SNP Core have regarded the party as on the left of politics, we would all agree that our country Scotland has been more socialist than right wing.

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Just now, Wee-Bey said:

I think you're giving him too much credit here.

Happy to be proven wrong here, but I can't recall him ever claiming to be a socialist.

Maybe he never explicitly called himself a socialist but he definitely liked to talk about creating a “left wing” Scotland post independence despite nothing about his politics being left wing.

He was also one of the main figures that caused most of the British “left” (and I use left in the vaguest way here) to abandon its eurosceptic position.  

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1 minute ago, MazzyStar said:

Maybe he never explicitly called himself a socialist but he definitely liked to talk about creating a “left wing” Scotland post independence despite nothing about his politics being left wing.

He was also one of the main figures that caused most of the British “left” (and I use left in the vaguest way here) to abandon its eurosceptic position.  

And the problem with that?

Much that the EU is not ideal I'd prefer that to the xenophobic shite we've to put up with now.

Turning the SNP from the Tartan Tories (under Gordon Wilson) into the Social Democratic party that was his SNP was a triumph.

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I know he was marmite but I had loads of respect for him. 

Brilliant speaker, intelligent, principled. Flawed. A political giant. Apparently a total c**t at times to those around him. The best politician Scotland has had outside John Smith.

Very sad day. I'm just glad he was able to win his court case before this happened. Hooe that gave him some peace in his final years.

 

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Even a decolonial movement like in Ireland, with a history of figures like James Connolly to its fore, is nowadays just a neoliberal shitshow. Scottish nationalism is not decolonial and the SNP were always suspicious of the left - Hugh MacDiarmid was kicked out the party in the early days for being a communist. Salmond in his younger years actually helped to moderate that anti-left bias among SNP leadership. His prime policy position, separating Scotland from UK, would've weakened a major imperial force. We saw how UK backed Saudi's assault on Yemen and we see now the diplomatic and material support UK currently provides to Israel. 

Edited by Freedom Farter
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