Nationalists have to face the fact they lost

AND so the curtain comes down on Alex Salmond’s leadership of the SNP, if not his political career just yet. Were a foreigner, unaware of t he independence referendum, to arrive at the party’s Perth conference, they would be convinced it was a victory celebration. Looking back over the Salmond reign, both he and the party have much to be proud of. For decades they were dismissed as cranks and oddballs, hell-bent on the unthinkable – the breaking up of Britain.

But Mr Salmond’s acute political brain, flair for organisation and astonishing personal charisma welded together the fractious SNP. It had long been riven by arguments between those who favoured a gradual exit from the UK and the arch-separatists for whom only immediate departure from history’s most successful political union would do. Notwithstanding his own arrogance – detailed elsewhere on this page – he led the SNP to a majority in Holyrood despite the electoral system being specifically weighted to prevent just that. Setting aside the fact that fewer people than the SNP like to pretend actually voted for them in 2011, it was a stunning victory.

And it was the springboard that propelled Scotland i n to the maelstrom of an i ndependence referendum. Simply achieving a referendum was enough to secure Mr Salmond’s reputation among the Nationalists, but to go on to net 45 per cent of the vote was a remarkable feat.

The Mail holds no truck with the reckless separatist agenda, but no one could argue that the Yes campaign did well to persuade so many Scots that their dream – lacking in detail and full of dangerous dead- ends – was viable.

The Nationalists are sure their present surge can carry them on to independence before long.

Certainly it comes at a tricky time for the other parties – Labour are in a parlous state; leaderless in Scotland and with the unconvincing and deeply unpopular Ed Miliband in charge nationally. The Tories are haunted by their old hoodoo, Europe, over which UKIP are making hay.

So the story Nationalists are telling themselves is that their star is in the ascendant. Both Mr Salmond in his last speech as leader, and Nicola Sturgeon in her first, touched on the theme.

Miss Sturgeon clearly believes she will be a power-broker in the next UK election – although the average voter would be hardpressed to name a single SNP policy other than separation.

And what a pity that Mr Salmond, truly a conviction politician who could have walked towards the sunset head high, cheapened his legacy with a speech in which he addressed only the 45 per cent who back his separation agenda and pretended their view holds sway.

The reality is that the Perth event might be a high-water mark for the SNP. They conveniently forget that two million Scots were not seduced by their independence plans and firmly and convincingly closed the door on Scotland’s exit from the UK. The SNP may yet rue the fact that, buoying each other up with talk of ‘independence when and not if,’ they missed a sea-change in the mood of the wider electorate. Many Scots have had their fill of constitutional politics. They want Holyrood politicians to stick to their daily briefs, not grandstand on big, vague notions that were Mr Salmond’s stock-in-trade.