A STAGE SET FOR FAREWELL

AS the afternoon of September 19 – the day after the referendum – wore on, beneath the elaborate plasterwork and glimmering glass chandelier of Bute House’s drawing room, a hand-picked group of exhausted journalists awaited Alex Salmond’s arrival.

The event had been pushed back to 4pm and most journalists had been up through the night working on live TV coverage of the counts or preparing late editions of the morning papers.

Furthermore, reporter after reporter had been categorically told, by the First Minister’s special adviser Campbell Gunn, that Mr Salmond would not be resigning.

However, when the SNP leader entered the room, the assembled Press knew they had been spun. Mr Salmond was definitely going.

The energy, the bravado and the cheekiness were gone. Instead a drained, weary, serious First Minister started a short speech. The room was transfixed.

Mr Salmond’s tone was uncharacteristically quiet, his eyes wet.

Civil service press officers lining the room showed no emotion but, at the back behind a small row of television cameras, Mr Salmond’s chief of staff Geoff Aberdein had tears rolling down his cheeks.

‘For me as leader my time is nearly over, but for Scotland the campaign continues and’, looking up to the cameras, the First Minister concluded, ‘the dream shall never die.’

His final line was lifted from Ted Kennedy’s 1980 Democratic National Convention concession speech, the work of master speechwriter Bob Shrum.

But, 34 years later, the provenance was secondary: it aptly summed up the downhearted but defiant spirit of many of his supporters.

Unlike his three predecessors as First Minister – who had respectively died, resigned and lost an election – Mr Salmond had choreographed his own departure.