Salmond hails political revolution for SNP

The SNP coming to power a decade ago has been hailed as a “political revolution” by the party’s former leader Alex Salmond.

He was elected as Scotland’s first SNP first minister on May 16 2007 – with the vote in Holyrood taking place almost two weeks after his party secured victory over Labour by the narrowest of margins.

Despite Labour having coming out on top in the first two Scottish Parliament elections in 1999 and 2003, Mr Salmond said he was confident of winning in 2007.

He told Press Association Scotland: “It’s difficult for people now, after 10 years of an SNP administration, to appreciate what a political revolution it was.

“Labour had won every election in Scotland for 50 years, every single one, therefore although I thought we had a grand chance of winning, I stood in Gordon which was our 20th target seat.

“To win the election we had calculated we had to win 20 seats, so one of the reasons I stood in Gordon was to communicate to the party I believed we could win this.

“I decided to take the campaign on to the positive and fight a campaign which heavily accentuated what we were going to do in government and the ideas we had.”