Alex Salmond

By Alan Fisher in Europe on January 26th, 2012
Scotland's First Minister Alex Salmond holds a copy of the plans for consultation for a referendum on independence [Reuters]

 

Alex Salmond is as smart a political operator as they come.

His choice of January 25th - when Scots around the world celebrate the birthday of national bard, Robert Burns - to take the first steps towards an independence referendum was not coincidental.

Nor is the proposed date of the vote, autumn 2014, the 700th anniversary of a famous Scottish victory over English forces at Bannockburn. It's a battle commemorated in a song sung before most Scottish sporting events, recalling how the Scots sent King Edward and his army 'home tae think again". 

Since Salmond's Scottish National Party was founded 80 years ago, its goal has been the break up of the UK with the establishment of a sovereign independent state.

By Alan Fisher in Europe on May 9th, 2011
Photo by AFP

Within five years, the people of Scotland will be asked to decide if they want to remain part of the union or create an independent state.

This is due to a remarkable win for the nationalists in elections to Scotland's devolved parliament which sits in Edinburgh.

The Scottish National Party [SNP] had governed as a minority administration but this time around it has taken 69 of the 129 seats up for grabs.

When the parliament was established in 1999 a complex electoral system was drawn up – a mixture of first-past-the-post and proportional representation – to ensure no party, particularly the nationalists, would ever win an overall majority.

But the founding fathers failed to see a complete collapse of the left of the centre Labour Party in its traditional industrial heartlands around Glasgow and Fife, the loss of every single Labour seat in the north east around Aberdeen and the huge collapse of the Liberal Democratic Party.

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