Salmond steps down

[David Johnson]

Announced at a conference in the last few minutes.

[william]

fuck...

[randyandy]

Good riddance!

He had no choice with only having one aim hope he's taken that obnoxious bint Sturgeon with him

[David Johnson]

Yeah, same old Salmond. Apparently it is Westminster's fault that the Scottish people voted No. Nothing to do with him.

On the one hand I am pleased to see the smug bastard go. Maybe SNP politics will be a bit less infantile in which they blame Westminster for Scotland's economic problems whilst sitting on their hands with regard to using the tax raising powers they have already had for umpteen years.

On the other hand, as William states from an SNP perspective "fuck". Salmond was by far the most effective political operator that Scotland or indeed, the UK has. He ran a really effective campaign.

Once again, Cameron has fucked things up by lumping together Scottish devolution with Welsh, English and Northern Ireland constitutional changes in line with a timescale that was already really tight to keep to even if it only covered Scottish devolution. Miliband has stated that Labour does not want to set unachievable timescales for covering all of these changes which were never part of the Gordon Brown "vow" published in the Scottish press which was specficially about Scotland.

As a result he has given Salmond and the SNP an open goal to accuse the Westminster parties of dishonesty. What a prat, Cameron is.

[max_tranmere]

"He ran a really effective campaign"

Still lost though. Whoever takes over, probably Nicola Sturgeon, has less charisma and debating abilities as Salmond and she'll be less of a political big-hitter as him.

Prior to when the campaign for all this began two years ago most people across Britain knew who Alex Salmond was and what he was about. I suspect that in a year or two's time, assuming Nicola Sturgeon takes over, not as many people across Britain will know of her. The party will be less of a big political entity with her as leader so it will be a bad thing for them to have her as leader - but her becoming leader is probably what is about to happen.

[David Johnson]

Agree with you about Nicola Sturgeon.

As for Alex Salmond, he took the SNP from being a joke party to having an overall majority in the Scottish Assembly and getting 45% of the vote for independence.

A staggering achievement.

[max_tranmere]

It was certainly an achievement. He used to be very hard-line, referring to the Scots living in England as "ex patriots", I remember that from years ago, and I saw an old clip this week where the young Alex implied the English were more or less colonisers (currently!) and were doing it as if they had "an army at their backs". He most likely realised his line was too strong, rather daft too, and then softened it as the years went on. Having done that he became more popular - but not popular enough as we've just seen. So he is now stepping down, the lucrative line of directorships he will now get, the fortune he'll make from after-dinner speaking and lecturing at conferences, etc, will see him become a millionaire before long.

[Arginald Valleywater]

I imagine like most politicians he is already a millionaire....he has more suits than the whole of Savile Row combined.

[randyandy]

I see it as a game plan by Cameron and one that Labour walked right into.

He will squarely lay any delays at Labours door giving them the option to piss off their Scottish friends or not.

[RoddersUK]

My Glaswegian friend domiciled in England told me that there are a lot of stupid people in Scotland and Salmond is their leader.
Fuck em, they got what they deserved. Luckily there are more clever people in Scotland that there are stupid ones.