Alex Salmond is many things: a gambler with an obsessive eye for the horses, a populist showman equally quick to cause and claim outrage, an improvisational wit with a cut-throat edge.
And should he triumph in Scotland’s independence referendum Thursday, Salmond would earn a new reputation – as the man who knocked the “Great” out of Britain.
The 59-year-old leader of the Scottish National Party says he learned to dream of a better Scotland at his grandfather’s knee, and chose to join the SNP at university in 1973 when his English girlfriend poked too much fun at his separatist sentiments.
Nobody’s laughing in England now about the rise of Salmond, a high-energy campaigner who has made a habit of outmaneuvering opponents and rebounding strongly from any setback. His focus on independence appears all-consuming as he speaks, a pin of the Scottish flag always in his lapel. Even as his words at times careen wildly from the statesmanlike to the bullying, his bushy-browed eyes project equal measures of zeal and glee.
“Salmond has long been the most naturally gifted political performer in these islands,” wrote Jonathan Freedland, a British novelist and columnist, in a 2011 analysis that cannily forecast Salmond’s ability to rally voters behind independence.