What next for the Alba party following Salmond death?

With the sudden death of its talismanic founder and leader Alex Salmond, the Alba party, with just one MSP and two local councillors, faces difficult questions.

Alex Salmond founded the Alba party in March 2021 with the aim of delivering a “supermajority” for Scottish independence in the Scottish Parliament.

In a speech he delivered at the party’s launch, the former first minister said the plan was to use the regional list mechanism in Scotland’s electoral system to mop up “nearly one million wasted SNP votes”.

The aim, he said, was to ensure “90 or even more” of Holyrood’s 129 seats went to independence-supporting candidates.

“The party’s strategic aims are clear and unambiguous – to achieve a successful, socially just and environmentally responsible independent country,” he said.

“The tactics are to stand on the regional list to secure the supermajority for independence in our Parliament.”

In the event the party won just 1.7% of the vote and failed to win any seats, an outcome it repeated at the 2022 local elections and 2024 UK general election, where the party failed to get any of its candidates elected.

Indeed, Alba’s only parliamentary representation to date has come from defectors from other parties.

MPs Kenny MacAskill and Neale Hanvey defected from the SNP in 2021, and in 2023 one-time SNP leadership candidate Ash Regan became the party’s only MSP when she defected from the SNP, saying her former party had “lost its focus on independence”.

Ms Regan had previously served as community safety minister in the Scottish Government, but quit that position in 2022 so she could vote against the SNP’s controversial gender recognition reforms as they went through Holyrood.

During the 2024 election campaign Mr Salmond criticised the lack of action to “move the dial on independence” since the 2014 referendum.

He described his former party’s approach to independence as a “mystery”, and insisted that Alba was now the “natural home for independence supporters”.

Mr MacAskill, who is now the Alba party’s deputy leader, said despite the “issues” facing the party things were “coming together,” and Mr Salmond had been working towards replicating the electoral success he had enjoyed with the SNP.

“When I was last meeting with him, and it wasn’t that long ago, very, very recently, things were coming together for Alex, and indeed, things are looking far more propitious for the Alba party,” he said.

“Alex was chirpy and cheery. He was always a cheery chap in many ways, he certainly gave that public perception, even when privately there were issues challenging.

“But as I say, I think Alex had already founded the modern SNP, taking it to success, and he was embarking on doing it yet again in a different political party.”

Mr MacAskill would not be drawn on what the future might hold for an Alba party bereft of a leader whose record in Scottish politics he described as “unsurpassed”.

“At the present moment, this is a time to grieve. It’s the time to reflect on Alex’s legacy,” he said.

“But I think all of us who are in the Alba party share Alex’s comments that the dream shall never die.

“But at the present moment, this is the time to remember Alex, what he contributed to our country and the better society that he made.”