Alex Salmond resigns: But why did he feel the need?

He has taken his country further than most thought possible

Alex Salmond is to step down as leader of the SNP (Getty Images )

Why on earth did Alex Salmond quit?

I mean, seriously? Here is a man whose country, a few years ago, seemed about as far away from independence as Cornwall does now. Salmond was a man who appeared doomed to live in the shadow of Labour's stranglehold on Scottish politics. A man seemingly resigned to a lifetime of protesting and complaining.

Look at him now. Look at where high intelligence, brilliance (usually) in debate and a certain native cunning can take you. Minority government from 2007; overall majority in 2011; audacious referendum in 2014. Salmond is defeated – yet only in the most technical sense. He has persuaded almost half of the Scottish people to go for separation, and achieved the most radical constitutional change in the history of the UK, or leastways since Ireland exited in 1922.

He has achieved Home Rule for his people, and left the English trying to work out how they work around the Scots, rather than the other way round. He has brought his nation almost everything sovereignty can deliver, apart from the right to make war. It is really not something to be depressed about. Maybe he is just built that way. Like Gordon Brown in the last campaign, he may come back again.

Salmond said at his press conference; “As leader my time is nearly over.... but for Scotland the campaign continues and the dream shall never die.” He may have been premature with his political obituary; certainly Scottish, and British, politics needs figures of his calibre to make democracy as lively as it has been in Scotland these last few weeks.