SCOTLAND has lost a son and its greatest First Minister, Alex Salmond.

His untimely death in North Macedonia on Saturday came as such a shock.

I always got the impression Alex never stopped working and true enough he was in North Macedonia to speak at the Forum for Cultural Diplomacy, organised by the country’s former President, the United Nations and others when he died.

He’d called me from the conference on Friday night to organise a proper catch-up this week on the challenge to the Winter Fuel Payment cut.

A decision he took great issue with as an unforgivable attack on people of pensionable age many of whom were on low and fixed incomes. It’s a cause he championed and it was a great pleasure for my colleagues and me to work with him.

While Alex had a head for economics and strategy, social justice was at his heart. When he entered the House of Commons as the new MP for Banff and Buchan in 1987 he caused a stairhead rammy during the Chancellor’s budget.

He interrupted Nigel Lawson’s speech by shouting: “Poll tax for the poor, tax cuts for the rich, nothing for the National Health Service - an obscenity!” That was quickly followed by 400 votes to 23 to expel him from the chamber.

Few politicians had his charisma, talent, intellect and sense of social justice. There’s no question Alex put the SNP on the world map.

Stuart Campbell of Wings over Scotland told me: “It’s scarcely possible to comprehend the magnitude of Scotland’s loss. Our familiarity with him shouldn’t overshadow the fact that Alex was a figure of significance in the country’s history on a par with Wallace and Bruce and that we were fortunate to live in his time.”

While others have claimed credit for electoral success, such victories were accruals – to use accountancy parlance – earned by Alex Salmond from the 2014 independence referendum.

It’s important to remember support for Scottish independence was at a modest 15% in 1979. It rose to the high 20s when Alex formed his first minority Scottish government in 2007.

Yet remarkably, Alex managed to increase support for Scottish independence to 45% by September 2014.

Just a few weeks ago, I had the very good fortune to interview Alex, with my colleague John McGovern, for The Ordinary Elite podcast.

Alex had formed the first majority Scottish government in May 2011 with an amazing 69 seats; he’d put the SNP on the electoral map and increased support for the independence cause.

Ten years on from that historic referendum, we began by asking why he resigned as First Minister in 2014 when he had achieved so much.

Alex said, “Well, it’s a question I’m increasingly asking myself to be fair”. He had done 20 years in total as SNP leader by 2014.

I posed the question of how much better Scotland might have been over the last decade if Alex had still been at the wheel. He understood capital finance. Got schools, bridges and roads built. Valued education. He knew how to get things done.

Scotland would have had much more than a couple of fully functioning ferries if we had a leader of Alex Salmond’s intellect and calibre after 2014 in my opinion.

Alex aft quoted Rabbie Burns. Some of the words from A Man’s a Man for A’ seem apposite.

“The man o’ independent mind. He looks and laughs at a’ that. But an honest man’s aboon his might. The pith o’ sense and pride o’ worth. That sense of worth, o’er a’ the earth. For a’ that, and a’ that. It’s coming yet for a’ that”.