Not long after Alex Salmond became first minister, he told me that he had spent a lot of time studying his predecessors’ “endgames”, in an effort to avoid their fate. But if democracy is represented by anything, it is a ticking clock counting down the months untila leader is unseated from the bucking bronco of elected power. To the surprise of many, Salmond chose to go in the immediate aftermath of the “no” vote in the independence referendum of 2014. His nemesis David Cameron opted for a similar fate two years later for the same reason. Samantha Cameron’s tears had barely dried after listening to her husband’s resignation speech on the steps of 10 Downing Street, on the morning of June 24, 2016, when

Source: The Times January 10, 2021 00:04 UTC