Alex Salmond knew how to leverage Scotland’s food & drink greatness

The late Alex Salmond certainly wasn’t a nice man, but he was arguably a great one. Andrew Neil described him as “full of plots and plans”, which captures Salmond’s peerless understanding of the opportunities afforded him by the exercise of power as Scotland‘s first minister.

He saw, as his predecessors had only begun to grasp, how he could enlist Scotland’s food and drink assets – both at home and around the world – in the battle to win Scotland’s independence. It’s a lesson for every politician trying to create a distinctive profile. It is also an illustration for our industry’s leaders and representatives of the wonderful opportunity they should be leveraging.

As a director of Diageo, I had quite a lot to do with the first minister, though thankfully at one remove. He made it abundantly clear that he expected to deal with empowered representatives in Edinburgh.

That suited us, though it was hard on my brilliant colleagues, because Salmond was often brusque and frequently downright rude. I always assumed he was doing it deliberately, because he could also be astonishingly charming and brilliant company.

When we made the long-delayed strategic decision to close our Kilmarnock plant, he took it as a personal affront. He mounted a national campaign – marches, a petition and a detailed government-backed plan – to keep the site open.

He even showed up uninvited in our London headquarters and demanded a meeting with our CEO Paul Walsh. It was epic and, how shall I put it? Tense. Both were seriously tasty public figures, unused to backing down. So when Walsh rightly refused to change the decision, we were cast into the outer darkness for a couple of years, with ignominies and often personal derision heaped on those who had to represent the company in Scotland.

But Salmond knew Diageo was Scotland’s most important company. It was by far the largest producer of the nation’s real economic gold: scotch whisky. Salmond also knew that, as owner, we had the keys to the 2014 Gleneagles Ryder Cup. It was an event he saw as emblematic of the Scotland he was seeking to create. So he quite quickly performed an elegant volte-face, and became something like our best friend.

This was his brilliance. Over the years leading up to the 2014 Ryder Cup, he made food and drink the chief and most accessible potent symbol for Scotland’s emergent national identity.

Around the world, St Andrew’s Day became an opportunity for the Scottish government to profile the greatness of scotch, salmon and cheese, and the delights that the lure of kilts and claymores could offer the tourist. The whisky industry (including Diageo) and many, many other brand owners were aghast at the idea of seeing their major marketing and promotional investments deployed in the nationalist cause. But Salmond – a distinguished economist in his earlier commercial life – knew it drove sales, so we had to acquiesce.

Contrast his positive attitude to that of his dreich successor Nicola Sturgeon. In the first weeks of Covid, she really did suggest closing distilleries, bottling plants and what she described as non-essential food producers – including, ludicrously, those of Walker’s Shortbread – in flagrant denial of their economic and symbolic importance. Only the tenacity of respected figures from the industry like David Thomson and Ian Smith forced her to back off what would have been catastrophic in every regard.

In the end Salmond did, as first minister, preside over a triumphant Ryder Cup at Gleneagles, but it was pretty bittersweet for him. Two weeks earlier, he had narrowly lost the Scottish referendum. Ironically, that was largely because he couldn’t provide the answer to the specifically economic question of which currency an independent Scotland should adopt. Even Salmond’s magical skills had their limits.

The key lesson here is to remember what Salmond knew instinctively: that we have an extraordinary asset in our food and drink industry. At the heart of our national life – whether Scottish, Welsh, Irish or English – it has a unique connection with our land and our people. The clever political leader sees it is iconic and takes care not to monkey it about.

But when we disappear from the story, we have cause for concern. When that happened before 2015, it opened the door to the soft drinks levy. I hope Rachel Reeves doesn’t sense another opportunity on budget day.