Scotland's political bruiser - FT.com Alex Salmond, the ebullient leader of the Scottish National party, was in his element this week, doing what even his foes concede he does best: hogging the centre of the political stage, draping himself in history and arguing the case for independence that would break up the United Kingdom. The man widely heralded as the canniest politician in Britain was - in theory - on the back foot, as he was the victim of an ambush by the other leading political parties against his proposed independence referendum, challenging its legality. But it had not taken him long to regain the initiative. His contentious referendum would be held in the autumn of 2014, he announced, a date which just happens to mark the 700th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn, the greatest defeat of the auld enemy. For Scotland's first minister, the referendum will be the climax of years of political fieldcraft that have seen the independence issue gain unprecedented momentum. It was a minority interest until the 1960s, and has waxed and waned several times since then. But the SNP now dominates the Scottish political landscape, having gained an outright majority in last May's elections to the devolved parliament. And yet, while Mr Salmond's skills as a political operator are revered at Westminster, this is the fight of his political life. His last great crisis came in 2000 when he unexpectedly stepped down from the party leadership after a 10-year stint, for reasons that remain unclear. Since his resumption of the leadership in 2004 he has gone from strength to strength. However, the pro-Union parties still think he is eminently beatable in the referendum once he is forced to address matters of substance. The 57-year old Salmond recalls that he joined the party as a student, after an argument about nationalism in 1973 with an English girlfriend. She was secretary of the student Labour club and told him: "If you feel like that, go and join the bloody SNP." He was studying economics and history at St Andrews University, two disciplines that have served him well as he has pursued his goal. He also attributes his poise when speaking or debating to his years as a soprano when he was growing up in the town of Linlithgow. "The one thing it left me was being able to be in front of audiences," he says. It is hard to see much of the boy soprano in the bulky and combative politician who has dominated the British airways this week, but even his critics concede he has poise on a podium. In Scotland, he has mainly had to contend with second-string opponents; Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling, for example, pursued careers at Westminster. Now he is going head-to-head with George Osborne, the chancellor, regarded as one of his generation's finer political minds. It was Mr Osborne who this week confronted him on the legality of a referendum, causing him to confirm his plan for an autumn 2014 vote. The pro-Union parties are determined to question his judgment, highlighting his backing for light regulation, support for RBS during its takeover of ABN Amro, and wish to join an "arc of prosperity" including Iceland and Ireland before the financial meltdown. Labour admits it fails to land blows on Mr Salmond in the last Holyrood elections. "He let out Al-Megrahi, the biggest mass murder in Scotland's history, and we still couldn't nail him on law and order," rues a former Labour minister, referring to the release of the Lockerbie bomber from a Scottish jail. Mr Salmond was elected MP for Banff in 1987, after working first as an agricultural economist with the Scottish Office, then for seven years as an economist specialising in oil and gas for Royal Bank of Scotland - a period that underpins his interest in the energy sector, and means he has maintained a keen interest in the financial sector. But Douglas Alexander, a senior Scottish Labour MP, says his vision of a Scotland with a prosperous financial services sector, playing a full role in the EU and using the euro, has been overtaken by events. "Their political advance has taken place at a time of intellectual retreat," Mr Alexander says. On issues as fundamental as the currency, they seem to have even fewer answers today than they did in the past. Mr Salmond enjoys an easy rapport with voters. The writer Tom Gallagher says: "His amiability allows many Scots to view him as "the people's friend." Officials who have travelled overseas with him speak highly of his ability to absorb information then deploy it to attract investment. David Torrance, his biographer, records that when Mr Salmond, on his first visit to the US as first minister, heard that Alison Duncan, his Washington fixer, was suffering from cancer he dropped everything, arrived at her home unannounced and sang an old Burns lullaby at her front door until she came down. But behind the bonhomie, Salmond-watchers say there is another side to him. Staff in his office speak of his explosive temper. One journalist experienced in Holyrood politics says: "He lets you know if you've written something he doesn't like. He wobbles with anger. Though he specialises in putdowns, he hates to be the butt of humour. One of the more successful sallies of Annabel Goldie, the former Tory leader at Holyrood, came when she berated him for taking praise for increasing physical education in schools: "Unfortunately for the first minister, patting himself on the back doesn't count as PE." For a polished public performer, he guards his privacy. He spends most weekends in his constituency with his wife, Moira, whom he met while they were civil servants, but who seldom appears at official engagements. It is his inscrutability that his opponents find most irritating. "Nobody really knows him," says one old Labour adversary. They know he used to be an economist and now he is first minister, but after that? He is a blank sheet and people project their hopes on to that. The writers are Scotland correspondent and political editor