Alex Salmond faces a sceptical nation Soon after Alex Salmond left the stage, having given what should have been a triumphant address to the Scottish National party conference in Perth last weekend, party activists gathered in local pubs and began to grumble. "It was pretty much the same speech as last year," said one. It's the same speech he gives every year. His friend, who works for one of the party's MSPs added: "I can't see any chance of us winning independence in two years" time." Just a year after winning an unprecedented majority to the Holyrood parliament, and days after signing the agreement that guaranteed an independence referendum in 2014, the SNP should have been in celebratory mood. But with the polls showing that Scottish voters support staying in the union by roughly 2:1 and the party having undergone a bruising internal war over foreign policy, supporters were in no mood for triumphalism. For about a decade, the SNP leader has been feted by commentators as the most successful party leader in British politics. Only a brave few dared mention the quality of opposition in Holyrood. Now, after one of Mr Salmond's toughest weeks in politics, voters and commentators are beginning to ask whether Britain's most successful party leader has lost his touch and whether his guile has been drastically overrated. Last Tuesday may have been the worst day in the first minister's 25-year political career. It began with the news that two of his MSPs were resigning over the party's decision to drop its decades-long opposition to remaining in Nato - a reversal Mr Salmond backed to move the SNP further into the mainstream. That news was compounded when, Nicola Sturgeon, his deputy, revealed that contrary to earlier suggestions, the Scottish government had no legal advice that justified its assertion that the country could remain in the EU after independence. Not only had Mr Salmond suggested such advice had been sought and given long ago but the Scottish government had spent £12,000 of taxpayers" money on a legal challenge to prevent having to disclose its contents. Ms Sturgeon's statement triggered a hostile reaction in the Scottish press. The Scottish Sun, which supported the SNP in 2011, ran a front-page headline branding Mr Salmond: "EU Liar." So is this the low point of his five-year rule as first minister? Strategists for the UK coalition government believe it shows the SNP is losing the argument over independence. "The detail will be lost on most people, but we are detecting a breakthrough in the public consciousness that he can't be trusted," a Downing Street official says. Alistair Darling, the former chancellor, who is leading the campaign against independence, describes it as a "turning point." The row has certainly shaken the image of Mr Salmond as the master politician. Christopher Harvie, the former SNP MSP and historian, says Mr Salmond may have had it too easy. He has always got away with any slips in the past. That has given him a tendency to drop his guard. On the other hand, as David Torrance, his biographer, points out, the 57-year-old former economist has ridden out similar storms in the past - including the incident in 2010 when the Scottish government allowed its tax-raising powers to lapse without telling parliament. Mr Salmond is powered by a sense of being able to defeat the odds, say friends, which was further fuelled by overturning the polls in last year's Holyrood elections. This conviction he can achieve the politically impossible by sheer force of his own personality makes him remarkably resilient. When he stood down from the party leadership in 2000 amid bitter criticism of his "dictatorial" style, his career seemed over. Yet four years later, just months after saying he would not run again for the leadership, he was back at the SNP helm. Three years after that he was first minister. But it has also has seen him hoard power. And while this gives the SNP a clear message, critics say it gives rise to a bullying style of leadership that shuts out any criticism with bluster and counterattack. One opposition politician who has known Mr Salmond for years says this can make him a hard person to deal with: "He is an extraordinarily difficult person - he trusts himself and nobody else." The person describes how Scottish MPs used to catch the sleeper train from London to Edinburgh at the end of long weeks in Westminster and unwind over drinks in the bar - which they jokingly referred to as the "carriage of shame." MPs from all different parties would get on and the conversation would flow, but when Alex came in he was very guarded. He seemed to see himself as surrounded by enemies - he couldn't let himself go. Arguably Mr Salmond's greatest triumph was signing the so-called Edinburgh Agreement, which gave the party the referendum for which it has campaigned for so long. However, Mr Salmond left the final negotiations to Ms Sturgeon. Those in the room describe him as "curiously subdued," even deferential. "He can be spiky, but when David Cameron was there, he was on his best behaviour," said one. They also say, however, that by handing the duty over to Ms Sturgeon he played a canny political game. If he wins the referendum, he will take the credit, but if he loses, he can now share the blame with her for not getting the terms right. If Mr Salmond loses, as expected, commentators may see this week as the point at which fatal flaws in the independence case were exposed. But while some see this as signs of Mr Salmond finally overreaching his own talents, the reality is that once he won a majority in 2011, he had little option but to call a referendum. The arch-gradualist was forced by his own success to take the last step on the path to independence earlier than he might have wished. "2011 was his greatest victory," says Mr Torrance. It may also have been the worst thing that could have happened to his political career.