In the course of a few hours in the north-east of Scotland in September, 2014 I had a glimpse of what people mean when they talk about political greatness.

Alex Salmond had invited me to join him on a helicopter tour of Aberdeen, Dundee and Inverness just a few days prior to the first referendum on Scottish independence. I was covering Scotland for The Observer at the time and, ever the political operator, he wanted one of the Union’s big newspapers to see what he was all about it.

Here was the man who, in a few days’ time, was on the brink of doing what Napoleon, The Third Reich and the Spanish Armada couldn’t achieve: dismantle the United Kingdom. Having parked his tanks on Downing Street, here he was showing the people of Middle England what they were up against.

You must tread warily when deploying phraseology around ‘greatness’ or ‘the greatest’ too loosely. The term has been devalued in an age when a generation spans little more than a week and heroes must be created rapidly to supply the demand.

No matter your political preferences, or what you felt you knew of him as a human being, Alex Salmond was the greatest politician Scotland has ever produced. Let no-one try to tell you otherwise. In the space of little more than two decades he had done what no-one else in this nation’s sinewy and rough history had even come remotely close to achieving: bring Scotland to the brink of independence.

Yet even that statement of fact in itself fails remotely to do justice to this feat. In doing so, he had to face down and then overcome everything that the massed forces of the ruthless British establishment could throw at him.

There’s a reason why Britain had become the most influential nation in the world over the previous three centuries and why English remains the global language of power. It didn’t happen through gentle persuasion and personal charisma. It occurred through a lethal combination of brute force and the ruthless application of gathered intelligence. The British state had always brought them together when faced previously with any existential or internal threat. Act now; ask questions later.

In the space of a week prior to that afternoon in the north east of Scotland, Alex Salmond was beginning to experience fully what it feels like to have Britain’s boots on your neck.

In what felt like an orchestrated manoeuvre, the British state had begun to bring its largest, long-range guns to the front line. Its power had always been built on controlling capital and now, just weeks out from referendum day, they turned to the money once more.

Five banks, including RBS had announced their intention to transfer their headquarters to England in the event of a Yes vote. Suddenly, many of the top retail brands in the High Street began warning of price rises.

Alex Salmond though, was having none of it and it seemed that the threat was receding with the latest poll putting Yes within sight of 50%. “If you had told me that, with seven full days of campaigning left we would be within two points of victory I'd have bitten your hand off. A momentum has been building here and we are on the cusp of it,” he told me.

Read more:

Alex Salmond dead aged 69 as former SNP leader passes away

Alex Salmond: Flags lowered as allies reveal 'heartbreak'​

Tributes following death of Alex Salmond

Over the next three hours I had a ringside seat watching our greatest politician at the top of his game. It seemed also that benevolent forces had contrived opportunities where he could showcase his charisms. In a douce Aberdeenshire neighbourhood he personally visited an entire street of homes, charming, cajoling, chivvying and finally converting at least three more maybes and undecideds to a firm Yes. Most of them were women and one, a young mother, had proudly told him that the child in her arms would be two years old the next day.

In the press pack gathered in his wake the Economics Editor of the Washington Post had been waiting to pounce. He wanted to discuss the sustainability of oil funds in a world where prices have been unpredictable because of instability in Iraq and Ukraine and the shale lakes in the US. The gathered tribunes of the UK press scented blood and the possibility of a ruinous heading on the last Sunday front page before the referendum.

Instead, they and the American journalist got an economic masterclass from Salmond, a former oil economist. He quoted liberally from an analysis by Professor Patrick Dunleavy to support his contention that having 16 billion barrels of oil - the most pessimistic prediction – could transform your economy. In the years that immediately follow 2014 the No side’s predictions of the end of North Sea oil have indeed been rendered ridiculous. It’s the supreme irony that Mr Salmond’s star pupils in the SNP have chosen also to demonise oil.

Then, he risking the wrath of his timekeepers with a 15-minute chat with a 94-year old war veteran. In it, he displaying a knowledge of modern British military history that’s entirely beyond the IQ of all those who came after him, and probably most of the UK cabinet too. 

Just at that moment, on the main road adjacent to this street, there was a collision between a young female motorcyclist and a jeep. It had looked serious and we were all thinking the same thing: if the worst happens then the day ends here. Happily though, the young woman would recover well in hospital and Mr Salmond would ensure that she would wake up the following morning to a bouquet of flowers and a card from the First Minister of Scotland.   

Curiously, events since September, 2014 and the political personalities who have shaped them have provided further testimony to Alex Salmond’s political greatness.

It’s inconceivable, given the psychotic twitches of hard-right English nationalism at Westminster, that Mr Salmond wouldn’t have chivvied another referendum from it all. He was able to manipulate David Cameron into agreeing a Yes/No ballot. No Tory leader since has matched Mr Cameron’s smooth intelligence and wit. Alex Salmond would have waltzed rings round them all.

Read more:

Sturgeon pays tribute to Alex Salmond following sudden death

What will happen to Alex Salmond's unfinished business?

Alex Salmond obit: The master tactician who reshaped Scottish politics

There’s an even more tragic irony in what has happened to his beloved SNP in the last 10 years. With Salmond gone they have been reduced once more to a cult, hollowed out by leaders and a cast of familiars who have taken his legacy for a ride and trashed it. 

Every single one of them and their senior advisers owe Alex Salmond their entire careers. Without them, they’d have been mere numbers in the mid-tier management of Scotland’s public sector.

However, Mr Salmond’s own human vanity in which perhaps the flaws that led to his trial were rooted gave them an opportunity to bring him down. Even so, the malevolence and viciousness with which they gleefully turned on the man who made them was breath-taking.

No one will ever again come as close as Alex Salmond did to making Scotland independent. His admirers and his loved ones can take solace perhaps in this truth: that long after they have all gone the world will remember him and his feats much more than the wretched little they ever achieved.