Alex Salmond’s final tweet, sent just a few hours before his death last Saturday, was quintessential of the man and the politician. Its valedictory flourish - "Scotland is a country, not a county" - was typical of his penchant for a soundbite.

Its rebuke of First Minister John Swinney was hardly the first time that Mr Salmond had alluded to how Scotland would be in better shape were he still in charge. And the core of its content - that Scotland’s First Minister should not allow him or herself to be pigeonholed in status alongside English regional mayors - was emblematic of the strategic radar of a man who rarely allowed himself to be outflanked by the unionists to the south.

There was plenty of politics behind these final few messages, both internal nationalist politics and external constitutional politics. But behind the politics lies a policy problem which is entirely of the SNP’s own creation, both under Mr Salmond and Mr Swinney and indeed Nicola Sturgeon and Humza Yousaf in between.

Read more by Andy Maciver

The event about which Mr Salmond was tweeting was Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s inaugural Council of the Nations and Regions. The gathering was relatively controversial from the word "go", and as soon as it was announced earlier in the month, complaints surfaced both from SNP Glasgow council leader Susan Aitken and, perhaps more surprisingly given the party allegiance, Labour’s Edinburgh council leader Cammy Day. Why are we not there, they howled, when you have Andy Burnham and his ilk from the cities of England?

The answer was, in effect, “because they’re more important than you”. It is stinging because it is true. I challenge you, reader, to name a Scottish council leader outside of the two I cited in the previous paragraph. On the contrary, though, I’d place a bet that you don’t have much trouble recalling Mr Burnham or Sadiq Khan. And the reason you don’t know council leaders in the way that you know mayors is because the former are relatively anonymous and relatively powerless.

This, I am bound to say, is part of a local disempowerment which has been significantly exacerbated, if not caused, by the SNP in government. The devolution agenda should have seen powers pass from Westminster to Holyrood, and then from Holyrood to local authorities, however the second part never happened. Labour and the Liberal Democrats cannot be exonerated; in office for the first eight years of devolution, they did nothing to advance a localist agenda. However, under the last 17 years of SNP rule, local disempowerment has been accelerated by centrally-imposed decisions such as the council tax freeze and, particularly impacting remote and rural areas, the centralisation of revenues from the Scottish Crown Estate.

Some of this, I would imagine, was deliberate - and frankly pretty smart - constitutional strategy. In order to create the conditions for independence, nationalists needed to instil an impression that there is "one Scotland" - a homogeneous unit rather than a collection of cities and regions.

So Holyrood sucked powers up from Westminster, and simultaneously sucked them down from local authorities. We can hardly complain, therefore, when Sir Keir looks around for powerful local representatives to attend his summit and cannot find any. They don’t exist.

Nonetheless, it is not too late.

Scottish Labour appears to believe in what they call "metro mayors", and two of the party’s former city leaders, Steven Purcell and Donald Anderson of Glasgow and Edinburgh respectively, have recently called for mayoralties and closer alignment between the two cities. With Labour still to put flesh on the mayoral bones, it is unclear how closely aligned these interventions are.

Glasgow City Council leader Susan Aitken complained about not being invited to the PM's gatheringGlasgow City Council leader Susan Aitken complained about not being invited to the PM's gathering (Image: Newsquest)

My fear, as someone who believes in decentralisation, is that all the talk of "metro mayors" is an indication that Labour may fail to see the wood for the trees.

The story of 21st century Scotland will be the shift in economic activity from the central belt to the rural and coastal outer areas. There is nothing historically unusual about such a change in focus. The industrial revolution brought a west of Scotland dominance with the heavy industries, and when technology and globalisation obliterated them, activity moved eastwards to Edinburgh’s burgeoning financial and professional services sectors, and northwards with Aberdeen’s oil boom.

Edinburgh will continue, one hopes, to be a global centre of excellence for fintech and financial services more generally, but gradually we are going to see the economic fortunes of Scotland coming from our remote land and seas. Scotland’s three largest exports are whisky, salmon and energy - all produced far from the urban centres - and the last of these is where fortunes await if we sensibly curate the opportunity.

But the building blocks are not in place to facilitate that sensible curation, and powerful, local champions will be required in order to put that right. Rural and island transport infrastructure is dismal, and central government does precious little to improve it. Housing is scant and expensive to build, but policy does little to alleviate the causes. Partly as a consequence, population continues to shift away from remote and rural areas, leaving them short of workers for these expanding industries.

This is not an argument against mayors for our cities. They need these local champions. Edinburgh needs to be able to grow and thrive. Glasgow needs significant remedial work, probably for a generation, to revive itself. Aberdeen’s energy transition needs careful management. Inverness is the capital of the Highlands, but often far from the minds of policymakers.

However, in Scotland, those areas furthest from the centres of authority are likely to be the powerhouses of our future prosperity, and they need the representation to match. From the far-away South West to the Borders, from the West Highlands to the islands, our rural regions need championing mayors to make the most of their enviable opportunities.

Sir Keir will likely have 10 years in this job. His final Council of the Nations and Regions should be very much busier than his first.

Andy Maciver is Founding Director of Message Matters, and co-host of the Holyrood Sources podcast