I’d have stayed on if I knew we wouldn’t be independent 10 years on – Salmond

Get the free Morning Headlines email for news from our reporters across the world Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy Former first minister Alex Salmond has said he would have stayed on in the role after the 2014 referendum if he knew Scotland would still not be independent after a decade. If you’d told me then that ten years later, we’d still be waiting despite the manifest opportunities there have been, then I would have said, ‘well, I’ll just hang about then and see the matter through' Alex Salmond Speaking in a new documentary by ITV Border about the 10th anniversary of the independence referendum – named A Decade of Debate – Mr Salmond said he would not have handed off the reins to deputy Nicola Sturgeon at the time had he known how the next 10 years would play out. But then… I thought we were set for independence in a reasonable timescale.” He added: “If you’d told me then that ten years later, we’d still be waiting despite the manifest opportunities there have been, then I would have said, ‘well, I’ll just hang about then and see the matter through.” But Ms Sturgeon questioned if that would be the case. “It was more a sense of I don’t want just to sort of almost by default say, ‘yes I’m going to put myself forward.’ I wanted to take a moment to ask myself some hard questions,” she said.