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HE didn’t thump the table but it felt like that when Alex Salmond demanded Ineos fire up Grangemouth during his party conference speech.

Behind the scenes, he wasn’t just thumping or even bashing heads. He was persuading, negotiating, cajoling and – in the end – getting a result.

Salmond missed much of the SNP conference and the by-election campaign in Dunfermline – but it was worthwhile to see the fires of Grangemouth, which he watched as a boy in Linlithgow, burn once more.

Onlookers suggest he switched into hyper-active mode in his determination to save the plant, thousands of jobs and Scotland’s industrial prestige.

He even convened secret talks with a prospective buyer – the Plan B if Ineos boss Jim Ratcliffe refused to light those fires.

Andrew Owens, the multi-millionaire owner of Greenergy, a rival to Ineos, met the FM to discuss a purchase at the luxury Houstoun House Hotel in Uphall near Grangemouth.

Salmond also had tough talks with leaders of Unite, who under-estimated just how ruthless Ratcliffe could be.

The FM even spoke in glowing terms about the efforts the UK Government was making to help, refusing to allow political rivalry or the impending referendum to prevent Edinburgh and London co-operating for the good of Grangemouth.

He negotiated a deal to reduce the cost of Ineos’s gas by £40million using his energy industry contacts.

All this was between conference calls with Ratcliffe himself.

Reports at the weekend suggest the wily FM talked the language of money – the only language multi-national capitalists understand.

It appears the FM convinced the Ineos boss that, if he walked away, another owner was waiting in the wings to make a lot of money from the plant because of government investment and guarantees.

Salmond’s critics called him a fox. Well, if it takes cunning to save our biggest industrial site, Scotland will say “so be it”.

What his enemies call arrogance translates into determination and strength in a crisis.

Given the hyperactivity of his week, it wasn’t surprising that the First Minister sounded somewhat wearied when interviewed on Radio Scotland on Saturday, once the crisis had passed.

One thing he didn’t raise in that interview was the referendum.

No surprise there – Grangemouth had, after all, been absorbing most of his waking hours for at least the last fortnight.

Yet the next politician interviewed on the same show seemed blithely unaware of this.

Salmond, alleged Labour MSP Jenny Marra, is “obsessed” with independence and thinks and speaks of nothing else. She repeated this ad infinitum. In fairness to Marra, those would have been her instructions.

The “Salmond independence obsession” is a key line for Labour and the Tories right now and they clearly believe it works or they wouldn’t keep saying it.

But Salmond’s key role in solving the petrochemical crisis suggests the thing that pre-occupies the First Minister most is delivering results for Scotland.

The business of government, and of leadership, is time consuming,

Indeed it is sometimes said internally that SNP ministers are so focused on governing well, they have little time left over to campaign for independence.

But you cannot separate the two.

If Salmond and the SNP are obsessed with anything, it’s getting the best deal for Scotland.

That’s why he fought so hard for Grangemouth.

And it’s why we need a YES vote next year.