When a minister resigns "to spend more time with [his] family", the customary reaction is cynicism and knowing nudges. But when Sam Galbraith, Scotland's environment minister, announced his departure from politics recently, there was only understanding, regret and good wishes.
For Galbraith, time is a precious commodity. As one of the longest-living lung transplant survivors, the fact that he had survived as a front-line minister at both Westminster and Holyrood was regarded as miraculous.
His departure removes possibly the most controversial, and certainly the most cantankerous, member of the Scottish government. More importantly, it deprives Scottish politics of a commodity it can ill afford to lose - a thrawn, independently minded individual, for whom the end result is more important than popularity or political considerations.
Galbraith's absence will mean one fewer of the "real" people in an executive and parliament dominated by career politicians and party animals. He is an eminent neurosurgeon whose colleagues continued to call in mid-operation for advice - which he sometimes gave by telephone while travelling between engagements in his ministerial car.
It will also mean one fewer of the Scottish "old guard", as a keeper of the flame for his close friend the late Donald Dewar, and with his style of devolved-but- autocratic government. He has never been politically close to Dewar's successor as First Minister, Henry McLeish.
McLeish's decision not to replace Galbraith but redistribute his portfolio of Environment, Sport and Culture among existing ministers suggests two things: the shortage of experience and talent on the back benches of the Scottish Parliament, and a reluctance to disturb the balance of a government that was unsettled by last year's leadership election.
Six months ago, when he was education minister, the funeral rites were being said over Galbraith's political career, in the wake of the exam-results fiasco that blighted the lives of thousands of pupils. But, not for the first time, he cheated death.
He timed his resignation so that the by-election to the Scottish Parliament on 3 May in his 12,121-majority Strathkelvin and Bearsden constituency would coincide with the date of the UK general election. Senior Labour figures asked him to postpone the announcement for a few months to give them a clear run at the Westminster seat, which was middle-class Tory until Galbraith took it in 1987. At the last election he held it with a majority of 16,292.
For months, however, family and physicians have warned him that politics could be shortening his life. The pressures did not leave time for the daily regime of exercise and rest essential to the survival of a post-transplant patient on a daily cocktail of immuno-suppressant drugs.
The 55-year-old has taken a realistic view of his prospects ever since 1987, when he was diagnosed with the then fatal lung disease fibrosing alveolitis. After the birth of his first daughter (he has two), Galbraith agreed to a pioneering lung-transplant operation in January 1990. He has confounded his own prognosis.
Galbraith has a medical man's matter-of-factness about his condition. When a fellow MP commented over dinner about his persistent cough, he replied: "Yes, and what makes it worse is I'm coughing up someone else's phlegm."
Latterly, he has seemed a brooding presence in the Scottish Parliament and was reported to the Presiding Officer for rudeness when he was told by a prim young SNP MSP that "this is no laughing matter" and he retorted: "No, but you are."
It was typical of a man with no time to waste, whose disease has given him a more pressing set of priorities, for he is also mischievous and entertaining. He was suspected of using his health problems to parliamentary advantage, collapsing into paroxysms of coughing at strategic moments, so that his SNP shadow seemed unsure whether to continue or call the paramedics.
Although Galbraith was an energetically reforming health minister at the Scottish Office, Dewar did not make use of his experience as practitioner, patient and administrator of the NHS, but gave him the Education portfolio in the post-devolution Scottish Executive.
Galbraith rode the Section 28 storm decisively, but his handling of the Scottish Qualifications Authority shambles was marked by uncertainty. In the first instance, his "I'm a dad, so mums and dads can trust me" was reassuring. But during the exams fiasco, his references to "the kids", who were waiting in desperation for the results that would decide their futures, seemed patronising. Those who expected McLeish to drop him when he became First Minister failed to appreciate that Galbraith had carried the can and that McLeish, as minister for lifelong learning, also had responsibility for the row.
His resignation puts all the scrambling and blame-shifting into perspective. Politics is not his life - staying alive is.
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