Jim Wallace, Baron Wallace of Tankerness

As Liberal Democrat leader and Deputy First Minister from 1999 to 2005, Wallace made the first Holyrood coalitions work and three times served as acting First Minister. The partnership agreements he negotiated produced the abolition of up-front university tuition fees in Scotland and free personal care for older people, the first big policy divergences from England, and proportional representation for Scottish council elections. He showed that the parliament's electoral system would make coalition the norm. He died in 2026.