SITTING in his Westminster office drinking cappuccino, albeit in a paper cup, Alex Salmond is relaxed, looking forward to next week's annual conference in Inverness, and is prepared to tell The Herald that he has to tackle his leadership of the SNP differently this time around.

Not that he thinks he did too badly during his first 10-year stint. Rather, he believes the party has to raise its game to make sure of winning at the polls in the local, Scottish and general elections.

He will adopt a different leadership style. Out will go the one-man-band politics and in will come a team game, a recognition that if the SNP is going to succeed it has to prove the party is bigger than him and could indeed be a credible party of government.

He says: ''I am well aware that what I do this time has to be different, although I thought the first time round wasn't bad. But we didn't win, although we went from four MPs to 40-plus MPs and MSPs. So this time I have to do something quantifiably different.

''I wasn't famous for my inclusivity the first time round. I was perceived as something of a one-man band. But my defence was there wasn't a huge number of people with whom to share the work. This time there is a much bigger team to draw on and I intend to draw on all the available talents.''

Mr Salmond will raise the stakes at the conference and will bluntly tell party members they must make progress at next year's expected general election if they ever want to get their hands on the reins of power in the Scottish Parliament.

''The SNP are a constitutionally-orientated party so we must put two arguments. One, we cannot say what is happening in Scotland now has nothing to do with us and sit back and wait for the nirvana of an independent Scotland. We have to present ideas and show that we can come up with something better, and two, we actually have a job of working in the Scottish Parliament, and it is a real parliament, not a pretendy parliament.''

But he has a stark warning for the Scottish parliamentarians, and one that finds him agreeing with Magnus Linklater, a right-of-centre Scottish newspaper columnist, for the first time in his life. Recently Linklater urged the tenor of political debate to match the grandeur of the building.

The SNP leader remarks: ''One of the problems of the parliament is that too many people in the parliament act as if it is, perhaps not a parish council, but certainly a town council. To be a parliament, it has to act like a parliament. The building is not the only thing and whatever criticism I've made of the building, and I've made plenty, it does not feel like a town council, it feels like a parliament, and hopefully that will be one of the things that helps people to act like parliamentarians.''

Mr Salmond admits the SNP lost its focus, but if he were not confident that under a new, reinvigorated leadership it could be restored he would not have been tempted to risk the ridicule of the press and forgo the pleasures of restoring his home in the north-east of Scotland. He has three immediate priorities: setting out a policy programme to take the SNP into a general election campaign, establishing a new economic strategy and formulating a plan to revitalise democracy.

He says: ''My speech at conference will hit hard. It will be an attempt to explain party policies and the direction in which we are going in a way that is clearly understandable. If the members don't understand our direction, how can we expect anyone else to find it exciting?''

The new SNP leader is too long in the tooth to reveal his target for next year's general election but he is confident he will welcome the SNP's 10,000th member at Inverness. He insists the SNP is now Alex's team, not Alex's army, but he will expect all the members to be foot soldiers nevertheless.