Alex Salmond’s strange – but revealing – admiration for Vladimir Putin

What to make of Alex Salmond’s qualified admiration for Vladimir Putin? The First Minister, interviewed for the forthcoming issue of GQ, declared he admires “certain aspects” of the Russian President’s record. Asked for his views on Putin, Salmond told Alastair Campbell that:

“Well, obviously, I don’t approve of a range of Russian actions, but I think Putin’s more effective than the press he gets I would have thought, and you can see why he carries support in Russia.

“[…] He’s restored a substantial part of Russian pride and that must be a good thing. There are aspects of Russian constitutionality and the inter-mesh with business and politics that are obviously difficult to admire. Russians are fantastic people, incidentally, they are lovely people.”

Well, some of them anyway.  Anyway, cue outrage all over the place from all the usual suspects.

There are many reasons why foreign policy will not have much, if any, impact on September’s referendum and not the least of them is that an independent Scotland will not have much in the way of a distinct foreign policy anyway.