Now Salmond can begin his battle for indepedence

After all the carry-on with the new Scottish Parliament building, they may have to rebuild it yet again to accommodate Alex Salmond’s head. Never the smallest object, it will have swelled dangerously today – and (I hate to say it) deservedly. This was his victory. Only Smart Alec can pitch simultaneously to the left and the right, and get away with it. “The SNP has become the conservative party of Scotland,” a banker friend emails from Edinburgh. “Almost every Scot I know who is a conservative in London is now strongly pro-SNP”. Salmond talks about low tax and enterprise, etc, while vowing to keep state spending up at Soviet levels. My gran once summed up his debating technique. “If he knows the answer, he gloats. If he doesn’t, he laughs.” He gets away with it.

And how? Infuriatingly for his enemies, he always has. His dad was a leftie, known to his Navy shipmates as “Uncle Joe”, who converted to nationalism later.