Some of those who queued outside the Cineworld multiplex in Edinburgh for this morning’s Yes for Independence launch found it hard to contain their chortles. There, hanging above the door through which Alex Salmond was due to arrive was a huge poster carrying just two words — The Dictator.
And if that ad for Sacha Baron Cohen’s new movie wasn’t enough to send the First Minister into a fury with his PR team, there was more inside. One poster for the film Prometheus carried the tag line: “The Search For Our Beginning Could Lead to Our End,” while a series for the new Ice Age movie proclaimed: “Cranky and Clueless”, “Wild and Woolly” and “Mean and Mischievous” — any one of which could be used to describe at least some of those who took to the stage to launch the Yes campaign in Edinburgh today.
So even before the start, then, there was a feeling that the normally slick SNP press machine had got things ever-so-slightly wrong — an impression that would only deepen as the event went on.
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