HOW many photographs exist of Alex Salmond eating? There must be hundreds. Alex eating pies. Alex eating curries (lots of those). Alex eating ice cream cones. There was another in the newspapers yesterday – a lurid close-up of Alex demolishing a Belgian biscuit. It was a scary sight.
During an election campaign a few years ago I asked an SNP friend of mine why the Nationalists didn't stage more photo opportunities with Salmond and children. When his Labour opponent at the time, Jack McConnell, stepped in front of the cameras he w
as invariably surrounded by ruddy-cheeked wee cherubs. Why didn't Salmond do the same? My friend sighed: "It's because when you put kids next to Alex, it looks like he's going to eat them."
However much I would like to, I am not going to devote this column to the First Minister's eating habits, and how we as taxpayers are paying to keep him well-fed. On the subject of how he managed, in April 2007, to claim £400 for food consumed at Westminster when he was on a well-publicised diet in Scotland campaigning for the Holyrood elections, I will be silent. Nor will I dwell on the mystery of the £800 he claimed for food at Westminster during two summer months when the Commons wasn't even sitting. Not a word will pass my lips, because I have something more important to discuss with you.
Salmond is this week going to cause all kinds of problems for his political opponents – and they will have no-one to blame but themselves. Salmond will be able to deflect attention away from his party's failure to keep election promises, his government's lack of momentum and, yes, the cost to the taxpayer of his calorific intake.
This coming Tuesday, Jim Murphy, Labour's Scottish Secretary, will be at Bute House for talks with Salmond and the Scottish Cabinet. A clue to how that meeting will go was revealed in a briefing note issued by the First Minister's office yesterday. It can be summarised like this: Salmond is going to use the Calman Commission as a stick with which to beat Murphy over the head with all the vigour of a Tehran riot cop. And he will do so while claiming the moral high ground.
The Calman Commission, you will recall, was the group established by the unionist parties to come up with improvements to devolution. When the Commission published its report last Monday you could detect some smugness on the part of Labour, the Lib Dems and the Tories. They plainly felt that they, and not the SNP, were now making the running on the constitution. They, and not the SNP, were the ones having a constructive and detailed discussion about how to make Scotland a better-governed country. They, and not the SNP, had done the hard work to equip Scotland with the powers needed to protect its people from the vagaries of the global economy.
They had some justification. I'm a long-time believer in what this newspaper dubbed Devo Max – a strong Scottish Parliament exercising far more substantial powers, but still within the Union. And I would have liked Calman to have been more radical, both in the financial levers made available to the Scottish Government and the areas of legislative competence devolved from Westminster. But my fear – that Calman would simply tighten some bolts in the devolution boiler-room, squirt some WD40 on the moving parts and give the whole thing a wipe with an oily rag – proved unjustified. What's proposed is a substantial transfer of powers. This really is Devolution 2.0.
Of course there are legitimate questions about how it will operate in practice, but the SNP arguments against Calman are in danger of making the Nationalists look like moaning ingrates. Salmond, however, has a trump card, and he will play it with some relish on Tuesday. The SNP will ensure that the political narrative of the coming months is not about what Calman is proposing, but about whether the proposals will be put to the popular vote.
As the briefing note from the First Minister's office says: "On the central issue of Scotland's funding, the Calman parties should be prepared to put their option to the people in the referendum that the SNP Government propose for 2010, and we will agree to include it on the ballot paper. It can then be tested against the Scottish Government's policy of independence and Scotland being responsible for all of our tax and spending – including North Sea revenues – with the economic and financial powers we need as a nation."
The unionist parties have already made clear their opposition to a referendum. Salmond, therefore, will take great pleasure in portraying them as anti-democratic. That's much more fun – and far better politics – than an arcane debate about the practical difficulties in replacing a set block grant with fluctuating income tax receipts.
By failing to think this through and anticipate the SNP's response, the unionist parties have allowed themselves to be outmanoeuvred by Salmond. They have handed him the advantage. There is, of course, a way for Iain Gray, Tavish Scott and Annabel Goldie to recover their momentum. It is a course of action I believe they should have the courage to take. They could simply call Salmond's bluff and agree to a referendum on Scotland's future. No multi-option nonsense – you can't decide the fate of a nation on second-preference votes. Let's have a straight choice between the two options on the table – more powers or independence. There's an elephant in the room, and there has been ever since the SNP gained power in 2007. So let's look that elephant square in the eye. And no, that's not me getting back onto the subject of Alex Salmond and food.
