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January 12th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda
By
Quentin Letts
Last updated at 3:25 AM on 12th January 2012
Silver-tongued, shrewd and slippery: Alex Salmond, Scotland’s First Minister
Canny. That is the (perhaps slightly stereotypical) adjective often used to describe Scotland’s Nationalist First Minister, Alex Salmond. Shrewd. Silver-tongued. Slippery, even. Those are other words for the man David Cameron has boldly confronted over Scotland’s independence referendum plans.
The burly, ballsy master tactician Salmond has long had it his own way. Other British politicians seemed to be terrified of him. Now he is being challenged by charming young Lochinvar Cameron. It could be a fascinating tussle.
Mr Salmond was born in 1954 on December 31 – Hogmanay, the perfect birthday for a politician who has come to embody Scots self-rule. Not that he is one of those heritage Scots who feels the need to flash the sporran. He has worn a kilt just once, at a recent charity event in America.
There was nothing much wrong with the cut of his legs, it should be said. Pictures bear witness to two sturdy pillars, pale, hairy and indubitably Caledonian.
No, vanity was not the reason for Mr Salmond’s previous reluctance to doll himself up in tartan skirtings. It had more to do with the fact that to him, nationalism is about more than romance and Braveheart and bashing Sassenachs on the bonce.
His interest is more nakedly political. It is connected to the workings of power, the control of wealth, the dispersing of patronage. That, rather than steamy ballads about porridge and spiders, is what gets this bruiser out of bed of a misty morn.
Mr Cameron faces, in this jowly, sallow-eyed economist, arguably the only British politician who is more fluent than him in front of a broadcaster’s microphone.
Boy, can Salmond talk. And it often makes fair listening. ‘Wee ’Eck’ (translator’s note: Wordplay on his size and Christian name Alex) Salmond is eloquent, delivering his messages in a fast, adenoidal voice.
He has a wry wit, a wide vocabulary. He is well educated (an MA from St Andrew’s University). What with his intellectual armoury and his flair for quoting unintelligible reams of Rabbie Burns poetry, he is a box of rhetorical tricks.
Our peachy-faced, politely-spoken Prime Minister may be able to claim the edge in terms of photogenic appeal against (the these days not so wee) Mr Salmond. In the sheer scope of the office he holds, Mr Cameron also takes the laurels against a First Minister whose Edinburgh residence Bute House, while grand, has negligible international clout compared to 10 Downing Street.
Celebrating victory: Mr Salmond with wife Moira at the Scottish Parliament election count in May last year
But where Alex Salmond trumps all other senior British politicians is in his classlessness, his presentation as a streetwise tough. It may not be entirely true but it certainly works a treat politically.
Both his parents were civil servants, his mum being a Churchillian Tory. He himself was a civil servant, as was his wife Moira. But Mr Salmond is more interesting than that might make him sound. He gambles, mainly on horse races. He drinks. He scoffs so much curry late at night (at the end of ‘ridiculously long’ working days) that his gussets strain like marquee guyropes in a Force Nine gale.
In 2000 he resigned the leadership of his party after a decade, and a year later he quit the Scottish parliament to concentrate on life at Westminster. In other words, this is no risk-averse, gym-treadmill-treading careerist.
One of his grandfathers was a plumber and reputedly taught Alex tales of Scottish history on his knee in Linlithgow. More importantly, the old man also taught the boy the basics of his plumbing trade. It is said that to this day First Minister Salmond knows his way round a blocked U-bend. He certainly does in a political sense.
Peachy faced: David Cameron has met his political match in Mr Salmond
He started in the late 1970s as a hot-breathed, royal-baiting Leftie, furious with the world. Today he would have us see him as an avuncular moderate, an Anglophile at ease with the monarchy.
Some attribute his transformation to Moira, 17 years his senior. Quietly supportive, she is kept very much in the background, though she is said to have firm (and often disapproving) views of her husband’s occasionally shambolic dress sense.
Others argue that Mr Salmond long ago charted his political course and that his strategy of moderate, step-by-step progress has been brilliantly justified and was all his own work.
He understood a long time ago that his Labour, Lib Dem and Tory opponents would like nothing better than to be able to depict him as a smasher of traditions, some violent extremist who wants to overturn three centuries of union. He needed to cut off that danger.
So it was that, as early as the Thatcher years, he set about establishing for himself the image of a centrist, a member of the SNP’s gradualist wing rather than the ‘one more shove’ fundamentalists. He did not go in for beery chest-beating. Instead, like any man of the turf, he studied the form book and worked out a plan of action.
His cleverness was first noted when he ran Jim Sillars’s successful SNP campaign at the Govan by-election 24 years ago. The nationalists decided to lie ‘doggo’ until very late in the campaign, luring Labour into a sense of false security.
Something similar happened in last year’s Scottish Parliament elections. Ed Miliband’s lot thought they merely had to wail about how bad everything was, about how the Tory-led Coalition in Westminster was mucking things up, about how Labour were the people’s party.
But Mr Salmond realised that the voters wanted a more upbeat message. Labour squandered a big opinion poll lead, were trounced by the optimistic SNP and gave Mr Salmond his first majority government in Edinburgh. ‘Canny Alex,’ they all said.
He used well his time of ‘exile’ at Westminster between 2000 and 2004, when he returned to the SNP leadership. He took care to groom himself not just as a character north of the border but also as a British mainstream figure.
Changing Highland tunes: Mr Salmond was once a Royal-baiting leftie but these days dines with the Queen at her Highland castle, Balmoral (pictured)
He went on light entertainment shows such as Call My Bluff and Have I Got News For You?, where his repartee served him well. He strolled round the Palace of Westminster with the steady tread of a grandee.
To the scorn of some SNP diehards, he praises the monarchy – claims he would keep it, even – and dines with the Queen at her Highland castle, Balmoral. Back in his angry days in 1988, when complaining about the poll tax, he sneeringly referred to the same Balmoral as the monarch’s ‘17,000-acre holiday home’.
But in those days he also complained noisily about English power, English sovereignty, English overlords. Now all that type of blowy talk has been finessed to something less likely to upset floating voters. He styles himself a keen Anglophile. He quotes English historians and English authors.
According to one story, it was an argumentative Labour canvasser in the 1960s who first drove Alex’s father to vote SNP when he rudely rubbished the party as ‘Scottish Nose Pickers’. Another tale has it that the teenage Alex Salmond was a Labour supporter until he had a row with a Labour-supporting girlfriend and she said, ‘if you feel like that, go and join the bloody SNP’. He did so, to serve her right, or so the story goes.
You need to rise early in the morning to outwit the Glaswegian Labour Party. Alex Salmond has done that, repeatedly. Now he squares up to a youthful and very English Prime Minister.
Mr Cameron yesterday came up with the memorable line that the SNP thought of self-rule not as a referendum but as a ‘neverendum’ – that is, as a prospect ever to be dangled in the distance, simply to lure voters.
There may well be some truth in this. If Scots voters finally have to confront the possibility of a Scotland without English financial support, without the BBC, without the Ministry of Defence’s ship-building orders, a Scotland which would have to join the crisis-stricken euro, will they really continue to support Alex Salmond?
Or has the increasingly decisive young Cameron done the previously unthinkable to the man from Call My Bluff – and actually called his bluff?
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Alex Salmond is not a clever politician, he is an opportunistic one. He exploits the ancient hatreds of England ,especially prevalent after that historically inaccurate nonsense ,Braveheart, to get them to vote in significant numbers for independence. However, he also knows that Scotland cannot survive without the money pumped into it under the Barnett Agreement, an agreement that gives money to Scotland to allow it a far better standard of public services than those actually paying it. He knows they will never vote for full independance, just a large enough number for more cash injections from us. But he conveniently forgets his stupidity. Who can forget his ridiculous statement about the Arc of Prosperity? We all know what happened to Ireland and the Euro. David Cameron could easily call his bluff by telling him that if they vote for independence, that’s exactly what they get. Withdrawal of all English tax payers money and a fiscal union with the doomed Euro.
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The Scots may speak from the heart in wanting separation, but they are not called canny Scots for no reason. When the chips are down they will vote with their heads and protect the money in their pockets; Salmond knows that and why he wants the question of maximum devolution. He knows that Scotland will be better off staying part of the UK and is using independence to get the maximum devolved powers for Scotland. Cameron is right to demand an IN/OUT question as it spikes Sammons long term goals of screwing the English for everything he can get out of us and ups the stakes. Cameron needs to put all the cards on the table and show just what an independent Scotland will look like without the support of England are its cash transfers north of the boarder. Should be an interesting fight, Salmond wrapped up in the Scottish flag and Cameron pushing the economic costs of independence, who will blink first; Salmond or Cameron.
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Salmond has already won. Every time Cameron opens his mouth more Scots move to the SNP. Cameron makes no sense: he and his tory supporters argue sponging Scots are costing England billions yet wants to keep the union – why??? He argues Scotland will be excluded from the EU yet that is what his Tory supports want for themselves. I’d rather wee Eck had Cameron’s job, but as he doesn’t separation look inevitable.
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The Union was forced upon Scotland, they didn’t chose it. Let them leave the Union if they wish to do so. Scotland is a country in it’s own right, as is Wales and Ireland. It’s for the Scots to decide their fate, (mind you there’s that many in Scotland living on benefits it’s hard to see how they’ll be voting for independence) nothing to do with someone from the likes of Manchester.
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Salmond is a typical politician – an arrogant buffoon forcing his idiotic and ill-thought through views on the long-suffering electorate. Devolution was one of the worst things to happen to the UK, just as the NHS found, fracturing sections of the service up only serves to highten inefficiency and create mass waste – which in laymens terms equals a lot of our money down the drain. When he finally asks the people of Scotland whether or not they want to remove themselves from the UK and become part of the EU rather than Britain, I’m pretty sure he’ll get a nasty surprise.
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Britain with its Kingdom in UK ruled for over three hundred years over its Colonies and its Dominance upon globe where once Sun never set and acquired waste wealth being diverted into the UK.
“Divide and Rule but do not Develop ” had been the policy of Britain’s superiority to rule over its Colonies for over two hundred years.
Divided Nations after Indepence from Britain still rue and are bitter over conflict, divisions and partitions.
Makes me really very sad to see the UK once an Empire decline with its own Kingdom seeking Indepenedance to split.
United we are STRONG. Divided we are weaker.
Fragmented into pieces like after colapse of USSR, and other Nations, to my opinion will probably leave USA to dominate the world in years to come.
No doubt, North Sea oil is rich source of Revenue to the UK, but nothing lasts for ever.
Even the Roman Empire declined.
Being united, the UK is better of rather than lick the wounds of failure in generations to come.
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little big man
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It is not St Andrew’s University. It is St Andrews University. This is because St Andrews (no apostrophe) is the name of the town. There you are Quentin, you have learnt something new today. No need to thank me, mind.
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Good piece, by the standards of this organ. Worth pointing out, though, that Cameron’s scriptwriters lack the imagination to come up with an inventive term like “neverendum”. It’s been bandied about in Scottish politics for a long time, to the point of groanworthiness. Most sources suggest it was coined by another Dave, Canadian satirist David Rosen, in relation to Quebec’s independence referenda.
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– James de la Mare, London England, 12/1/2012 00:19
You sound like the same people were saying the British Empire will become weaker by giving all these countries independence.
Laughable.
If the Scots want to be independent, then it is their right, regardless of whether that has a negative impact for the rest of Britain and the Scots themselves.
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