Act like a statesman, Mr Salmond, you can borrow my badge if you like!

WHEN the football pundits on Sky Sports joked about the former Celtic player Charlie Nicholas being late for the programme because he had been held up by border passport controls you knew that the independence debate was reaching out beyond the political chattering classes.

While these footballers may have been joking they were actually making a very serious point about what would happen if we in Scotland voted for a divorce with the United Kingdom.

It is precisely these sorts of questions about borders and passports that the Nationalists and, in particular, Alex Salmond don’t want to talk about.

That’s why when Tory leader David Cameron opened his big mouth before engaging his brain and talked about how the referendum process should work, Alex Salmond’s Cheshire cat grin couldn’t have got any wider.

This was the best New Year’s gift the Nationalist leader could have asked for.

For more than a week now instead of discussing the issues involved in a divorce we have had a discussion on the process and that’s exactly what the Nationalists want to do.

Far better to have a row with that nasty English toff telling us how to run our country than to actually face up to the arguments as to how damaging a break up of the United Kingdom would be to the Scottish economy.

I’m not so sure that we will fall for all this posturing though.

It is pretty obvious to anyone with half a brain that Salmond wants to delay a referendum as long as he can and have as many arguments with the English Tories as he can in order to give him a better chance of winning the vote.

It is also obvious that he wants to give kids the vote in a referendum not because it is the right and democratic thing to do but because he thinks that the young are more gullible than the rest of us and therefore more likely to vote with him.

At least the debate over the past week has focused attention on the referendum campaign and who will be involved.

I can’t help suspect though that for all their talk about being a Unionist party, the Tories would actually welcome a break up of Britain.

How else can you explain their incompetent blundering into Alex Salmond’s trap? The fact is that without the large number of Scottish Labour MP’s the Tories would probably be guaranteed a permanent majority in an English and Welsh parliament.

Is it any wonder then that Labour MSPs are reluctant to join in with the Tories in any referendum campaign?

The Liberals won’t be much help either given their increasing unpopularity north of the border, a result of them working so closely with the hated Tories.

To win the vote, the unionists will want to see more of Charlie Kennedy and less of the Chief of Cuts, Danny Alexander.

The great irony of the whole referendum debate is that there is actually a majority in England for a divorce and a minority in Scotland.

I suppose though that if David Cameron went round wearing a cross of St George tie everywhere and an English flag in his lapel then we in Scotland may be a little more inclined to vote for separation.

When the Alex Salmond meets with the Prime Minister I am looking forward to seeing if he persists with his Saltire dress code or decides to for once to behave in a little more statesman like way.

If he wants he could always borrow my pin badge that has the cross of St Andrew and cross of St George side by side.

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