Less than six months ago Alex Salmond emphatically dismissed any suggestion of politicising Glasgow's Commonwealth Games.

Jack McConnell, Mr Salmond's predecessor, was so concerned at the prospect he called for a political truce throughout their duration. Lord McConnell, as he now is, went as far as to call for an end to all political campaigning by both sides but that was always a forlorn hope, impossibly difficult to police and, therefore, unrealistic.

And now we know Mr Salmond and his team have every intention of using the Games as a political lever, if not a launch pad, for the final few weeks of the referendum campaign. Why else would there be a furore over the date on which Mr Salmond and Alistair Darling, the leader of the Better Together campaign, will be debating on STV? As one Scottish wag put it, it's not as if either of them will be limbering up for a track or field event.

The story, as I understand it, is that STV invited both Mr Darling and Mr Salmond to debate on July 16, the date on which Mr Salmond had agreed to debate with Mr Cameron.

Since STV knew Mr Salmond was available, they probably didn't think there would be a problem and, since Mr Cameron has insisted consistently he would not debate, they invited Mr Darling; not, as Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP's Deputy First Minister, put it, as a Tory substitute but as a representative of Better Together, the body set up to campaign against the break-up of the UK.

And, before the facts disappear into the mists of time, it was SNP MPs who marched through the Westminster lobbies in 1979 to bring down a Labour government and put Mrs Thatcher and the Tories in Downing Street for the next 18 years.

But back to the STV debate. Mr Darling accepted STV's invitation but Mr Salmond was having none of it. He insisted the debate should be postponed until after the Commonwealth Games.

Yesterday, he tweeted his readiness to debate on August 5. Mr Darling, who had a cast-iron assurance that the first date was non-negotiable, would not be bounced into signing up for a new date. Rather, he wants STV to hold talks with both campaign managers before a new date is set in stone; not, it seems, an unreasonable position. The nationalists are hopeful of the polls narrowing during the Commonwealth Games and that is the most probable explanation for holding out for a date after the event.

Several weeks ago Peter Murrell, the SNP's chief executive, still hoping they could needle the Prime Minister into having second thoughts about a debate if the polls closed, said in an interview: "Why don't we just close the gap a bit more and see whether we're right, whether there will be a debate between David Cameron and Alex Salmond. Let's just see what we can do in the period when everyone is watching the World Cup and the Commonwealth Games."

Hopefully Mr Salmond will not play politics with the Games. He would do well to learn from the 2012 Olympics in London. Although they had been won for London under a Labour government and the games took place under the Tories, neither party tried to make political capital out of them.

From the outset, Tessa Jowell, their chief champion in the Labour Cabinet, firmly believed any politicisation could destroy the event. Party politics were kept on the back burner. Debates will happen in Scotland in August. Mr Darling has accepted already the BBC's invitation to debate with Mr Salmond in Inverness on August 12. Wisely, the BBC consulted both parties before making the arrangements.

It is to be hoped the debates will live up to the hype but history tells us we shouldn't hold our breath. With the exception of the first televised political debate between United States Vice-President Richard Nixon, and the little-known senator John F Kennedy in 1960, televised debates are not game changers and tend towards tedium rather than excitement.

Pollsters concluded that first debate influenced more than half of all the voters in the US. John F. Kennedy's success they put down to his suntan and good looks.

And here we were thinking it was all about policy.