I am surprised and disappointed to learn that Alex Salmond has now provisionally agreed to a TV debate with Alistair Darling, even although there can be only one winner.
Such a match is an insult to Scotland by downgrading the importance of the referendum on independence.
Alex Salmond is the elected leader of the political party which won the greatest number of votes in the 2011 Scottish election, and an overall majority in the Scottish Parliament under a voting system designed to prevent that happening. Alistair Darling is a Westminster back-bench Labour MP, not even in the Shadow Cabinet, and no one elected him to be leader of Better Together.
The only justification offered for his appointment is that he represents a Scottish constituency. But so do some ministers in the coalition cabinet, and if the Prime Minister feels it would be beneath his status to debate on TV with the First Minister of Scotland, the appropriate substitute is the Secretary of State for Scotland Alastair Carmichael.
Mr Darling had a fairly undistinguished career in the Labour Government. His clearest display of financial acumen was his mastery of the House of Commons rules which allowed him to "switch" his declared first and second homes in Edinburgh no less than four times, to his considerable personal benefit.
If Nigel Farage, the leader of a party with not a single seat in the House of Commons, can have televised debates with the Deputy Prime Minister, surely Alex Salmond is entitled to face the organ-grinder?
Iain AD Mann
7 Kelvin Court, Glasgow
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