ACCORDING to The Leveson Inquiry, Rupert Murdoch regards the First Minister of Scotland as "amusing".
That's a compliment, apparently. Donald Trump has elsewhere described Alex Salmond as wonderful – you bet – before suffering a change of corporate mind.
Johann Lamont, for Labour, wanted it understood the head of the Scottish Government is a sucker for a tycoon, he indulges an "infatuation with very rich men", and he is "the only senior politician in this country, perhaps the only one in the world", who would still put the kettle on for Murdoch.
Factually, this happens to be true. No-one doubts the Westminster parties will disappear up the fundament of News International once the coast is clear. The SNP's leader seems to lack inhibitions, though, and keeps a caramel wafer handy for the world's least favourite magnate.
It's about jobs, you see. As Salmond tells it, there is no humiliation he would not have chanced to avert "the huge risk last year of losing thousands of Scottish jobs".
He would have made a lobbyist's call – from a Government with no broadcasting remit – to further Murdoch's BSkyB bid. He would, it seems, have risked all, ungrammatically, for "these huge number of jobs" attached to one call centre.
What no-one managed to ask, since all participants are tainted, is why. Why grovel to these despised individuals? Is this what the Union gave us? Is this what independence would involve?
Lamont did her best. Ruth Davidson, for the Tories, tried to inquire over the putting surface offered to Trump in his attempts to rewrite planning laws and overturn an energy strategy. Neither politician could ask a plain question. Why does the man who hopes to lead an independent Scotland kowtow to these types?
Lamont said that Salmond is "no statesman, just a sucker". She argued that Murdoch "has played him for a fool again", that the First Minister "just likes rich men". All that was missing from yesterday's debate was the name of a bus operator. The SNP should count its blessings.
Salmond was not browbeaten. He enjoys these fights. He knows his compromises are as nothing to the habits of Labour and the Tories where Murdoch is concerned. He forgets to answer a question: Is that good enough? Being an "amusing guy" might not satisfy every voter, or every potential investor.
Salmond's backbenchers gave him a good shout. That has become their predictable function. The smarter ones paused, I suspect, to wonder whether the leader is quite the asset he's supposed to be.
A prospectus summarised as "Jobs, shut up" might not amount to the perfect vision of independence. Why wasn't Murdoch sent packing? Why was a property developer with a lurid history treated as the sort of homecoming patriot we need? Salmond's baggage is mounting.
Yesterday's exchanges involved too many denials from a politician proposing that everything will be different after 2014. The Labour benches howled, mechanically, when he discoursed on "this 15 years of worshipping at the feet of Rupert Murdoch from the Labour Party". Salmond's efforts still felt feeble.
He has ceased to resemble the SNP's best asset. In fact, he may have become the party's problem. The massed legions of the online You'll Have Had Your Tea Party won't agree, of course. But they need to say, openly, why Salmond takes tea with Murdoch.
Ruth Davidson went for Trump instead. There are smaller barrels, and bigger fish, and no chance of missing. Salmond denied the gift of "assurances", and the misleading of Parliament. He didn't make the obvious rejoinder, for none of them can. What would the Tories or Labour have done instead?
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