THERE is a golden rule in politics:
don't risk anything unless you absolutely, undisputedly, positively have to.
Well-placed sources have suggested the First Minister and those around him have convinced themselves they can drag the Prime Minister kicking and screaming before the TV cameras in a live debate with Alex Salmond on Scottish independence.
But as this newspaper reported earlier this week and as David Cameron makes crystal clear in a letter to the FM today, hell will freeze over before he will engage with the SNP leader on live television.
Now, the PM - because of the low standing the Conservatives currently have in Scotland - always treads very lightly when he crosses Hadrian's Wall. He knows the political context in Scotland is very different from that in England and so he walks as if on egg shells whenever his foot hits Scottish soil.
Quite understandably therefore, the Yes camp and the SNP are desperate to drag the Old Etonian English Tory toff into the fray as much as possible while the No camp and the pro-UK alliance have been just as desperate to keep him out.
Perhaps the most telling comment came last week when, in an interview with The Herald, Alistair Darling, the ex-Chancellor who now leads the Better Together campaign, declared the Prime Minister was "neither here nor there" when it came to the independence debate, ie he was, to all intents and purposes, completely irrelevant.
No 10 knows if Mr Salmond were to succeed in getting a live debate with Mr Cameron, the pro-independence forces would do all they could to portray it as the FM speaking up for Scotland and the PM speaking out against Scotland. Given how opinion polls have for the most part consistently showed the Yes camp trailing, the SNP leader believes if he could land just one good punch on the up-tilted Cameron chin while the good folk of Scotland watched from their sofas, then it might give the pro-independence campaign a mighty boost as the poll nears.
While the PM and all those around him will insist any TV debate with the FM would be a no-contest victory for the MP from Oxfordshire, they will, nonetheless, be keeping the delicate Cameron chin as far away as possible from the aim of the chunky Salmond fist.
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