Not The Right Stuff

Alex Salmond likes to think of himself as a Prime Minister in waiting, a statesman and someone we should look up to as Scotland's leader on the world stage. Then he goes and spoils it all by being crass and frankly tasteless. At a press conference in Glasgow East, televised by Channel 4 news this evening, he held up a card on which was a picture of Gordon Brown and Margaret Thatcher. He waved it around saying. "What were they discussing, Mrs Thatcher's state funeral?" 

Now whatever the rights and wrongs of granting the former Prime Minister such an honour - and I'm not sure it should have been given - Alex Salmond shows himself as both petty and petulant. That is not the sort of thing someone in his position should say. It shows him up for the rather annoying self congratulatory politician that I've always felt he is. Leaders rise above such things and however hard he tries Mr Salmond will always come over as both smug and supercilious.