With just two weeks to go to polling in Scotland's "general election", Alex Salmond yesterday carried his campaign to London, and put the I-word back on top of the political agenda.
The Scottish National Party leader has been much derided for his apparent attempt to "play down" his party's commitment to Scottish independence (it ranks tenth on a list of pledges, below one to end tolls for the Skye bridge).
Unabashed, and unapologetic, Mr Salmond yesterday resumed his claim on behalf of "Scotland's Party", telling the English they, too, should become a fully independent nation.
Writing in Punch, ahead of a speech to the Foreign Press Association, Mr Salmond said: "With Scottish independence, England would lose a surly lodger and gain a good neighbour. With Scottish devolution, the UK and England gain a problem, confirming my belief that independence for England is the only logical path . . . because it is best for England if England takes control and responsibility for its own affairs."
And as controversy rages in Scotland over reports that Mr Blair plans a cull of Scottish cabinet ministers post-devolution, the SNP leader ventured that Scottish MPs at Westminster should forfeit the right to vote on English affairs. Having long observed its own rule not to vote on English-only matters, Mr Salmond said the same edict should apply to all parties.
At this writing it remains to be seen what the pundits and commentators will make of Mr Salmond's decision to set out his separatist stall. Given the current disposition, he will not be surprised if the conclusion is that he has completed a triple whammy, compounding his perceived "mistakes" over tax and Kosovo.
By any objective assessment the first fortnight of the Scottish campaign has been an unhappy one for Mr Salmond. He caused something of a party split (while easily winning the conference vote) with his proposal that Scotland should forgo Gordon Brown's 1p tax cut, effective from next April, and redirect some £700 million saved revenue to Education and Health over a three-year period.
Opinion polls suggest that more than half of Scottish voters are prepared to pay higher taxes in return for better public services. And Mr Salmond's gambit, putting the SNP well to the left of New Labour, and appealing to an Old Labour instinct still apparently alive and kicking in Scotland, would give them the opportunity, as they say, to put their money where their mouths have been.
Labour's gleeful response to this "gaffe" was simply explained by Charlie Whelan, Chancellor Brown's former spin doctor, in yesterday's Guardian. Dismissing the polling evidence, he contentedly concludes: "I don't believe them; and neither do I believe that Scots are somehow different from the English and want to pay more tax."
Charlie may well be right, and there is little evidence yet to bolster SNP claims that its campaign for "Scotland's penny" is proving a vote-winner. However, it might at least be argued that Mr Salmond's decision on the tax issue is the stuff of real politics, and a more honest politics at that.
He might have imagined the same response would greet his opposition to the bombing of Serbia as "an unpardonable folly". Instead, he provoked an apparent backlash amongst Muslim voters in SNP target seats, and a swiftly-established conventional wisdom that his intervention over Kosovo amounted to his second electoral gamble, and his second big mistake. Scots voters appear, if anything, more supportive of the war than the English.
Outside observers, not to mention internal critics, might be less than enamoured of real and honest politics, if the result is a steady loss in support. And there is no doubt that, where the SNP entered the race neck-and-neck, Labour now enjoys a comfortable lead of around 13 to 15 percentage points. An NOP poll for the Scottish Express on Tuesday predicted Labour would take 62 seats in the new parliament (just three short of an overall majority) as opposed to 43 for the SNP.
However, John Curtice, Professor of Politics at Strathclyde University, says the chattering-class claims that tax and Kosovo have done for the SNP are equally rooted in fantasy. Prof Curtice attributes a collective misinterpretation of the polls to the fact that a System Three poll for the Herald reported the most significant fall in SNP support in the past three weeks, while before this System Three had not picked up a persistent decline in SNP support reflected in ICM polls since last autumn.
Noting that Labour's gain has actually been more at the Conservative Party's expense, Prof Curtice also offers Mr Blair the worrying thought that "there is an army of undecideds at least twice as large as Labour's lead".
Equally worrying for Mr Blair in the longer term, and to Mr Salmond's delight as he arrived at the Foreign Press Association, was yesterday's Guardian/ICM finding that the idea of a fully independent Scotland now enjoys majority support among voters throughout Britain, and that a majority expect it to happen within the next 10 years.
In his interview with this newspaper last month, Alex Salmond rejected the notion that his strategy required a Labour win, with the SNP in opposition: "This is an exclusive for The Irish Times, Frank . . . The SNP are trying to win this election."
And it would be nonsense to suggest that the party is fighting to lose. That said, the notion persists that Mr Salmond understands the reality of devolution as process rather than event; that his party is as yet ill equipped to form a government, he is very much the party; and that if, as always seemed likely, victory is denied him at this stage, he will remain centre-stage in the ongoing debate about Scotland's future as leader of the not-so-loyal Opposition.