When David Cameron sits down with Alex Salmond in Edinburgh tomorrow, the prime minister’s message will be clear – if just a bit patronising.
“Talk to my man,” he will say (if not quite in those exact terms), the man in question being Michael Moore, the secretary of state for Scotland.
The reason for Mr Cameron’s stand-offish attitude is simple. He knows Mr Salmond will go into the talks determined to thrash out key issues about his planned Scottish independence referendum.
Mr Cameron, however, will go into those same talks determined to avoid anything to do with the referendum on Scottish independence.
Hence the impasse and hence Mr Cameron’s desire to push all responsibility on to Mr Moore, someone he believes is at the appropriate level to deal with Mr Salmond and his referendum.
But will it work? No, not in the least.
That is because these talks are really not about the referendum at all, they are about political posturing and jockeying for position in the eyes of the public – and, as far as that aspect is concerned, Mr Salmond is well ahead at this stage. And Mr Cameron knows it.
The prime minister has known for some time that he has a long-standing series of engagements planned for Scotland tomorrow. He also knew he couldn’t possibly come to Scotland without paying homage at the court of King Alex, it would be seen as a snub (and on that would be seized on gleefully by the Nationalist administration).
So, somewhat reluctantly, Mr Cameron’s aides let it be known that the prime minister would be coming to Scotland and would be popping in to see the first minister – not for substantive talks, they stresesed, but merely as a “courtesy visit”, a quick "hello" to acknowledge that he was stepping into Mr Salmond’s fiefdom.
That was a mistake, one that Mr Salmond pounced on.
With deliberate mischievousness, the first minister responded on Monday by saying: “Courtesy visits are usually what prime ministers do to foreign heads of state. I don’t know whether that is what Downing Street meant to imply.”
Round one to Mr Salmond.
But the first minister then upped the ante still further, dismissing the role of Mr Moore and making it clear that he expected to negotiate with the prime minister directly on the issue of the referendum.
Mr Salmond declared: “The prime minister makes the decisions, that much is obvious in any governmental arrangement…
“I have been open to meetings with a range of people but obviously, if you are negotiating, then you negotiate with the person who makes the decisions. Now that’s again a statement of fact. The secretary of state is appointed by the prime minister.”
At a stroke, Mr Salmond had effectively hijacked the agenda for a meeting which Mr Cameron didn’t even want to hold in the first place.
So now, according to the first minister, tomorrow’s meeting will be about the referendum. It will be “substantive” and he expects to deal with central issues of policy with the prime minister.
This is the last thing Mr Cameron wants, which is why his aides have been briefing that the prime minister will simply tell Mr Salmond to talk to Mr Moore if he wants to deal with the nitty-gritty of the referendum.
Mr Cameron might well tell Mr Salmond this at the meeting. He may well say: “You need to talk to my secretary of state" – a polite way of saying "Talk to my man”, but this is unlikely to matter one jot.
That is because Mr Salmond will already have achieved everything he needed from the meeting.
What the first minister wanted was the public sight of the prime minister arriving at Bute House or St Andrew’s House for a meeting with the first minister, on the first minister’s territory, apparently as an equal, to discuss the break-up of the United Kingdom.
It really won’t matter if the two politicians discuss anything of significance or whether they munch on shortbread for half an hour and discuss the plot of River City – this is all about perception.
Mr Cameron wanted to give the impression that he was above these sorts of negotiations, that he, as prime minister, was more powerful and more important and that Mr Salmond should deal with someone on his own level, like Mr Moore.
But, once again, he has been outfoxed by the first minister and, once again, the unionist side has been left playing catch-up – and unless and until they get their act together, though, they will find that the game is over before they have even started playing.
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