IT IS TIME TO REFUSE THE ROUBLES, SALMOND
RATHER too much of my adult life has been spent watching Alex Salmond’s jowls wobbling in righteous indignation.
The voice rises with practised precision to meet the most damning phrases in the morality lesson; the finger jabs away in rhythm and those soft brown eyes suddenly blaze with fury.
You have to hand it to him. He’s very good at it. Indeed, so effective is Mr Salmond at the brutal take-down, you have to wonder at the animus he could muster for any political rival crazy enough to accept the Kremlin’s rouble in the current climate.
Just suppose, for example, some incorrigible self-publicist politician was still making a Russian-state sponsored TV show in the light of what is now known about Vladimir Putin’s men arriving on these shores to commit murder with a nerve agent.
Of course, it is not a rival who is unwise enough to do so.
It isn’t even a member of the party to which Mr Salmond belonged until, to spare its blushes, he resigned days ago to fight sexual misconduct allegations. It is Alex Salmond himself, star of The Alex Salmond Show on Russia Today, who reckons making his money this way is fine for a former First Minister.
I have no idea whether there is anything in the sexual misconduct claims he denies.
But if Mr Salmond denies he would monster any opponent making TV programmes for the propaganda vehicle of a state which sends assassins to our land then, in that, I’d have trouble believing him.