Taxing Times for Alex Salmond

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The SNP is now staking its election chances on Scots' generous instincts.

If you turn off the microphones, lock the doors and guarantee eternal anonymity, some of Scottish Labour's brightest hopes will confess a guilty secret. They sympathise with the SNP.

Not that they want an independent Scotland: that remains a heresy. But when the cameras are gone and the curtains are drawn, Labour's younger modernisers swap their ritualised "Nat-bashing" for something more measured and forward-looking. They might acknowledge that there are "very committed social democrats" in the SNP. They might mention the virtues of "non-secessionist nationalism". They might even contemplate working with named Nationalists in a never-never land called "realignment".

These cloistered meditations raise interesting questions about the SNP. After …