Of course, in an earlier, less acute stage of the “process-not-event” of Scottish self-determination, we have seen innovation of this kind from the Labour Party in Scotland. Jim Sillars famously broke off from being a hammer of the Nats to found the...

Such matters should be for Scotland to decide, not the subject of dictation by a London-based Tory politician – etc, etc. The indefatigable Jim Sillars has pointed out the legal position under the 1998 Scotland Act with which Mr Salmond seems unfamiliar.

He did not go in for beery chest-beating. Instead, like any man of the turf, he studied the form book and worked out a plan of action. His cleverness was first noted when he ran Jim Sillars’s successful SNP campaign at the Govan by-election 24 years ago.

There is no blood and soil, no faith or fatherland. Even the attempts to make Scottish nationalism militant during the Thatcherite years, such as the setting up of the “Scottish resistance” (complete with logo of a mob with clenched fists) merely...

He was the unofficial voice of those within the party who argued against devolution on the basis that the halfway house offered by a parliament with incomplete powers would thwart independence. However, he was also the author of a highly influential...

A spokesman for the First Minister defended Mr Salmond’s criticisms of Mr Cameron’s European policy, which he said had been influenced by Tory Eurosceptics at Westminster. He said: “Jim Sillars writes as a media columnist, not a politician, and is...