From Donald Trump to the BBC, the first minister couldn't have a better array of enemies
So which other of the seven forbidden arts does Alex Salmond possess? He already seems to have mastered necromancy in raising a moribund party of be-kilted gargoyles from the dead and forming them into a credible political force. And, judging by the number of opponents who have fallen suddenly with agonised expressions across the Holyrood chamber, we may safely assume that he's added some voodoo to his political armoury. But what new sorcery is it that now empowers him to summon an assortment of patsies and make them, against their collective will, do his bidding?
First of all, we had Jeremy Paxman inadvertently calling thousands to the Saltire by his impersonation of an English public school delinquent during an interview with the first minister. In the run-up to last Saturday's Calcutta Cup encounter at Murrayfield, another zombie from the shires stepped forward to do the bidding of the beast-master. His name is Ric Bailey and he is employed at our expense to occupy a position at the BBC entitled "chief adviser, politics". Let us overlook for a moment why the BBC, not being a political party, even has a political adviser. Perhaps the broadcasting unions may want to ask the same questions when the corporation's senior managers are asked to justify recent job culls as they seek to reduce its cultural significance to Punch and Judy proportions.
Bailey intervened to prevent Salmond contributing to a preview programme about the rugby international. It seems that he felt it would be inappropriate to admit Salmond's appearance during a period of "heightened tensions" in the run-up to the referendum on Scottish independence. How did this chap Bailey think the first minister of Scotland was going to behave on the BBC show? Perhaps Mr Salmond would blame Scotland's recent woeful rugby performances on the Union. Maybe, like the rest of us, he would wonder aloud why the Scotland international rugby team seems to have more English accents than the English international rugby team (but perhaps that's just my untutored Lowland ears).
Another week, another English buffoon, another few thousand votes for the yes campaign.
For a few days, there were some excursions and alarums about this when another much more serious story ought to have been foremost in our thoughts. This was the revelation that the old and infirm in some of Scotland's care homes are treated worse than Romanian orphans before the fall of Ceausescu. Nicola Sturgeon, the health minister, should have been grilled on this and asked why, on her watch, the obscenity of Scotland's unregulated care home sector has been allowed to become the nation's biggest get-rich-quick scam. Perhaps, though, the government is waiting for Margo MacDonald's death bill to become law, which would probably solve the problem at a stroke.
Salmond's political advisers are not above reproach here either. Some of them should have been informing their master that most of the nation does not think it seemly to have our elected first minister appear on a piece of radio flummery to talk about a minority sporting event. This is our most important office of state and possesses its own dignity and authority. Note to the government secretariat: Radio 5 Live is not an appropriate setting for the bearer of the office of first minister.
Last week, when the first minister ought to have come under sustained pressure over his party's lamentable record of supporting small Scottish businesses, Donald Trump came to his rescue. Trump has been allowed by a cabal of local yokel Aberdeen politicians to destroy part of the north-east coastline by constructing one of his concrete casbahs and calling it a golf resort.
He wrote a bizarre epistle to "first minister" Salmond, lecturing him about building too many windfarms and ruining Scotland's natural beauty. This from a man who would probably turn the Sagrada Familia into a five-star apartment complex given the chance. Trump told the first minister that the world was laughing at him. Most of us, though, were laughing so much at the spectacle of Trump posing as an arbiter of good taste and aesthetics that we quite forgot why we were criticising the SNP.
Then on Thursday, the tribunes of the people of Glasgow came together and contrived to make Alex Salmond's future look just a little rosier in the west. The ruling Labour group on Glasgow City Council had gathered to vote through the budget for the forthcoming year. This should have been a straightforward piece of business in view of Labour's majority on Scotland's biggest council. Instead, they came within a whisker of being defeated as a group of recently deselected councillors, whom the leadership had described as "deadwood", predictably rebelled and sided with the SNP. Normally, this would be unworthy of much comment. The local council elections, though, are only three months away and the SNP are now poised to win control of Glasgow. If the local leadership couldn't see this coming following their crass and clumsy attempt at party management, then they will be crushed in May and Glasgow will be controlled by the SNP for the first time since William Wallace was an altar boy.
Does Salmond have an endless supply of boobies that he knows, when the time is right, will open their mouths, disengage their brains and take the heat off him? There is a growing sense in this country that we must be allowed to become the masters of our own destiny, for good or for ill, and free from any Westminster interference. This has been reflected by significant increases in support for independence, two-and-a-half years before the event, in every opinion poll since the die was cast last month. The SNP must still, however, convince a majority of Scots to trust Salmond when he says that independence does not carry any risk to the nation's economic wellbeing.
If the parties of the Union continue to be distracted by the populist flimflam of the past four weeks, then they will help make the first minister's dearest wish come true.