The King is in the altogether...

It has been noticeable from Alex Salmond's performances in Holyrod that he (until recently) has had nothing but contempt for his opponents, the leaders of the other parties, the parties themselves, MSPs, Parliamentary processes and the Parliament generally.

I believe that it is this contempt that has allowed him the psychological space to relax and swipe away any question on any subject and give him his dominance over Scottish politics. If you don't respect the the questioner, the question or even the forum in which the question is asked, then it's easy to be dismissive. People of no account asking pointless questions in an irrelevant assembly: who cares? Say anything or nothing. Insult, reject, ignore. Hold me to account will you? We'll see about that, here's the back of my hand? Smack! Which he has been his attitude to all and sundry for a very long time.

But that was then....

REcently, Labour leader Johann Lamont has been getting under the First Minister's unexpectedly sensitive skin.
 
At today's FMQs, Johann Lamont conducted a forensic dismantling of Salmond's defence of the FM's  relationship with Rupert Murdoch. As well as revealing the SNP leader's too familiar relations with the man declared unfit to run his own corporation, she asked the killer question: has the FM's phone been hacked?

Answer came there none.

Ruth Davidson asked the same question, as did Willie Rennie.

Eck dealt with their interventions more confidently, after all they are even less significant than the puny eected leader of Scottish Labour, but still he didn't answer.

Because he doesn't care. It's only the pretendy Parliament, why should someone as important as the Eck himself have any concern with the petty questions of merely elected Scottish Parliamentarians? After all, he's the Eckus Maximus, the Fat First Minister, the top dog, the law-unto-himself, the boss, the Natfather, friend of Murdoch and Trump and master all he surveys. Who are these elected politicians to question him? Much less why should elected politicians expect any sort of honest answer from the great Eck?

But it no longer holds water. Not only has Johann Lamont punctured Eck's balloon on too many occasions for the myth of the FM's invincibility to be maintained but the confidence of his demeanour is no longer enough to carry the day.

The king is naked and the crowd can clearly see his embarrassment. They laugh. They point. They aren't taken in any more. The crown is squinty and about to be knocked off.

The contempt has been turned around 180 degrees. Now it's pointing at Salmond himself. And the Murdoch-lover is crouching down and covering his nudity and his vulnerable privacy. No longer the crowned head of contempt, he has become the epitome of naked contemptibility.

 Contempt from such  creature is no longer contempt: it's a joke, a fleabite. Laughable .

And when the tyrant's contempt is ignorable he is no longer tyrannical or to be feared.