Alex Salmond must have been cringing into his cornflakes this morning as the back lash against his colleague Joan McAlpine's 'anti Scottish' comments began.

It presents him with a public relations problem he could do without, just when people are starting to ask some searching questions about his independence policy. 

The SNP has worked long and hard on a closely choreographed, on message, PR savy approach to winning power. An approach that has served them well and elevated them to a position where they can legitimately claim to have a mandate to ask the Scottish people if they are in favour of splitting up the UK.

A debate that they hope will be based on the evidence that Scotland will be better off out of the Union, a debate they think they can win. But just when they are starting to be seen to be having a grown up, rationale discussion about why independence is a good thing in the run to the 2014 referendum, up steps Ms McAlpine with a bag full of spanners.

Anyone who is not for independence is 'anti Scottish' according to the bold Joan.

I bet the First Minister thought he'd exorcised that level of petty, chippy Nationalism that blighted the party throughout the 80s and 90s that consigned them to the fringes of serious politics for a generation.

How hard he has worked to transform the it's 'oor oil', kailyard introversion into a confident, modern party of government.

Only to see the journey potentially stalled by one of his own political aides.

And at a time when at last the debate is getting interesting and Westminster has woken up to the fact that they could be sleeping walking through the breakup of a 300 year partnership. Suddenly questions are being asked about whether Scotland really would be allowed to keep the pound or would it join the Euro? How is oil revenue going to be split? What will happen to UK military bases in Scotland and how much of the national debt would an independent Scotland have to shoulder? With a multitude more to follow.

However, he will probably get away without having to take any action for the simple reason as Labour's Douglas Alexander's school boy attempts at debate on BBC Question Time last night proved, even when the Unionists have the ammunition they don't know how to concentrate their fire. For the simple reasons that they have no strategy and no leadership.

Which despite this minor little blip Salmond most certainly has.