HAS Alex Salmond really got the Unionists in a panic, or is that just what they want you to think? It’s becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish an April Fool from a double-bluff.

When the former First Minister set out his big plan to achieve an independence super-majority – in which the “super” part was himself – it was greeted with plenty of scepticism, and not just because of the extraordinary context of the announcement and the car-crash manner in which it was conveyed to us.

He might have adopted a new phrase to describe the kind of Holyrood composition we had from 2011 to 2016, but he failed to spell out exactly why a pro-independence majority comprising SNP and Alba Party MSPs would carry more weight than one made up of SNP and Green ones, initially saying only that “a referendum is one tactic – it’s by no means the only route”.

If this was simply a pro-indy numbers game, with more MSPs meaning more pressure on the UK Government to grant a Section 30 order, then Alba would surely be standing aside in any region where they might threaten the Greens (and therefore risk decreasing the pro-indy majority while – as early polls suggest will be the case – failing to win any seats themselves).

​READ MORE: Alex Salmond's Alba will not return any MSPs to Holyrood, says Survation poll

But both Salmond and David Mundell clearly know something we don’t, because the former Scottish Secretary was quick off the mark with an apparent warning to Unionist voters. He said Salmond and his new party “present a real and present danger to bringing about an independence referendum and it has to be stopped”. Was this a clumsy choice of words, or did he perhaps mean exactly what he said?

Note that he didn’t say Salmond or Alba had to be stopped. He also didn’t actually say that they posed a danger to the Union. One interpretation of this is that he thinks Salmond’s return to Holyrood might make a second independence referendum less likely, and perhaps that’s even correct. Unionists like Mundell might have an interest in persuading Yes supporters that Salmond’s tactics will work – in the North East Scotland region if not anywhere else – because secretly they would love to see him back in Holyrood.

On one hand, Salmond seems to believe that his version of a super-majority (that is, an indy majority including himself) will be almost impossible for Boris Johnson to ignore, because it would mean facing down a whole parliament instead of just one party (the “almost” part is why he has some Plan B, C and D tricks up his sleeve, and the “one party” bit depends on everyone forgetting the Greens exist, despite the key role they have played during the last five years of SNP minority government).

But on the other, SNP politicians are working to discredit any such outcome in advance by expressing the highly dubious view that independence supporters using their two votes tactically amounts to “gaming the system”.

The obvious danger here is that Unionists now have a ready-made explanation for why an SNP+Greens composition can be dismissed as “gamed”, let alone an SNP+Alba one. I can just hear Boris Johnson now, reading from a script written by the SNP to dismiss the result – and the Scottish Parliament, and indeed devolution itself – as rigged and illegitimate. The reaction to the Alba Party’s very existence has been a gift to the UK Government before a single vote has been cast.

Adding yet more fuel to the fire is Nigel Farage, one day claiming that neither Nicola Sturgeon nor Alex Salmond really wants independence because they are both pro-EU (it will surely come as a surprise to France, Germany and the rest to learn they are not independent countries), and the very next day suggesting he and Salmond are two peas in a pod, agitating for their respective causes from outwith government.

Perhaps with these April 1 comments he was pulling our collective leg, or maybe these apparent contradictions – along with the hyping up of Salmond by those who one might expect to fear him – make sense when you consider that the ex-FM could prove to be more of a thorn in the side of Sturgeon than a threat to the Union.

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It’s no secret that many of those who have defected to the Alba Party believe the current First Minister has not been forceful enough when it comes to pressing for indyref2, with some going so far as to suggest she doesn’t actually want independence at all. The obvious counter to this is that – pandemic aside – Sturgeon does not want to press for a second referendum until she is confident the Yes side would win it, and under her more cautious leadership support for independence has risen.

How might Salmond’s return impact on the Scottish electorate’s confidence in the First Minister, and how closely do those ratings correspond with support for independence? For every impatient die-hard Yes supporter who welcomes the ex-FM back, might there not be one or more in the “soft Yes” camp who would be scared off by talk of pro-indy street demonstrations, and dismayed to see pro-indy squabbling erupt before we’ve even finished the first round of Covid-19 vaccinations?

Unionists may see the emergence of the Alba Party as a win-win: if Salmond fails to win his seat, they can crow that the independence cause he represents is dead. If he succeeds, they’ll sit back and wait for fireworks.