Who Has Alex Salmond Beaten?

I can’t find the passage, but if memory serves there’s a moment in War and Peace when the assembled company is discussing Napoleon Bonaparte and marvelling at and quaking before the string of military victories he has won and how this spells doom for poor Russia when an old and ancient battle-weathered chap growls something to the effect of “Who has he beaten? Only Germans. Everyone has always beaten the Germans.”

Well, not quite. But you get the point. This is something to keep in mind next time you hear someone worry about Alex Salmond. Take for instance my old friend Jenny Hjul, writing in the Sunday Times:

If Gordon Brown won’t allow a referendum on Scottish independence when he calls a general election, then David Cameron, once in No 10, should test the strength of the union in a plebiscite, or so the argument goes. The justification is that the separatists would be so convincingly defeated that they would slope off into the sunset and never dare raise the subject again, or not for a generation anyway.