On the Cromarty Firth in the Highlands of Scotland, Alex Salmond's pipedream is materialising in an old-fashioned industrial yard. Some day soon, two gargantuan, yellow, tubular carapaces will be taken from here to a resting place on the seabed, there to facilitate the old business of oil and gas extraction and the new one of renewable energy.

To take a stroll in this hall of pillars is to be reminded that in this country there are still people wearing overalls and wielding blowtorches making hard and heavy machines. "That's what a proper job looks like," the man on my left, another reporter, observes. Sparks are flying, metal is glowing. There are hammers. And taking place over there is something that looks suspiciously like … panelbeating.

A klaxon sounds and the workers, men and women, lift the visors on their helmets and prepare to listen to their special guest, Alex Salmond, the first minister of Scotland. He is here to mark the next stage of an industrial miracle. This is Nigg Energy Park, home of Global Energy Group owned by Roy MacGregor, a man who seems to encapsulate what life could be like, according to Salmond, in an independent Scotland.

Later, when we are driving back towards Castle Stuart golf club, host to the Scottish Open championship, Salmond seems unduly relieved that his speech seems to have gone well and seeks reassurance. I tell him that there was a rough 3:1 for independence among the chaps whom I encountered afterwards in the smoking hut. Overall-clad workers in the midst of their toils are not Salmond's normal audience and perhaps he was worried about how he might have been perceived.

"Nigg is the beating, industrial heart of the Highlands," he tells me, "there's a skills academy in there, too, with 1,200 apprentices on the payroll and looking forward to real jobs." He is warming to a theme. First, though, I want to get the serious business out of the way: Wimbledon, Andy Murray and taking a big saltire out of Mrs Salmond's handbag and parading it through the front rooms of middle England. What was all that about? "No one at Wimbledon took any offence, they are lovely people and they found it quite good fun, actually." No one at Wimbledon has been available to comment for the last 136 years.

He likes England, seems comfortable in its backyard. He has made speeches in London and Liverpool recently and plans several more. In his speech earlier he talked about the five unions Scotland would still retain following independence: a shared presence in the European Union (perhaps); a defence union (Nato); full currency union; and the union of crowns. And something also that he calls a social union. But just how independent can an independent Scotland be if it continues to share so much with its neighbours?

"We have a social union which is about much, much more than Westminster. It's about family and emotional ties. We will not become a foreign country, that's simply ridiculous. Does anyone think Ireland is a foreign country? And as for the currency – well, Scotland has as much of a claim on the Bank of England as anyone else; it was a Scot who founded it, after all."

Yet what of the Douglas Alexander imperative, that Scotland has a shared working-class heritage with the big urban centres of England such as Newcastle, Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham and that by seeking independence we are abandoning these places to endless south-east Conservative rule?

"For two-thirds of my life Scotland has had a government we didn't vote for. Even when we do get the government we voted for we invade Iraq. These governments weren't just disappointments, because all governments are a disappointment in a way. Harold Wilson was a disappointment to many people but I think he was a great politician and he did some really good things, like keeping us out of the war in Vietnam and creating the Open University. And he kept Labour winning elections against the prevailing trend.

"I accept that Tory England can seem like an unbridgeable citadel, but England is not necessarily like that. It's not the mission of the Scots to save England from voting for the government that England votes for. That's just patronising and it removes the imperative of English politicians to frame their arguments and approach in a way that galvanises people in England. One way to influence people is by example. I'm not claiming that Scotland will be perfect, because it won't be. But there will be things we do that will cause people to say 'Why on earth can't we do that? Scotland's got free education, why can't we have free education?' "

To some, this is Salmond at his best: painting on a broad canvas, eschewing narrow separatism and a what-we-have-we-hold position; throwing the gauntlet down to the English. "We can be a beacon of social progress," he says. To others, though, he is at his supercilious worst here; floating the idea that, having withdrawn from the union, Scotland, in its beneficence, can turn round and preach to the English about how to deal with the nasty Tories.

He is in expansive and ebullient mood, and clad, in a suit which complements his robust upholstery. The aftershave seems a tad too recherché for a Highland golf tournament. He's entitled to his bonhomie, though, for it's been a good week. The floated plans to prevent Scottish MPs at Westminster from voting on purely English issues would seem to make them semi-redundant and sits comfortably within the nationalist narrative. This was followed by the MoD's reported plans to annexe the submarine base at Faslane if Scottish independence were to occur. Countries have gone to war for less. The planned salary rise for Westminster MPs just a few years after they were caught with their hands in the nation's till merely provided a gentle top-up to the week.

Deployed artfully, these three stories ought to have the unionists in retreat for a while anyway. In the hands of the yes campaign the opportunity will probably be fumbled. This group, established to bring non-SNP people into the independence fold, has had a wretched year and several senior figures in the party are openly advocating a complete filleting before it's too late. Salmond, though – at least in public – remains supportive and, anyway, as he has said repeatedly, the phoney war hasn't even started. Nor is he perturbed by opinion polls in which the yes percentage refuses doggedly to rise above 35%. This is a man, after all, who faced a 20% deficit barely a year before the 2011 Scottish election in which his party was returned with a landslide, a feat that the Holyrood voting paraphernalia was supposed to render impossible. Nor will he even admit that his party's greatly anticipated white paper on independence, due in November, will be the starting gun for the campaign. It's clear, though, that something is stirring and that preparations are being made for the gathering storm. Three senior figures in the yes campaign have left the building and SNP summer policy camps are being organised. Salmond himself will make several more keynote speeches as he eases himself back into the saddle. He is excited about what is already in the white paper. "This will be a huge moment for us and, although I wouldn't say we are in full campaign mode, we are stepping up a gear this summer. The importance of the white paper is that it will give people a credible basis on which they can believe their questions are being addressed in a serious fashion. Nobody expects you to be able to answer every question and the no campaign are making a fundamental error if they believe that, but people can expect a serious exposition of the issues."

Salmond, both in his morning speech and in conversation, seems wearily resigned to Scotland's mainstream media being anti-independence, but he would be wise to pay little heed to this. His main obstacle will be piercing the Scottish comfort zone. Independence movements are normally fuelled by a deep sense of grievance at hostile occupation or economic and military subjugation. Not by any stretch of the most febrile nationalists' imagination could Scotland ever be deemed to have existed under the English yoke. Yet the reactionary instincts of the Westminster coalition government and a Labour party that is afraid of its own shadow could act together to provide a window of opportunity. Salmond was particularly touched by a question from a young female apprentice that morning who sought a commitment from Salmond about future apprenticeships for others.

"Independence will come to Scotland on a tide of rising expectations, not out of desperation," he says. "People are entitled to have rising expectations and not simply for themselves. They can have expectations for decency, and the reasonably secure belief that the country will be all right economically. This, coupled with a belief that we will be better socially, is an irresistible combination. We can be in a position not simply to do better for ourselves but for each other."

Yet earlier last week he had taken part in a vote to deprive prisoners the right to vote in the referendum, a curiously reactionary and draconian approach from a party of social justice. He was much more convincing on an independent Scotland's attitude to immigration which, he conceded, provided the opportunity to be much more enlightened than in England. He agreed to consider establishing a Scottish commission on integration, which would bring it into line with several other European countries and thus remove it from Home Office control and its concomitant security and terror connotations.

"We have an attractive identity and it's all the more so because we don't insist on it being a single identity. People are free to be dozens of different things and we should be confident that Scottishness will be part of that."