Mainstream and social media alike are now well into their second day of an absolutely epic meltdown at the news that Alex Salmond is to broadcast a chat show on RT, the Russian equivalent of the BBC.

It really is almost impossible to overstate the magnitude of the shrieking fit the decision has produced. Addled old Lords with criminal convictions for violently and drunkenly assaulting Her Majesty’s police have with an audacious lack of self-awareness decried the immorality of one of HM’s advisors going on TV to talk about stuff, and one Lib Dem MSP has even gone so far as to raise a Holyrood motion demanding that the state interferes with the lawful employment choices of a private citizen.

We imagine that RT will be beside itself with joy at the avalanche of publicity the UK press and political sphere is giving it. We’d be amazed if the hysterical brouhaha didn’t double or treble the audience figures that Salmond could otherwise have expected.

It’s just that it’s all a little, well, sudden.

Nobody disputes that RT is an arm of the Russian government – which in the interests of accuracy it perhaps needs to be pointed out is a democratically-elected one, as is the Russian presidency.

And nobody disputes that the Russian government are pretty bad guys. Russia has some draconian anti-gay laws and media (unlike Scotland, where homosexuality was legalised as long ago as 1980), and has been implicated in the murders of a number of journalists and other dissenters – all things which could never happen in the UK.

Such claims as those above are obviously nonsensical tinfoil-hat conspiracy paranoia, because we all know that neither the British establishment nor the state broadcaster would ever be involved in covering up terrible wrongdoing at the highest levels.

And the UK government would definitely never condone the killing of journalists.

The BBC is, as we know, a renowned paragon of impartiality.

And obviously no other former or current UK political leader would be seen implicitly endorsing a toxic media outlet responsible for untold human suffering.

Even some normally reasonable and fair-minded reporters have accused the Russians of seeking to regularly undermine the processes of democracy in other nations – behaviour which would naturally be unacceptable for Britain and her allies too.

It would certainly never happen here.

The dastardly former Soviets have even sunk so low in the furtherance of these ends as to deploy armies of fake social media accounts in order to propagate their views and influence events across the globe.

Such underhanded tactics are far beneath the dignity and decency of our side.

At least any minor misdeeds that may have been inadvertently perpetrated by the UK government on occasion have had only trivial and unimportant consequences.

Putin’s Russia is also, and perhaps most notoriously of all, responsible for operating a sinister network of secret “black prisons” and – openly – a concentration and torture camp for perceived enemies of the regime, who are held outwith the reach of law on the territory of the Communist satellite state of Cuba.

[SUB: PLEASE CHECK THIS BEFORE PUBLICATION]

So there can be no disputing that a broadcaster backed by the Kremlin is a uniquely intolerable affront to all that is good and decent – even if it’s running entirely legally in the UK under an Ofcom licence, unlike (say) the Iranian state channel Press TV.

Which clearly no UK politician would therefore be seen to work with.

(A fun trivia fact to note in passing is that in order to watch Salmond’s RT show in the UK, viewers are of course forced by law to fund the British Broadcasting Corporation – not RT, which gets nothing from the licence fee.)

Salmond’s show – though it’ll be produced by Salmond’s own company, not scripted by RT – is said by critics to be “lending credibility” to Vladimir Putin simply by appearing on the station, a situation completely unlike that of the other UK politicians who have done so, such as Lib Dem leader Vince Cable.

Or the Labour leader and Press TV star Jeremy Corbyn.

Or the Green Party leader (sorry, “co-chairperson”) Caroline Lucas.

Or literally dozens and dozens of other UK MPs from all parties.

Or political pundits like David Torrance.

Who have clearly subsequently reconsidered the “preposterous” error of their ways.

(Yes, that really was David Torrance accusing someone else of being desperate for publicity and of consorting with the wrong sorts of people, if you were wondering.)

And it’s a further comfort that no Scottish politicians currently attacking Salmond have “lent credibility” to any other Russian state-owned propaganda media such as Sputnik News by appearing on it, as one Sputnik presenter noted.

The most unimaginable breach of all international protocols and laws, of course, would be if the Russian government was to attempt to somehow interfere in the politics of the UK itself, a scenario which is thankfully still just a crazed fantasist’s pipedream.

All in all, then, the furore about Salmond is fair and totally understandable. Because even though the government of every nation on Earth has rivers of innocent blood on its hands, and even though RT is a station which operates freely and legally in the UK and is available without restriction to anyone with a TV licence (Freeview channel 234, Sky 512), and even though politicians and ministers of every UK party regularly appear on it, it’s completely different in his case.

And when someone tells us why, we’ll be sure to get back to you with the reason.