Alex Salmond, Scotland's first minister, has emerged as a significant player in the Leveson inquiry. This is a result of the release of 163 pages of emails from News Corporation that have publicised the extent of its contacts with the Scottish government.

The charge is that the Scottish government was prepared to go into bat for the Murdoch empire as a quid pro quo for the Sun supporting the SNP in last year's elections. This is contested and denied by Rupert Murdoch and Salmond.

What is incontrovertible is that Salmond agreed last March to make a call to Jeremy Hunt, the culture secretary, to support Murdoch's BSkyB takeover bid. This call was meant to happen, but didn't.

To Salmond, this train of events is about the business of promoting Scotland, jobs and investment, as he has commented, "arguing for the Scottish interest is what this government does". At first minister's questions earlier today, he stated, "the job of a first minister is to advocate jobs for Scotland".

Beyond the accusations and denials, we now know that the Scottish government last year had a policy of supporting the BSkyB bid, believing in Salmond's words that it would be "good for Scotland". This official policy was never publicly announced, kept secret and only came out yesterday in the avalanche of News Corp emails.

There is a pattern here of modern politics and politicians; Salmond's courting of Murdoch follows Thatcher's ideological love-in him. From this New Labour learned to love the Murdoch empire, and subsequently the Cameroon Conservatives and Salmond's SNP have followed suit.

Salmond's style seems to involve "big beast politics", of deal making, attracting controversial, charismatic, alpha-males and being impatient or oblivious to the downside of such actions. There is an attraction to wealth and power from Fred Goodwin to Donald Trump (giving evidence to the Scottish parliament yesterday against windfarms in light of his relationship with Salmond going sour), and Murdoch.

The actions of Salmond and the SNP are what modern, successful parties do. New Labour fawned at each of these figures as well, as have the Tories. The SNP like New Labour at its peak, is a "big tent" coalition, from corporate interests to social democrats.

Murdoch has said Salmond is "an amusing guy" and that he is "interested in the writings of the Scottish Enlightenment and intrigued by the idea of Scottish independence". The latter is well known and seen as possible payback for a perfidious British political class now eager to spurn him. His interest in the Scots Enlightenment has so far evaded any students of Murdoch's media output.

Salmond will probably escape from this latest episode, aided by the weakness of his Scottish opponents. Labour's leader north of the border, Johann Lamont, did well today in their parliamentary exchanges, showing a genuine moral indignation, without landing a killer punch. A more likely outcome for Salmond unless he changes course is that the slow drip of his infatuation with "big beasts" along with a lack of serious party opposition will gradually diminish him: the way it did Blair.

This matters to the crucial debate about Scotland's constitutional status. The moral dimension could become even cloudier unless Salmond and the SNP learn some fundamental lessons.

The self-government forces are going to have to become explicit about their different Scotland, make choices and flesh out a progressive politics. This will entail speaking about a different kind of economy after the Blair-Brown bubble, championing social justice, and practising a very different politics. A generally well-disposed nation awaits a politics of this terrain, from either the SNP, Labour or other self-government forces, having giving up on the Tories long ago and the Lib Dems in the last year. An alliance with Murdoch and advocating for his business interests shouldn't have any part of this.

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