The Queen, who is on something of a roll after her triumphant state visit to Ireland and the arrival of Barack Obama in London, has just won a new fan.

Alex Salmond, the first minister of Scotland, has just given a gushing interview about the Queen in which he raises an intriguing prospect. The SNP leader tells Prospect magazine that an independent Scotland would keep the Queen as head of state while England would be better off as a republic.

Salmond indicated some time ago that an independent Scotland would keep the Queen as head of state. But the increasingly assertive – and mischievous – Salmond suggests that Scotland would be more confident than England about holding onto the monarchy because it takes a different approach to social class.

Prospect has just issued a press release about Salmond's interview with James Macintyre, the magazine's politics editor:

"There is a better case for an English republic than a Scottish one," he says. Mainstream Scotland, in his view, is not anti-monarchy, because the royals don't define a Scots class structure as they do in England. "I'm not saying Scotland is a classless society," he says, "but I still think inequalities in Scotland are not generally linked to the monarchy."

Salmond said he loved the royal wedding, which he attended, because it broke the traditional "English reserve" and ushered in a "carnival-like atmosphere" which he likens to Hogmanay. He says he "missed a trick" after failing to plaster Edinburgh in royal colours:

I was too busy with the campaign but I should have had this entire city – I would have had – covered in royal standards.

Salmond's remarks are no doubt designed to reassure Scots who feel uncomfortable about severing ancient links if Scotland becomes independent. The SNP leader appears to have no intention of restoring the House of Stuart, which provided Scotland's monarch, in its days as a sovereign state. (Even if he wanted to it would be tricky to place a Stuart on the throne).

Between 1603 and 1707 England and Scotland technically shared a monarch after the Union of the Crowns in 1603 which led to James VI of Scotland also becoming James I of England. In 1707, when the English and Scottish parliaments each passed an Act of Union, the Kingdom of Great Britain was created.

Queen Anne, who was the last Queen of England and Scotland (1702-07) and the first Queen of Great Britain and Ireland (1707 until her death in 1714) was the last member of the House of Stuart to sit on the throne. On her death the House of Hanover, in the form of King George I, took over.

But Salmond indicated there would be no return for the House of Stuart when he made clear that the current Queen, from the House of Windsor, would be Queen of Scotland. This became clear in an exchange in the Independent in 2007:

Q: Will the Queen continue to be Queen of an independent Scotland, as the direct descendant of James VI? Or will you reinstate the Stuarts? LAURA CORDON, Lewisham, London A: The Queen will be Elizabeth of Scotland in the same way as she is Queen today in Canada, Australia and a host of other Commonwealth nations.

Salmond's suggestion to Prospect that England could break from the crown, while Scotland would keep the House of Windsor, is no doubt designed to irritate the English establishment. London probably hopes that England, Wales and Northern Ireland (assuming Unionists maintain their majority there) will be regarded at the UN as the successor state to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in the way that Russia became the successor state to the Soviet Union. That might look a bit strange if the Salmond scenario comes true.