Salmond V Cameron

An interesting meeting is to happen tomorrow when the Prime Minister of the UK makes a courtesy call on the First Minister of Scotland. The piece written by Hamish Macdonell in the Caledonian Mercury is a nice little insight into a situation where the Prime Minster of the UK doesn't really want to meet Alex Salmond but feels obliged to do so. I suspect that Alex will be trying to tie him down and David will be deftly avoiding it. If Cameron is in and out of Bute House in 30 minutes then he has avoided being ear bashed by Alex; else, Alex has him cornered.
Seemingly the preplanned visit to Scotland, for the Prime Minister, did not originally include a visit to the First Minister of Scotland. Was this a deliberate policy to snub him or was this an oversight? Suffice to say, his political advisers have arrange for a courtesy visit in case it looks as if the Prime Minister is snubbing the First Minister. The Prime Minister was hoping that by the time he visited Scotland the talks between Salmond and Moore, the Secretary of State for Scotland would have sorted out most of the problems, the Scottish Secretary's chickenpox never helped the situation. Now Cameron will walk into the lion's den tomorrow and, if he has any sense, will quickly nip back out again after saying absolutely nothing. Not that it will bother Alex Salmond too much because no matter what the Prime Minister does Salmond has already won.
If Cameron leaves quickly then he will be seen as running away, if he stays for much longer there is a danger that Alex will pin him down. Cameron won't want that so I suspect he will leave early explaining about his full agenda.