Alex Salmond is not just smiling because Scotland beat France or the Queen invited him and the missus to dinner at Balmoral. He is laughing because he reckons that picture of Margaret Thatcher – the Hammer of the Scots – smiling with Gordon, will be worth a few hundred thousand votes on the doorstep.

Gordon has sourly insisted that the civil service continue to refer to the renamed Scottish Government as the Scottish Executive on the legalistic basis that is so defined in the enabling legislation. Which is true, but could be amended and in any event the media and political classes in Edinburgh have accepted the change.

In legalistic retaliation, Salmond has taken to referring to the Prime Minister as the First Lord of the Treasury.