LONDON (AFP) — A year after becoming Scotland's First Minister, Alex Salmond is wearing a broader grin than usual after his dream of splitting from London was boosted by his old rival Gordon Brown's Labour Party.
Salmond is basking in rising approval ratings for his Scottish National Party (SNP), which wants to break away from Britain, as his honeymoon period stretches on and on.
By contrast, Labour last week plummeted to its lowest opinion polls since records began in the 1930s after its Scottish wing broke with Brown by ditching its opposition to the SNP's plans for a referendum on independence.
Commentators say Salmond -- once derided by critics as smug, but now nurturing a more statesmanlike image -- could hardly have dreamed of a better way to mark his first anniversary in Scotland's top job on May 16.
"Mister Salmond has good cause to smile. His chief opponent, the Labour Party, is riven in two," the Scotsman newspaper said in an editorial Friday.
"The evident collapse of Mr Brown's writ over the Labour Party in Scotland...is breathtaking."
In an interview published Sunday Brown vowed to do "whatever is necessary" to stop the United Kingdom from breaking apart at the hands of Scottish separatists.
He called for an alliance of pro-union parties, businesses and trade unions to team up and fight to keep England and Scotland together, in comments to The Sunday Telegraph.
Brown's intervention drew the battle lines in a spat within his governing Labour Party.
Brown clearly distanced himself from Wendy Alexander, the party leader in Scotland who called for the SNP's plans for a 2010 independence referendum to be speeded up, amid repeated claims that she made the policy U-turn without consulting Brown.
"I will do whatever is necessary to ensure the stability and maintenance of the Union," he said.
Salmond could barely disguise his delight when he told the Guardian newspaper last week: "We're already getting the Labour Party to dance to a Scottish jig."
Salmond is the first pro-independence leader at the Scottish Parliament, which controls areas like health and education there while London manages defence and the economy, since it opened in 1999 under then prime minister Tony Blair.
He believes that the five million-strong nation, part of Britain since 1707, can fund independence through billions of pounds of income from the North Sea oil fields off its shores and economic growth.
Doctor Nicola McEwen, senior politics lecturer at Edinburgh University, said Alexander was gambling that holding a poll sooner rather than later would ensure defeat for the pro-independence lobby.
But she added that the more time elapses before a referendum, the longer Scots will have to develop trust in the SNP, which could lead to a closer result in a vote on the party's defining policy.
"As far as we can tell from opinion polls, independence is still some way short of a majority but not as far short as it was a year ago," she told AFP.
"The SNP attitude was to govern well and generate support for independence and that seems to be working to some extent.
"But the majority opinion is still in favour of strong government within the UK."
Another reason why the SNP might prefer to wait before holding a referendum comes back to Brown's woes, McEwen said.
He has to call a general election by mid-2010, and current opinion polls suggest his Labour Party may be ousted by the main opposition Conservatives.
The SNP could calculate Scots would be more willing to back independence if the Conservatives, who struggle for Scottish support, were in power in London instead of Labour, McEwen said.
Until last year, Labour were the major power north of the border.
But even Alexander's proposed early referendum may not be enough to salvage the right result for Labour amid its current turmoil.
"Labour should understand if there was an early referendum, then it would be likely to be a referendum on the performance of the Labour government and of Gordon Brown in particular," Sir Menzies Campbell, former leader of the opposition Liberal Democrat Party and an elder statesman of Scottish politics, told BBC radio.
Another concern for Labour is Salmond's hope that the SNP can dramatically increase its number of seats in the London parliament at the next election, potentially giving it the balance of power in the event of a hung parliament.
It could use this as a way of bargaining for more powers for Scotland, he says.
Whatever happens, the picture looks rosy for Salmond who, having come to power the month before Brown, must now be favourite to outlast him in high office.
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