On Dundee’s famous Tannadice Street, Alex Salmond was posing with children dressed in dark blue and holding babies clad in orange.
These are the kind of supposedly symbolic stunts that politicians pull off when they are on the stump.
Yesterday’s SNP photocall took place on the 100m of public highway that contains the stadiums of two deadly rivals, Dundee United (whose shirts are orange) and Dundee (dark blue). It was “football united” for Yes, explained the first minister in a city, Scotland’s fourth largest, that gives every impression of having swung behind the independence cause ahead of the referendum.
Mr Salmond had spent part of the afternoon near the Waterfront, soaking up the kind of reception usually reserved for rock stars.
“If Justin Bieber had sauntered down the road arm-in-arm with Paul McCartney, they wouldn’t have made an impression,” said one witness.
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It is appropriate too that the first minister had chosen to be photographed in front of the “Jim McLean Fair Play Stand”. McLean was a high-achieving United manager, whose career ended in ignominy when he assaulted a BBC reporter apparently to shut him up.
The memory of that on-screen scuffle was recalled in the treatment meted out last week to Jim Murphy when he visited Dundee. There were no blows, of course, but a verbal assault designed to silence the Labour MP for East Renfrewshire.
So did Mr Salmond stand for fair play? Would he call off those “Nationalist mobs” that Mr Murphy has identified breaking up Better Together meetings? Well, after a fashion. “If Jim Murphy comes bawling and shouting near you,” Mr Salmond told his devoted followers, “keep going on with your shopping and the rest of us will get on with this carnival atmosphere that everyone is enjoying.”
This festival spirit extends to the city mosque, apparently, where Mr Salmond had visited. There was a queue of people, filling in forms to vote for the first time. They are probably not going to put their X in the “no” box, he predicted.
“This is an extraordinary thing that is happening,” concluded Mr Salmond. “This is the story, not the side alleys that Jim Murphy would like us to wend our way into. The only people who are getting worried and upset are the people who are losing. That’s the No campaign.”
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David Cameron conceded at the weekend that he was nervous about the outcome of the referendum. No wonder, said Mr Salmond, “because the Yes campaign is gaining ground, it is gaining ground every day”.
As for himself, the first minister said: “I am not nervous because I am in the hands of the people of Scotland — where better to be in the hands of?” That’s all very well, but his supporters will hope that Mr Salmond feels the hand of history on his shoulder and not anywhere else.