 a SPECTRE is haunting Scotland   the spectre of Salmond. In the past week the First Minister has been compared to the Zimbabwean dictator, Robert Mugabe. He has been cast as a  Jekyll and Hyde  character whose true  bullying  tendencies have come to the fore since the May election. He has governed, some say, with a sinister centralism .  To the London press the First Minister is a devious trickster, playing politics with the constitution. Meanwhile, City analyst Citigroup says his determination to plunge Scotland into the  uncertainty  of an independence referendum will destroy the Scottish renewables industry and deter investment.  SNP ambitions to transform Scotland into a leading provider of renewable energy and to export power after independence to England and even beyond became the focus of determined attacks throughout last week.  No sooner had Citigroup warned investors that independence would threaten their investments in renewable energy in Scotland than the Institute of Mechanical Engineers tore into alex Salmond s renewable targets, saying meeting them would cost billions and leave consumers facing a rise in energy prices.  Nicola Sturgeon, standing in for Salmond at First Minister s Questions in Holyrood, countered that Citigroup was wrong, that renewables were on target and that, anyway, according to a report from PricewaterhouseCoopers, there was still ?376 billion in North Sea Oil, waiting to be exploited.  Those attacks followed days of criticisms of Salmond. The outgoing Labour leader, Iain Gray, used his farewell speech last Saturday to condemn the  ugly side of nationalism  under Salmond s leadership, which he claims is spreading vile poison  across public life.  The image he conjured up was of Salmond as the Dark Lord, presiding over his cybernat  demons to pollute the internet with what Gray called  smears and lies against anyone who disagrees with him.  Salmond has been here before, of course, and he s well used to Unionists attempting to link him to the  dark side of nationalism , as Labour s former shadow scottish secretary, George (now Lord) Robertson used to put it. In the 1990s, Labour portrayed Salmond as a cross between Umberto Bossi of the Italian Lombard League and the Serbian dictator, Slobodan Milosevic. Salmond was famously dubbed the  toast of Belgrade  for his opposition to allied bombing during the Kosovo conflict. More recently, before the 2007 Scottish election, the SNP leader was excoriated in the Scottish tabloid press as  the most dangerous man in Scotland . During the recent Supreme Court row, the advocate general, Lord Wallace, accused Salmond of challenging the rule of law itself by his  aggressive interventions  against English judges.  The First Minister naturally dismisses these charges and points out that he remains hugely popular where it counts    among Scottish voters. They don t seem to think Salmond has horns on his head. The FM s personal popularity has been a huge electoral asset to the SNP, so it s not surprising Unionists have been doing their best to tarnish it. What is surprising is how inept they are at doing so. Lord Cormack s comparison last week with Robert Mugabe was as ludicrous as it was offensive   no-one, not even Lord Cormack, seriously believes that the FM intends to lock up opposition politicians and foment violence on the streets.  In the same debate, the former Tory Scottish Secretary, Lord Forsyth, claimed, under parliamentary privilege, that the SNP leader had told the Chancellor, George Osborne, privately that if Westminster tried to stage its own referendum on independence, Salmond would  use the police  to frustrate it. The SNP say they ve no idea what Lord Forsyth was talking about.  What the Unionists never quite seem to grasp is that many Scottish voters   even some Unionists   regard such remarks about Scotland s elected leader as a slight against them. Treating the First Minister of Scotland as a devious anti-colonial demagogue or a proto-dictator is offensive toward the Scottish people.  Similarly, the charge that Scotland is too wee or too poor to govern itself is counter-productive and flies in the face of constitutional reality in Europe. Yet, hardly a week goes by without some politician claiming that Scotland would be in the red to the tune of ?4 billion   the figure quoted by annabel Goldie in her swan song as Tory leader.  There has also, in recent weeks, been a succession of  leaks  from  Government sources  questioning Salmond s policy on Europe. One claimed it would take three years and  billions  in lost revenue, before an independent Scotland would be allowed to rejoin the EU. another said if Scotland did remain in Europe, there would have to be border posts to control emigration to England.  It was all rather similar to the debates before the creation of the Scottish Parliament, when Edinburgh financiers warned of a flight of investment because of the  uncertainty  of devolution.I doubt there is a conscious conspiracy to demonise alex Salmond. Scotland s Unionist parties are in no shape to mount anything so coherent just now. Rather, there are signs Westminster politicians, and the London media, are becoming more aware of what s happening in Scotland and are starting to ask more searching questions, not just about independence, but also of  devolution max    which many believe is a ruse by Salmond to  rig the referendum so he can t lose.  It has to be said that many questions are legitimate: there are, indeed, gaps in the SNP s independence prospectus. If Scotland keeps the pound after separation, is that really independence? Do the SNP still support the euro, and how would it be introduced? Would England set up border controls if Scotland had a more liberal policy on immigration?  There has also been a more considered strand of criticism from liberal commentators such as the journalist Joyce McMillan, who sat on the devolution constitutional steering committee in the 1990s. Last week, she warned Scotland was becoming, by default, a  one-party state .  It s time,  she said,  for the people of Scotland to wake up to the dangers of this largely unforeseen situation; and perhaps to start developing some new and imaginative mechanisms for challenging the SNP s dominance, forcing it to clarify its ideas, and holding it to account.  The SNP s decision after the Scottish elections to  hog  the chairmanships of parliamentary committees is regarded as a sign of this centralism   though it has to be said that packing committees is what all governments do.  Since the May election, Salmond has certainly lost no time in sweeping aside opposition to his legislative programme. Last week, he pressed ahead with minimum pricing of alcohol, a measure that had been defeated by the opposition parties before the 2011 election.  The SNP have also introduced a supermarket levy and Salmond seems determined to drive through the controversial Offensive Behaviour at Football Matches Bill in the teeth of opposition. Whatever h 