Holding the line is so difficult. Walking away from an argument you've won without smiling can take herculean self control. Gloating may not be nice but it's honest: raw, revealing, and truthful.
On that basis, Alex Salmond is an honest man. There's a video on the BBC News website in which Mr Salmond chortles at what he perceives to be the Chancellor's lack of financial understanding: "I don't know what George Osborne's degree was in, but it certainly wasn't in economics." Ho ho ho. What a silly man the Chancellor is, Mr Salmond appears to be saying, and just how clever am I? You run along now, wee George. And pass me that honorary doctorate on your way out.
There's no doubting Mr Salmond fits the leadership bill, almost as amply as he fills his suit. Lord Prescott, on Desert Island Discs this week, says he's advised Ed Miliband to keep his jacket on. To look more authoritative, that is. No-one would need to tell Mr Salmond to avoid shirt sleeves, because the man has authority anyway. No leader can do without a little window dressing, but Salmond requires the minimum; Miliband the maximum.
So Mr Salmond seems to enjoy a scrap. What's a little baffling, though, is that David Cameron is offering him one. In his speech in Edinburgh last week, the prime minister talked about Scottish independence being a matter of head, heart and soul. But what about ego? For Cameron to be PM during a period in which the United Kingdom became smaller, losing the land of Highland glens and Scotch whiskey would perhaps diminish his premiership in the history books.
But for Mr Salmond, what a prize! Will he become the man to break up the Union after more than 300 years? If he does, his name will be read and noted by history students for centuries to come.
Thus there is no place for gloating complacency. It diminishes a talented leader; a man who looks comfortable in his own skin. At this critical time, everything Mr Salmond utters needs to be said with respect, and to make sense. What, then, of his desire to retain the pound? He talks of a 'Sterling Zone,' during a period when the Eurozone is experiencing potentially fatal convulsions, his argument based on the idea that currently shared exports would still, post a breakaway, continue to be traded using the same currency, creating greater fiscal harmony within the British Isles. He reckons the Westminster Chancellor would be "biting our hands off" to get a self-determining Scotland to keep the pound.
Sterling, though, is arguably incompatible with independence. Retaining it would mean a newly solo Scotland being unable to control its own interest rates, or to devalue if and when it chose. The Bank of England would also presumably remain Scotland's lender of last resort. That hardly seems compatible with throwing off the 'English yoke.' Sounds more like a child learning to ride a bicycle with stabiliser wheels. Maybe Mr Salmond isn't quite as clever, or perhaps as candid, as he'd have us think.
I've been trying to work out how I'd feel if I was Scottish. I have Scottish friends who are pretty keen on independence. It's understandable that those north of the border would rather decide their own affairs than have things dictated from London, in the same way that I'm not terribly happy about the European Court of Human Rights telling the Home Secretary she can't deport Abu Qatada.
Then again, life is about compromise. Romantic notions of nationalism are for books and films. As a trading bloc, the EU is a good idea. Strength through size gives Europe a better chance of competing with China and America. Were we to create a new country called 'Europe,' then few people, one imagines, would be happy about the loss of cultural and national identity involved.
And so to take part in the European project, but not be wholly governed by it, seems a reasonable compromise.
Which, through devolution, is what Scotland currently has as part of the UK.
And it's a pretty good deal, it seems to me. In addition to the aforementioned provisions in the NHS and in higher education, public spending in general is higher, north of the border, than it is in England. Greater London has roughly twice the population of Scotland, and is the UK's main economic powerhouse. If Londoners' taxes no longer had to pay for Scottish penicillin and Scottish degrees, it seems unlikely that any would complain.
So how would the English vote were they allowed to? It seems fairly likely they'd side with the Scottish First Minister. A YouGov poll points in that direction. It found that English voters favoured either maximum devolution for Scotland, or independence, by 52% to 32%. Which is a bigger margin of support than there is in Scotland itself. It also discovered that the English felt the Scots got a better deal out of the Union by 11 to one.
Alex Salmond, intriguingly therefore, says independence is a question for the Scottish people alone. But the politics of it, south of the border, are just as real.
In terms of hard numbers, Mr Cameron's argument simply doesn't add up. The Tories are a busted flush in Scotland, with only one MP. Labour, on the other hand, have 41. Without Scotland, England would perhaps be almost continually Conservative.
Thus for anyone who votes Tory, or for those who used to vote Labour but stopped after Blair's wars and Brown's over-spending, an answer is at hand.
And it's called Scottish independence.
The best way for Mr Salmond to load the referendum in his favour would be to extend the vote south of the border. Go cap in hand to the English, in other words.
Which would finally, perhaps, wipe that unbecoming smirk off his face.