Originally Posted by Osem

Salmond's nothing if not a canny guy and if he has got some dirt on Gordon you can bet he'll use it if he can but at the time that best suits him and the SNP best, just before an election possibly and not necessarily in a manner which betrays him/them as the source. This is all just another a political game and there is a myriad of means by which Westminster can exert pressure on Holyrood (and vice versa) some of which will be more successful than others. It's not impossible, however, that the SNP has a few rather nasty skeletons in their closet. If that were the case and they were known to Brown, that'd be just one way of preventing Salmond from spilling any beans in this case. That's the way politics works.