Since taking over as First Minister, Alex Salmond appears to have the Midas touch.

For years the nationalist cry of “It's Scotland's oil!” was reduced to a whimper. On the eve of the creation of the Scottish Parliament in 1999, with oil prices at $10 a barrel, Mr Salmond's claims that an independent Scotland would prosper sounded hollow, and the public rejected the SNP at the polls.

Almost a decade on, Mr Salmond is running the Scottish government, the price of oil is soaring, and climbing with it are the potential fortunes of an independent Scotland.

The First Minister's claims that Scotland would be better off breaking away from the rest of the UK suddenly have a ring of truth when oil is sitting at $134 a barrel.

But that is this year. What about all those other years when Mr Salmond was claiming that Scotland was getting a raw deal from the Exchequer?

Was he right then, or did he get that catastrophically wrong and he is only right now?

Mr Salmond is the master of the soundbite, and his arguments play well on the airwaves, but strip away the carefully crafted media script designed to generate public outrage and consider what he is suggesting.

He wants the Chancellor of the Exchequer to accept that the Treasury will be £4.5billion better off through oil revenues when we are just two months into the financial year. Granted, oil prices are not expected to plummet

soon, but Alistair Darling would have to take leave of his senses to agree to part with a share of revenue that he hasn't yet received, even in the unlikely event that the Chancellor agreed to cherry-pick the economic spoils in such a way.

Let us consider for a moment what would happen if he did. The good people of the North East of England would then demand their share of North Sea oil revenues, as well as the gas reserves off their shoreline.

And how long would it be before the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, declared that he would retain the profits from the City of London to help the metropolis deal with its myriad problems?

Then, those living in the South West of England and Wales would be left high and dry. But Alex Salmond doesn't have to worry about the implications for the rest of the UK of his seemingly reasonable demand to help Scotland over its particular difficulties in dealing with high fuel prices by taking a share of what is, after all, our own natural resources.

Scottish voters are unlikely to decide the future of their country on the basis of a few well-rehearsed soundbites, even ones that admittedly chime well with their current difficulties - or are they?

Only the electorate will decide if Mr Salmond gets to keep his Midas touch.

Times Recommends

• Milk: do we need a dairy godmother?
• DIY: the women doing it for themselves
• First double portrait of Princes unveiled