It is a valuable rule of politics that once the tabloid press stops taking public figures at their own estimation of themselves, it is time to hoist the warning signs.

Something like this has happened in recent weeks to Alex Salmond. One tabloid has even been so bold as to suggest that the First Minister's alleged hubris has become so all-consuming, he would open a biscuit tin if it meant that he could posture as the self-styled “President” of Scotland. Another claimed that his main policy objective in 2009 would be to have his photograph taken alongside Barack Obama.

Such apparent disrespect for one who until recently bestrode, in the words of one admirer, “the small Scottish political world like a colossus”, is a straw in the wind. For if the media are less in awe of Mr Salmond than they were, the same can be said of those who are in opposition to him.

At one point in 2008, the trajectory of Mr Salmond and the SNP appeared unstoppable. They were pulling off the trick, almost on a daily basis, of gaining in popularity as they went along in government, to the point where Unionists began to fear that independence was not the figment of Nationalist imagination that they had thought.

The salad days for the SNP culminated in the “earthquake” of the Glasgow East by-election victory, and while that triumph could not be interpreted in any way as a vote for separation, it showed that many one-time Labour voters no longer regarded a vote for the SNP as outlandish.

Then came the credit crunch, the near-failure of Scotland's banks and the global financial tumult and, suddenly, perspective was restored. Mr Salmond havered about “spivs and speculators”, but his economic argument for a Scottish breakaway was undermined, and his independence rhetoric appeared not only deeply irrelevant but almost irrational. The SNP went down to defeat in Glenrothes, with voters preferring to keep a tight hold of a pair of familiar nurses called Gordon Brown and the UK.

So 2009 is about to dawn with Mr Salmond in urgent need of a new language for his core political aim and already we are seeing the first green shoots of his new plan. He intends to turn the political debate in Scotland into an argument with Westminster over the £1 billion which the Chancellor, desperate to rein in spending after the immediate economic crisis is over, wishes to see disappear from the Scottish budget in the next three years.

The Nationalists have given notice that they intend it to be the defining argument up to the European elections in June and in a UK general election whenever it is held and then beyond to the next Holyrood election.

While critics will complain that it reeks once more of the Scottish whinge at full blast (other parts of the UK will suffer as much, if not more), it should not be dismissed as the SNP reverting to type.

The danger for Mr Brown, Alistair Darling and Scottish Labour is that they appear so far incapable of mounting a response to Mr Salmond's muse that Scotland will be paying the price of remaining in the Union.

It will come at a time when unemployment continues to spiral, businesses and companies close on a daily basis and the blight of home repossessions shatters families. Mr Salmond can be relied on to ask the uncomfortable questions about whether Scotland would not be better off outside a Union which visits such hardship on its communities.

Times Recommends

• Times Christmas appeal: Letter from the Editor
• Conferences — what a waste of money
• Schools supremo learns a painful lesson