Alex Salmond, the canny and engaging leader of the Scottish National Party, has the confident air of a man who knows that the prize is within his grasp. On election day for the new Scottish Assembly, May 6th, polls show the SNP will be neck and neck with its old rival, Scottish Labour, and there is a real chance that it can pass Labour out.
Whether that results in Mr Salmond's election as the first Scottish First Minister will then depend on the Liberals, who are, not surprisingly, being rather coy about their preferred coalition partner. He says the result now depends on who can get their troops out and insists that the soaring morale in the SNP rank and file will carry the day.
His message for the hustings is already clear - Labour in Scotland will be poodles of their Westminster comrades - and he revels in the media portrayal of Tony Blair as a "control freak".
Grist to the mill to one of Britain's sharpest political performers, and master of the devastating putdown. "I think Tony Blair's too fond of those genetically modified vegetables, and they are doing it to him," Mr Salmond says with a twinkle. It's a line that may well reappear at Prime Minister's Question Time.
The campaign trail passed through Brussels this week, with Mr Salmond in town to meet the Economic Affairs Commissioner, Yves Thibault de Silguy, and speak to the Irish Institute for European Affairs on "Scotland - a European Nation". In truth, in town to be seen projecting an international profile. But he tells a nice story of one of his last visits to Mr de Silguy.
Anxious to make the case for the Scottish banks' continued right to print their own banknotes once Britain joins the single currency, the SNP leader brought the Commissioner a bound display of the notes, all carefully stamped "specimen".
He was surprised when every attempt to press the volume into Mr de Silguy's hands was firmly but politely rebuffed by an embarrassed Commissioner who seemed to believe that Mr Salmond was trying to bribe him. "Why don't you take them to Lamfalussy?" the Commissioner eventually said of the head of the European Monetary Institute.
Mr Salmond did, and Mr Alexandre Lamfalussy, a passionate Scotophile, received the tainted banknotes with enthusiasm.
The SNP leader believes that irrespective of the political colour of the Scottish executive the new assembly will be strongly pro-European and contain a significant majority, the SNP included, in favour of joining the euro. Indeed, the Glasgow Herald has just published the first poll in the UK showing euro support in part of Britain drawing level with the antis, at 40 per cent each.
Mr Salmond even suggests the possibility of a Scottish initiative on the euro - "with Irish support?" - through the Council of the Isles, the body to be set up under Strand Three of the Anglo-Irish process in which the two governments and the devolved assemblies will be represented.
Mr Salmond is staking a claim for Glasgow as the headquarters of its secretariat. He argues that it may be difficult to agree on a location in either Northern Ireland or the Republic, and that London would give the wrong impression. Hence Glasgow, which has yet to be given the seat of any international body.
The Council has a European dimension to its mandate and he argues it could make an important contribution to legitimising the aspiration for British membership of the euro if the assemblies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland were to back it.
And Mr Salmond's determination to see specifically Scottish representation in Europe beefed up will be watched closely in the North. Plans are in place for an expanded Scottish Europa office in Brussels with a mandate to represent not just business and tourism interests but a specific Scottish political perspective, out from under the wing of the British embassy.
He insists that such independent "pro-active" articulation of the Scottish view must reflect not just the new executive but the broad sweep of the assembly and cites the German lander and the Catalan representative offices as precedents. He has a great fondness for Ireland and its economic success is a key theme of SNP campaigning.
And he speaks warmly of his relationship with not only the SDLP leaders but the North's First Minister designate, David Trimble, whose biographer recently called on Mr Salmond at Mr Trimble's own suggestion. There's trust!
Careful not to tread on Northern toes, he would be keen, however, to see the new Scottish executive play its part as honest broker in the peace process. Indeed, there can be little doubt that in the process of asserting their own relative autonomy from London, the Scots will create a potential partner and political space for the Northern Assembly to flex its own muscles.
The shifting paradigms of politics on both islands have an enormous potential in mutual cross-pollination of their respective dynamics.
