Will Tony Blair speak to Alex Salmond before he leaves office on June 27 in 12 days time? Who knows?

Why the Prime Minister has not spoken to him since he became First Minister on May 16 remains a mystery.

Downing Street has offered no coherent explanation, and now, whatever they say (and it is more likely to be cock-up than conspiracy), damage has been done.

In the great scheme of things whether Mr Blair speaks to Mr Salmond does not matter but perhaps it is indicative of a deep malaise in the Labour Party.

Whatever else can be said of the Prime Minister, he is very rarely discourteous. His facility for keeping his eye on the big picture, refusing to be derailed by the minutia, has been one of his over-riding strengths in office.

And that is primarily why this episode has been so puzzling.

There will be little love lost between the Prime Minister and Scotland's First Minister. Mr Salmond described the UK's intervention in Kosovo as one of unpardonable folly; he has called for Mr Blair to be impeached over Iraq; and could not help but sneer whenever they faced each other across the floor of the House of Commons.

But the Prime Minister has often had to rise above the fray to achieve higher political ends, and so to score an unnecessary own goal over something so trivial points to the conclusion that the understanding of the minutia of the Scottish political scene in Downing Street and the Treasury - although Gordon Brown eventually spoke to Mr Salmond - is zilch. This oversight would have been unimaginable if Pat McFadden, now the MP for Wolverhampton South East, had remained in Downing Street and was still working with Iain Gray, now re-elected to the Scottish Parliament, in the Scotland Office. (It is worth noting that Alistair Darling, often an unsung political operator, tried to contact Mr Salmond on his first day in office).

The First Minister, in his first 30 days in office, has not put a foot wrong. With few cards in his hand he gambled on wrong-footing the opposition, and not only has he done that in spades, he has lifted the booze ban at Murrayfield, freed future Scottish students from the burden of tuition fees, and kept open much-cherished accident and emergency units in Lanarkshire.

The penny has dropped amongst Labour MPs. David Hamilton and Ian Davidson, two of the more plain-speaking, feisty MPs, will not care too much if the Prime Minister ever says hello. They do care about the Labour Party in Scotland getting its act together.

They will not be sitting back to let Mr Salmond walk all over them for long.