AS I WRITE this blog the First Minister and opposition party leaders are being prepared for the weekly high noon ritual of FMQs. Very often the beauty of this is that something seriously left-field can be introduced, so that the FM cannot possibly be prepared for it. The former Green MSP Shiona Baird developed an expertise in obscure detail that was bound to discomfit Jack McConnell.

A couple of week's ago when Wendy Alexander chose not to go on the Grangemouth crisis it rebounded on her, making her look out of touch with the pressing issue of the day.

Having tried to set a new agenda this week with her call for an early independence referendum, she has little choice but to run with it today. If she chose not to go on the issue it would be interpreted as another u-turn and the SNP are already painting the Labour leader as “eccentric” and prone to changing her mind. As one senior Salmond aide said this week: “What we are saying is contingent on what Wendy Alexander is saying today, Tuesday, but who know what she will say come Thursday?”
So now it's Thursday, Ms Alexander had little choice but to go on what she herself has made issue of the week, and therefore has little chance of springing much of a surprise on the FM, who is on very firm ground given that all he is doing is sticking (for once, Labour may claim?) to a manifesto commitment.

Where is Ms Alexander going on all this? Here “bring it on” language shows that she wants to paint the SNP as lacking the courage of their convictions.

But she is also paving the way to back-track on her new strategy because she wants to contest the wording of the referendum question. This is a huge issue.

The Government's preferred wording as outlined in the White Paper is to ask voters whether they are for or against the following: “I agree that the Scottish Government should negotiate a settlement with the Government of the UK so that Scotland becomes an independent state.”

When opinion pollsters have asked that same question over the last year there has been steady growth in the numbers supporting the proposition, to the point that is now level pegging. But when the resolutely Unionist Daily Telegraph polled on the issue it asked the following question: “If there were a referendum on whether to retain the Scottish Parliament and Executive in more or less their present form or to establish Scotland as a completely separate state outside the Unite Kingdom but inside the European Union, how would you vote?”

The combination of a complex, somewhat convoluted question along with the negative connotations of “a completely separate state outside the UK” talks up the fear factor of Scotland “going it alone” and implying isolation in the international community.

Labour don't like the word independence. The United States and other countries around the world do not celebrate Separation Day. They celebrate Independence Day, which is why the SNP Government want to use a word seen as having positive connotations, and why their Unionist opponents are desperate to avoid that term.

The issue of the wording of the question is Ms Alexander's exit clause from her new pro-referendum strategy.

And with that, I'm off to watch FMWs.