Yet the deeper moral point, absent from both sides, is this one: The rich deserve their wealth as much as anyone, the relatively-higher tax rates they face are obscenely unjust, and if anything, the rich today should be paying radically lower tax rates.

FORBES: The Virtue of Lower Tax Rates on the Rich

Absent as he was, Mr Salmond was unable to intervene to point out that he had been cleared of breaching the Ministerial Code on that issue.

BBC: Spectre at the feast