I can't see Burns having anything to do with any of the various "Unionist" parties in Scotland; there's one of his letters (I think to Mrs Dunlop) where he asks, "What (or, "where") are all the boasted advantages of Union...". Salmond, many years ago, when he must still have been in his twenties, on a BBC current affairs programme, ran rings around the senior Labour minister Denis Healey, who had to take refuge in the typical Public Schoolboy trick of merely sneering derisively; I wish I'd put money on Salmond becoming the leader of the Scottish National Party.