There is a thing that many Scots do when they meet with other Scots. They start to sound more Scottish. Their consonants either grow jagged or fade away all together, their vowels twist, collude and extend. They start to say ‘aye’ in place of ‘yes’. They may even, if among friends, be tempted to risk the odd ‘och’. I wonder if this ever happens in Cabinet.
I can see Gordon Brow kicking it off, perhaps with a modest, Fife-ish, slightly extended ‘r’. John Reid might retort with a competitive Lanarkshire ‘gonny’ or ‘canny’. Pricking up his ears, the Glaswegian Douglas Alexander might decide to get in early with an ‘aye, but’, or a ‘nay, but’, and Kilwinning’s Des Browne might spot it, and note it, and emulate it.
On a bad day this could give Ian McCartney (Dunbartonshire) the courage to start talking, and that would be that. It would be like that Monty Python sketch about Yorkshiremen, and the likes of David Miliband and Tessa Jowell might as well close their red boxes and leave. Lord Falconer would feel honour-bound to come wheedling in from Morningside, and that secret Edinburgh public schoolboy Alistair Darling might even actually speak for the first time since about 1999, and risk one of the easy ones, like rhyming ‘tortoise’ with ‘anglepoise’.
By now, Tony Blair (also Edinburgh) would be in a rare state of agitation. Sitting there with all this ringing in his ears and with the ghosts of John Smith (from Argyll), Donald Dewar (from Glasgow) and Robin Cook (from Bellshill) urging him on. Social chameleon that he is, he could easily abandon the restrained Richard Wilson-esque tones he normally adopts when speaking Scottish, and launch straight into a ‘reet lads, that’s aw’ barry an’ spesh, but fit the feck er we gang tae dae aboot Basra?’
How have they done it? How has a government dominated so comprehensively by Scots managed to lose touch, so comprehensively, with Scotland? And how do they feel about it? Is our Prime Minister on his sofa with his Stratocaster, picking out the forlorn riff from Dougie MacLean’s ‘Caledonia’? Is our Chancellor resolving to feign an interest in single malts? Is our Home Secretary practising his Glasgow kiss in his bathroom mirror? These are men displaced.
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