Alex Massie Alex Massie

David Cameron is going to have to give the SNP what it wants

All Westminster might be agog with the latest shenanigans vis-a-vis the got-to-happen-at-some-point EU referendum but most sentient folk in this blessed land are magnificently uninterested in the matter. Not even this morning’s Telegraph splash – ‘Attorney General may back Brexit’  – can stir them from their slumber. At best the majors will have asked, over their E&B this morning, ‘Who is the Attorney General these days?’

North of the border, matters are just as quiet even though another great question remains unsettled. As yet, you see, there is no agreement on the terms of a ‘fiscal framework’ which will underpin the relationship between the finances of the devolved parliament in Edinburgh and the mother-parliament in Westminster. And if there is no agreement soon, if the Scottish government rejects the current proposals emanating from HM Treasury, then the new (or, rather, latest) Scotland bill will collapse and with it the entire rickety, jury-rigged, Heath Robinsonesque apparatus that was supposed to reaffirm and consolidate Scotland’s place within this blessed Union.

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