David Cameron’s Peculiar Unionism

David Cameron’s op-ed in Scotland on Sunday this week was interesting. Not because of anything that Cameron said but because it appeared at all. It’s another small indication that the country is preparing itself for a new Conservative government. To put it another way, I don’t think SoS would have been very interested in an op-ed from Iain Duncan-Smith or Mixhael Howard. What would have been the point? What could they have said to the country that anyone wanted to hear? Not much.

So Cameron’s proposals for how he would work with Holyrood are, while scarcely earth-shattering, useful to have put on the public record. Nonetheless, they are sensible, modest and designed to reassure. Cameron, I think, may actually understand devolution – and how it has changed the dynamics of the British political scene – rather more than Gordon Brown does. Certainly Cameron seems more prepared to work with, rather than against, the SNP ministry in Edinburgh.