Now the cybernats come for students

Something is rotten in the state of Scotland. No, not the creaking CalMac ferry fleet but rather the health of free speech in the birthplace of the Enlightenment. The warning signs have been there for years now, what with the Hate Crime Act, the Scottish government’s efforts to evade Holyrood scrutiny and the SNP’s own intolerance for any kind of internal party dissent. But now a minor episode at a leading university perhaps best illustrates the sorry state of the right to dissent in Nicola Sturgeon’s Scotland.

Students at the University of St Andrews last week published a short satirical article in their magazine the Saint, making fun of relations between London and Edinburgh. Titled ‘Och Aye The Noo And Au Revoir‘ it likens the Union between England and Scotland to a loveless marriage, comparing the two nations to a ‘middle-aged couple living in the suburbs’. Scotland is ‘menopausal’, England is having a ‘midlife crisis’ while Wales is described as ‘the family dog’, with devolution having confined the countries to ‘separate bedrooms since 1997.