Roll up, roll up for Ian Blackford’s farewell tour

Ian Blackford, the SNP MP, is to stand down at the next election. And last night he gave an interview to Anand Menon of the think-tank UK In a Changing Europe. The mood was cosy, the questions as soft as marshmallows. Menon opened with the issue of independence and he allowed Blackford to change the subject from ‘process’ to ‘the kind of country Scotland will be’.

Blackford stated correctly that Scotland’s status as England’s poorer neighbour encourages the best and brightest Scots to move south. And he quoted a statistic suggesting that England has benefited from Scottish inward migration in every decade since the 1850s. He outlined a solution that was strong on slogans, weak on detail. ‘We’ve got a plan to grow the Scottish economy… by developing Scotland as a destination for talent to come to.’ The engine of reform will be the country’s ‘world-leading universities’ where ‘disruptors’ will develop ‘start-ups and spin-offs at scale.’