Ed West Ed West

Should London leave the union?

We’re four months away from Scotland’s day of destiny, with the London-Scottish media fraternity becoming increasingly alarmed, and ironically (considering their total unionism) far more noticeably Scottish. At the Telegraph Graeme Archer made a characteristically elegant appeal to Sir Malcolm Rikfind to step forward, and there would indeed be something touching and rather beautiful about the grandson of Jewish immigrants being the man who saves Britain. The film script would write itself, if someone were to make a film about the Scottish referendum (which I admit is pretty unlikely). Sir Malcolm’s son Hugo meanwhile seems to think that the end of a 300-year union that helped export liberal democracy and the rule of law around the world is somehow more important than who gets to run the Tories.

And what unites a fair proportion, if not all, of Scotland’s prominent English-based unionists is that they live in what is effect the Union’s fifth country – London, which is now more different from the rest of England than Scotland is.

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