The SNP’s attitude to English votes for English laws is as hypocritical as it is tedious

Is anyone so dreary as the man who’s never happy except when he’s unhappy? Perhaps only the man who ceaselessly agitates for something only to reject it when it’s given him.

Consider, by way of a random illustration of this phenomenon, the case of Pete Wishart, the SNP MP for Perth and North Perthshire. A year ago Mr Wishart told the BBC that so-called English Votes for English Laws (EVEL) was: “An issue that the Scottish people could not care less about”. Scots were “not interested in your inconsequential spat about English Votes for English Laws”. Mr Wishart had “no concern or issue” in the matter. As he put it, “The voters of Perthshire could not care less about policing in Peckham or Plymouth”.

What a difference a year makes. Now EVEL, albeit in a comparatively modest form, has passed the Commons, Mr Wishart is outraged – OUTRAGED! – by an issue he previously thought so contemptibly beside the point.