The SNP’s England obsession

There is a whiff of something in the current Scottish Parliament elections. It’s not quite strong enough to call it foul but nor is it faint enough to go undetected. What I can tell you is this: it doesn’t smell right.

Yesterday, Alex Salmond’s new party, Alba, released a video depicting throngs of flag-waving nationalists with a voiceover delivered by an actor from the imagined perspective of Robert the Bruce. (If that seems like an odd idea for an election ad, welcome to Scotland.) ‘Bruce’ described the Battle of Bannockburn thus: ‘People power by the small folk of Scotland was the straw which broke the spine of English superiority’.

‘People power’ is a curious way of describing a conflict waged by the King of Scotland, the Earl of Carrick and the Earl of Moray against the King of England, the Earl of Hereford and the Earl of Pembroke. Of course, the all-important line was: ‘broke the spine of English superiority’.