Making a speech in Scotland at the weekend, I met scores of people who want their country to remain in the Union, but do not know what to do about it. They complain that they have no leadership. Unionism is probably still, by some way, the majority view, but it is decades since it was properly articulated. Once upon a time, it depended upon Protestantism (even after the 1945 election, Tories held most of the seats in Glasgow for this reason) and Scotland’s role in the Empire. The case has not been updated, though it could and should be. (What, after all, is modern about petty nationalism, and creating new borders?) And so Alex Salmond, by far the most able Scottish politician, has been allowed to frame the argument. Now he is being permitted to set the timetable as well, choosing a referendum at his preferred moment, with his preferred wording. The coalition has already, unnecessarily, conceded this. But why should a decision which affects the whole kingdom be shaped solely by the man who wants to break it up? And what constitutional status would a Salmond-framed ‘yes’ vote have for the future of the United Kingdom? Wouldn’t it be better for David Cameron to anticipate Mr Salmond and offer the Scots his own referendum, under full British referendum impartiality rules, rather than waiting for the SNP to plan the next four or five years to win it? The Prime Minister should also remind everyone that this is a matter on which, eventually, all British people should have their say. Members of all parties who favour the Union should now work out where they can make common cause.
There are probably large numbers of English politicians in all the main parties who have no position at all on the subject. Now they must, or they will be caught out. They may also find their parties splitting, as happened over Ireland. I suspect that Labour will have the biggest problem. It was Dr Frankenstein, and devolution is its monster.
Part of Mr Salmond’s skill is that he does not make the IRA’s mistake, which retarded their cause by about 60 years, of thinking that England is obsessed with holding on to whatever it has. Sinn Fein only began to get somewhere politically when its leaders realised that the key to the English attitude to Northern Ireland was that people were not interested. They were happy for it to go away, so long as it did so quietly. In the case of Scotland, the emotional ties are much greater, but the English lack of interest is a strong factor. Mr Salmond sees this, so he doesn’t stir things up by attacking England. Instead, he flatters it, almost as if he is offering to take a problem off its hands. If the only question at stake were the future of Scotland, he might well persuade the English, but what makes it difficult for him is that, by detaching Scotland, he abolishes the entity called Britain. This is something in which even the sleepiest Englishman might take an interest.
How disgraceful that rich British people will not, after all, be able to buy a place at our universities. Why are they denied the opportunities available to the citizens of every other country on earth?
The second volume of Harold Macmillan’s diaries, just published, wrestles with the problem of what needs footnoting, and what not. The editor, Peter Catterall, is clearly trying to work out what people can be expected to know nowadays. When Macmillan says ‘The wheel has come full circle’, Catterall explains that this is a quotation from Shakespeare, though it reads as if Macmillan is merely using the phrase conventionally. On the other hand, he does not explain a more considered play on a literary reference (this time, the Gospels) about one’s treasure and one’s heart. When Macmillan refers to Claridge’s, the editor carefully elucidates — ‘an upmarket London hotel’ — but when Malcolm Muggeridge (not footnoted) calls Supermac a ‘Turf Court Bummaree’, Catterall offers no enlightenment.
Like many highly educated people, Macmillan used ‘scare quotes’ (there — I am using them myself) to an astonishing degree. Such inverted commas are a device for distancing oneself from something. In Macmillan’s case, almost no word escapes this treatment. The press is described as ‘the “press”’, and the economy as ‘the “economy”’. Sometimes, one feels as if the diary is written by ‘Harold Macmillan’, rather than Harold Macmillan. The diarist himself observes that others suspected this. He records that his granddaughter, aged four, was taken to see his waxwork at Madame Tussauds. Afterwards she said, ‘Well, I do think someone might have told me that grandpapa was real.’
For nearly ten years now, I have owned a flat in London. Throughout that time, I have received many letters for people I have never heard of, or former residents who are dead. Usually these are just junk mail. But there has been a steady stream of correspondence for someone called Miss Mariko Nakahara. So far as I know (and I knew the previous owners of the flat, going back about 30 years), Miss Nakahara has never lived at the address. For years, I returned her letters, writing ‘not known here’ on the envelope, but this did not work, so I decided to open some of them in order to get in touch with the senders and stop the thing once and for all. The letters were all from financial institutions, mainly Lloyds Bank. I rang them often (‘We’re sorry, but our lines are very busy just now’), and when I got through, they agreed not to send any more letters. The letters kept coming, however; and now it seems that Miss Nakahara, as well as having a deposit account with Lloyds, also owes them money (less than she has on deposit). Via a debt-collector, they are threatening her with legal action. Can my goods be distrained to pay for Miss Nakahara’s debt? Did she ever exist? Is there no bank computer which, once in error, can ever be corrected?
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