The ugly truth about the SNP’s white roses

Anyone paying close attention to television coverage of the King’s Speech on Tuesday may have noticed that SNP MPs in attendance looked as if their next appointment was a wedding reception, with white roses on their lapels. In fact, the Nats wear the rose in honour of poet Hugh MacDiarmid, a founder of the National Party of Scotland which merged with the Scottish party in 1934, creating the SNP.

The nationalists’ boutonnière references MacDiarmid’s poem ‘The Little White Rose’, a drab little celebration of the sort of insularism the SNP insists doesn’t exist within its brand of nationalism. If you think my critique harsh, judge for yourself:

‘The rose of all the world is not for me. / I want for my part / Only the little white rose of Scotland / That smells sharp and sweet—and breaks the heart.’

MacDiarmid’s petty little verse is the poetic equivalent of a great aunt’s lament that she hears lots of eastern European accents on the bus, or a grandpa’s refusal to eat food ‘with bits in it’.