Scotland

You will recall that, according to the greatest account of England’s history, every time the English thought they had solved the Irish Question, the Irish changed the Question.  Something similar afflicts David Cameron’s grapplings with the Scottish Question. The poor man is damned if he does and equally damned if he doesn’t. The other week he was lambasted for his effrontery in giving a speech about Scotland in, of all places, London. Today he is lambasted for bringing his cabinet to Aberdeen. How dare he lecture us from afar; how dare he venture north like some touring proconsul! The optics, as the pros say, are not very good for the Prime

Ask any election strategist and they’ll tell you that momentum is everything. For the past 18 months, the No campaign has had all the momentum in the referendum debate. The Yes camp were becalmed, the No side had everything going for it and (let’s be honest) there was more than a hint of complacency on the unionist side. Well that there was should have been blown out of the water by what has happened over the last couple of weeks. Subtly, almost imperceptibly, the ground has shifted in the independence debate. The Yes camp has not bounced into a lead or anything like that, but it has started to make progress. A

I took part in a documentary about Scottishness a few weeks ago, and it wasn’t bad at all. I mused, mainly, on my own border-hopping, fretful-about-independence Scottish-Britishness, and a decent number of people got in touch afterwards to say I’d been speaking for them, too. Others were more cross, but interestingly so. One thing about the whole experience bugs me, though. That was the way they had me sit in a swanky Scottish restaurant in Belgravia and made out like I belonged there. It’s not that you don’t get Scots in Belgravia. Most will probably own castles back in Scotland, too, though. When they move to Belgravia, they do so

Stewart Hosie, the SNP’s finance spokesman at Westminster, said something unwittingly revealing last night. Taking part in the latest of BBC Scotland’s referendum debates (you can catch it here), he observed that: There is a plan from the Scottish government and the Yes side… What we don’t have is a plan a from the No people about what happens in the event of a No vote. So I want them to explain to you today when are they going to cut £4bn from Scotland’s budget? […] There is precisely nothing from the No camp to explain what they’re going to do to Scotland in the event of a no vote.

A recording of a conversation between Alex Salmond and George Osborne has been leaked* to The Spectator. An edited extract follows: Alex Salmond: Scotland and England are different countries. So different, in fact, that we should no longer live together. Our interests have diverged and so must our futures. George Osborne: I do not think that is the case. Nor, by the way, do I hope it is. Alex Salmond: But it is! George Osborne: [wearily] Perhaps you are right. Very well; if our interests and futures diverge then perhaps, as you suggest, present arrangements will no longer prove as satisfactory as once we thought they were. Alex Salmond: I knew

Personally, I’m now waiting for the Queen to get involved. After all, there’s not much left of Alex Salmond’s independence-but-not-independence blueprint that is left intact. First it was his ‘we’re going to share the pound in a Sterling zone’ claim. That was ruled out by George Osborne (and Ed Balls and Danny Alexander) last week. Then it was his ‘independence in Europe’ claim, and that was dismantled by Jose Manuel Barroso today. The only pillar of Salmond’s grand ‘everything’s-going-to-remain-the-same-only-different’ scheme which remains in place is a shared monarchy. So it can’t be long before Her Majesty also intervenes and says: ‘Do you know what? I don’t much like the idea of being

It might be bullying but, I suspect, it will be effective. The Tories, Labour and the Liberal Democrats ruling out Scotland sharing sterling after independence—as Nick Watt reported this morning — is designed to hole below the waterline the SNP’s attempt to reassure voters that even after independence they could still share a currency union with the rest of the Union. (Alex Massie does a very good job of taking apart the SNP’s response). The potency of this argument is a reminder of what a disaster the Eurozone crisis has been for the SNP. It has made the Euro a far less attractive alternative currency than it was a decade

I got a text from a mischievous friend in London this morning. ‘David Cameron has asked me to ask you not to leave the UK. We would miss you all awfully if you did and the Olympics were jolly fun with you on board,’ it said. I don’t think this was quite what the Prime Minister had in mind when he decided to appeal to the English, Welsh and Northern Irish to use their powers of persuasion to get us Scots to stay in the Union. But if that wasn’t what he wanted, then what was it? The Prime Minister’s big speech on the Union today is both interesting and difficult

[audioplayer src=’http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_6_February_2014_v4.mp3′ title=’Matthew Parris and Alex Massie discuss how Alex Salmond could wreck the Union even if he loses’ startat=55] Listen [/audioplayer]From a kind of torpor about this year’s Scottish referendum, Lord Lang of Monkton has roused me. You may remember Lord Lang as Ian Lang, a Scot who as MP for Galloway served Margaret Thatcher and John Major as a minister, under the latter both as Scottish Secretary and then President of the Board of Trade. A pleasant, steady and notably capable man, it was possible to imagine him as a potential Tory leader, but he stuck with John Major throughout. Last Thursday, Lang secured and led a Lords