Scottish nationalism

Monday

Stephen Daisley

Sturgeon is indulging her conspiratorial supporters

Nicola Sturgeon’s speech to the SNP’s conference earlier this afternoon was mostly standard fare (Covid, climate, coalition with the Greens, Universal Credit) but towards the end, a section on Brexit and independence stood out. She told the faithful: Westminster will use all that damage that they have inflicted as an argument for yet more Westminster control.By making us poorer, they’ll say we can’t afford to be independent. By cutting our trade with the EU, they’ll say we are too dependent on the rest of the UK. By causing our working population to fall, they’ll say the country is ageing too fast.They want us to believe we are powerless in the

Monday

Stephen Daisley

Alex Salmond will have his revenge

Alex Salmond has been cleared of sexual assault following a trial at the High Court in Edinburgh. The jury returned this afternoon and found the former First Minister not guilty of 12 charges and resorted to Scotland’s special not proven verdict on a 13th allegation. Salmond’s twin defences were that the claims against him were ‘exaggerations’ (he wasn’t perfect but he had never done anything criminal) or ‘deliberate fabrications for a political purpose’ (he was the victim of a conspiracy). In private, much of the Scottish political and media class already had him hanged, drawn and quartered and so this verdict is being met with a mixture of shock, horror

Thursday

Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 11 October 2018

Although, in David Goodhart’s famous distinction, I see myself as one of the ‘Somewheres’ rather than the ‘Anywheres’, I do not believe in nationalism (as opposed to patriotism). Nationalism always involves falsified history and sees identity as a zero-sum game. Nation states should be respected, not deified, and are usually the better for not being ethnically ‘pure’. But the Anywheres’ attacks on nationalism are interestingly selective. They hate Viktor Orban’s Hungarian version, for instance, but love Leo Varadkar’s Irish one. The avowedly internationalist EU uses Irish nationalism as its biggest moral justification for blocking Brexit. And thus does Scottish nationalism, being seen as left-wing, escape criticism for its coercive righteousness.

Thursday

Johanna Thomas-Corr

Dead poet’s society

Alex Salmond, former first minister of Scotland, once claimed that he could always tell Scottish fiction from English. Novels, he said, reveal fundamental differences in the values of the Scots and the English. I wonder then what he would make of Annalena McAfee’s book, Hame — about the most Scottish work of fiction that any English novelist could possibly write. So committed is the former Guardian journalist authentically to explore every aspect of life north of the Border that she learnt to speak Braid Scots — from Lallans to Doric dialects — and crafted poetry in them. Surely that makes her more Scottish than most born-and-bred Caledonians? For what drives

Thursday

James Yorke

The Coronation Chair and the Stone of Scone, by Warwick Rodwell – review

The Coronation Chair currently stands all spruced up, following last year’s conservation, under a crimson canopy, by the west entrance to Westminster Abbey. The sovereign has used this throne during the actual ceremony almost continuously since the coronation of Henry IV (1399). The oldest dated piece of English furniture (1297-1300) made by a known artist (Walter of Durham) to survive has been given the comprehensive study it deserves by Warwick Rodwell, with supplementary chapters on its most recent conservation by Marie Louise Sauerberg and its current display by Ptolemy Dean. Not only does the book cover the design, construction and decoration of the chair, but also the subsequent adaptations and