Sunday 14th December

Just remind me again what the result of the Scottish Referendum was.  Oh yes, that’s right the Independence vote was lost, quite substantially in the end if I recall.  And at the time Cameron said that this now settles the question for at least a generation.  Well I always thought a generation was about twenty-five years, not a couple of months.  However in a strange way defeat has actually enlivened and invigorated the SNP to a remarkable degree; I can’t help but wonder what they would have been like if they had actually won the thing, because in defeat they are behaving as if they were indeed the victors and had been somehow swindled out of their rightful reward.  But more than that they are now setting the agenda for the more than inevitable next referendum where they will win.  That’s the trouble with referenda, the more you have the more people think they are entitled to a re-run in a few years time.   Alex Salmond is now standing for a Westminster seat, where if his calculations are right he would be leading a sizeable number of M.P.s, enough at any rate to hold the balance of power, and as such to demand a fresh referendum as soon as possible.

At least if the SNP are right and they annihilate Labour that will put paid to the MidLothian Question which so agitates the Tories.  The trouble with Scotland is that they hate the English so much.  And yet without us they would really be a very small country struggling to make economic headway either in Europe or the World.  The English may make fun of the Jocks but are actually rather fond of them and cannot imagine being without them.  Now Northern Ireland, I don’t think there would be so many tears shed at all if they left, but Scotland would mean sharing this island with someone else and that seems unimaginable.  However it now feels like an inevitability, but when and if they do go I cannot imagine Nicola Sturgeon allowing those who disagree with her a referendum to rejoin the ‘Auld Inimy’ in a hundred years.