Putting Down the Rebels

Britain's Head Boy has once more been doing his bit for the cause of Scottish independence. In the course of a burble to Scottish business leaders, Daveybloke threatened them with the loss of America's second permanent seat on the United Nations security council, and appealed to their blood-and-soil instincts by waving the pound and the armed forces at them and proclaiming that Scotland would find it difficult to combat terrorism without the help of people who can start wars and torture Muslims properly. Apparently the reasoning is that the first actions of an independent Scotland would be to join the euro and thereby become the new Greece, and then to secede from any and all mutual defence and international law enforcement treaties, thus also becoming the new Westminster.

In order that Scots should not feel patronised or demeaned, Daveybloke insisted that a question about further devolution short of independence cannot appear on the ballot paper because it would confuse the natives. Daveybloke did offer to consider doing something or other about further devolution if the Scots would vote against independence first; but on the question of what exactly was on offer he came over all coy. Evidently the miserable saga of the anti-NHS bill, to say nothing of prolonged and intimate association with Liberal Democrats, has taught him the danger of making cast-iron pledges; even so, his speech-writers were tactless enough to leave in a good word for the national welfare state which his government is busily demolishing. Daveybloke did, however, burble affectingly about his personal stake in not being seen as the prime minister who let another chunk of the Empire slip away: he is "ready for the fight for our country's life". Daveybloke burbled that the battle involves his "head, heart and soul": jolly reassuring given that the first is in the nineteen-fifties, the second's very existence is of doubtful attestation and the third is in Lord Ashcroft's pocket.