Scotch Mist

Gordon Brown has rightly appointed as Secretary of State for Wales a dedicated wrecker of the Labour-Plaid Cymru deal, who will certainly block both further devolution and the consolation prize (or, rather, the main prize to most Plaid Cymru voters, although apparently not to most Plaid Cymru politicians) of yet further privileges for the Welsh language even in the English-speaking parts of that eighty per cent English-speaking principality.

Yet Brown is talking about further devolution in Scotland, apparently. Believe in it when you see it. He will find some way of rejecting any specific proposal and making it look as if he was boxed into a corner by the SNP, their Tory allies, the Lib Dems, the Greens, and the Nationalist wing of the Scottish Labour Party, which is economically well to his left and which has close ties to the Labour Hard Left in England and Wales.

Brown will come out of it all looking like the voice of reason. They will look like the people who were offered the earth but demanded the moon and the stars as well (and thus prevented further devolution).

And nothing will actually change.