Savage

The cuts in public spending in Scotland after the Election? Hardly, Alex. Scotland is permanently exempt from such things. Was under Thatcher, would be under anyone else produced by the Westminster Political Class, which, like her, is in a sort of awe of how "special" and "different" Scotland is, so that the Scottish upper-middle-class oligarchy, which is largely maintained at public expense, always has to be given whatever it wants, even when the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer are both, not baffled outsiders to it, but lifelong and hereditary members of it.

No, I am thinking of Billy "Home Rule Is Rome Rule" Wolfe, praised to the skies by Alex Salmond. All right, so he has just died. But even so. Wolfe represented, embodied and articulated the true spirit of the SNP: devolution means rule by Labour's Glaswegian Micks, but independence is the means to the real aim of an all-white, all-Protestant Scotland.

Salmond also trotted out, rather desperately, the suggestion that the SNP was on for 20 seats. While I do not believe the rumour that, First Past The Post being what it is, the Nats may end up with no seats at all, they are certainly facing the ultimate indignity of fewer than the Tories. They can then find themselves a Leader who does affect to say f when he means th, or "less" when he means "fewer".