Doing The Black Thing

As Diane Abbott knows perfectly well, "doing the black thing" certainly does involve a very hefty and healthy dose of Christian-based social conservatism, assisted as that has to be by plenty of central and local government action, which is the point and purpose of that action. As well as including the closest possible Commonwealth ties.

Not least to countries which, by retaining the monarchy, retain the embodiment of all of this as the basis of their respective constitutional orders, something noticeably accompanied by high academic standards where it still taken seriously, unlike in Britain or in much of Australia these days. For example, Jamaica, as any referendum on the monarchy will make clear.

No wonder that Alex Salmond would want an independent Scotland to be such a country. At every point, this way of thinking is strikingly Scottish. But all of it is increasingly being defined in our public life as very much a "black thing", in an attempt to present its presence on these shores as a product only of post-War immigration. Utterly absurd, of course. But so are a lot of other things.