A Parish Council? He Wishes!

Tony Blair once likened the Scottish devolved body to a Parish Council. Well, if Lanchester Parish Council demanded to see our bank manager, then he would come. He certainly would not expect us to go to him.

If Alex Salmond had been the Leader or the Chief Executive of a major local authority (such as Edinburgh or Glasgow), then they would have been straight on a train or a plane to pay court to him. Not the other way round.

If the Leaders or Chief Executives of several more minor local authorities (all those in the former Grampian region, say) had been in a similar position, then then they would have been straight on a train or a plane to pay court to them. Not the other way round.

But as it is, the mere "First Minister of Scotland" (as if! - tell that to the MP for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, and saviour of Scotland's beloved banks) is expected to make his way to London. To pay court to them. Not the other way round.

Who, being a potential MP or municipal player, would want a job like that? And who, if no potential MP or municipal player were ever up for it, would want such a job to exist at all?

TSB has deep Scottish roots. And as far as it and everybody else outside the parallel universe of Scottish nationalism (in all parties) is now concerned, the First Minister of Scotland is Gordon Brown and the Scottish Finance Minister is Alistair Darling.

What will Salmond even talk about when he gets there? He'll suggest this or that and it'll be "Oh, don't worry, we've already squared that with the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer". Or, of course, "We'd never get that past the Prime Minister and the Chanlcellor the Exchequer". Not to mention "Didn't you used to be Chief Economist at RBS?"

Everything about the SNP and, as it were, its Lager, has always been a product of Scotland's strange and historically aberrant descent into insularity, exacerbated by devolution: that the oil would last for ever, that people would always want to buy it, that Scotland subsidised England, that any independence treaty would just hand over the oil revenue to an independent Scotland, that an independent Scotland would be a "successor state" rather than simply a secession, that it might ever be let into the EU, that it might be allowed to remain on things like the National Grid, that Perthshire was normal (rural, pretty, affluent, some distance from all the English in the oil industry, a long way from places in Scotland with their supermarkets, cinemas, hospitals and main employers in England), and on, and on, and on.

But now, it is time to wake up. Forty per cent of the Bank of Scotland and fully sixty per cent of the Royal Bank of Scotland are now in public ownership. At UK level. Where the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer are both Scots sitting for Scottish constituencies.

A Prime Minister, moreover who, being in the Labour (or Conservative) tradition rather than the Liberal one that held sway at the time of Irish Home Rule, could more than reasonably claim that that tradition absolutely precluded signing anything that constituted or effected a secession from the United Kingdom, ever. Nor, for that matter, has there ever been a referendum, anywhere, on secession from the United Kingdom.

And a Prime Minister who could now strengthen the Union even more than the global banking crisis has already done, and even more than it will be elsewhere when (as will very soon happen) the Irish Republic cracks down on Catholic schools while liberalising its abortion law. He could appoint a single Secretary of State with specific responsibility, even if "only" in terms of advocacy, for the Highlands, Islands, Borders and possibly also North East of Scotland; for North, Mid and West Wales, and for English-speakers in Wales (there is no contradiction here - Wales is now run by a South Welsh upper middle class which uses the Welsh language as its cordon sanitaire); and for those in "the Roman Catholic community" in Northern Ireland (which exists as a legal entity quite apart from the Church, for employment quota and other such purposes) who wish to preserve the Union.

I nominate Brian Wilson. What could be his title as a peer, and why?