It is somehow odd this weekend that the Fabian Society New Year conference has heard Gordon Brown demanding a “British Day”. I probably agree with him (so long as it doesn’t interfere with Armistice Day) and when I agree with Gordon Brown there’s definitely something wrong somewhere.
Listening to Gordon Brown one cannot but wonder why British politics is dominated by the Scots? They have their own strange National Assembly or Parliament which has extremely palatial premises in Edinburgh, yet Scottish politicians come down South in their droves to bicker and back-stab for high office at Westminster.
In the same way as Fettes-educated Blair is being “terminated” by Gordon Brown, so Charles Kennedy has fallen to the plotting of Sir “Ming” Campbell, if you don’t count the influence of Scotch whisky. It makes one concerned for the future of the yet-to-be-proven David Cameron? He sounds like a Scot and has the Glaswegian Dr Liam Fox (Shadow Defence Secretary) right there ready to stab him in the back. But is Cameron a true Scot? Oddly, and despite his name, he seems to be much more of a true Englishman with just a smattering of cosmopolitan outside blood.
There are few references in David Cameron’s biography to Scottish influences although it is interesting to note that he is a fifth cousin, twice removed to HM Queen Elizabeth II (bless her). Certainly he is related to the Marquess of Montrose, but also to the Earls of Denbigh and Carnavon. He is even a descendent of Frederick V, Elector of Palatine. His wife is (comfortingly) a decendent of both Charles II and Francesco I de Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany.
Dr Fox apart, Scottish back-stabbers in the Conservative Party could come in the form of the extraordinarily named Thomas Galloway Dunlop du Roy de Blicquy Galbraith, 2nd Baron Strathclyde, PC who leads the Tories in the House of Lords, or David Mundell, MP for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale & Tweeddale and Secretary of State for Scotland.
I suppose that, in the final analysis, the rampant Scots politicians do make today's House of Commons a more interesting place. John Major tried to entertain with his Edwina Currie fling, and Winston Churchill knew how to down a glass or two of brandy, but for pure, venomous skullduggery the Scots know how it is done.
This blog would be a poor one if it didn’t, however make mention of the Scottish MP who is most in the news this weekend, Dundonian George Galloway who is criticised for appearing on Celebrity Big Brother. Okay so he now represents Bethnal Green as a “Respect” member, but he will be more remembered as Member for Glasgow Hillhead (also associated with Tam Dalyell who beat Vincent Cable of Liberal Democrat fame in the 1970 election, the late Roy Jenkins who held the seat in the eighties, and Lord Strathclyde’s grandfather who held the seat in the fifties). It was when MP for Glasgow Hillhead that Galloway was challenged about expenses claimed on a War on Want conference in Mykonos, Greece. His ambiguous answer included the following statement: “I travelled to and spent lots of time with people in Greece, many of whom were women, some of whom were known carnally to me. I actually had sexual intercourse with some of the people in Greece”.
