to carelessly mislay his wife by announcing to the press on the very tarmac, airside, that he was leaving and divorcing her for his mistress. He did so when Downing Street, home of the Messianic and thoroughly discredited Tony Blair, ordered him to choose between the twain, which he did in jig time aſter the affair was publicly exposed. So. Press and Prime Minister first ... wife last to know; all life is cliché. Maybe her phone line was engaged.
Mr Cook was too cowardly, himself (or perhaps too politically astute because he knew it would not play well in Scotland), to murder the referendum. But he was “art and part” of the killing; he recruited our George to do the foul deed; he helped fashion the bullets and he nudged the sniper’s rifle in the right direction. Oh, yes he did, M’lud.
It was a dastardly act perpetrated against the Scotish people. Because of it we lost 20 years of devolved government. Serious referenda that affect the very core of a nation are not like buses; there will not be another one coming around the corner in a minute. The waste of those lost years in thrall to Westminster is beyond computation.
Thus, when someone asks folk of my generation why they don’t vote Scotish Labour (as I was asked before the recent general election by a socialist canvasser, the first to knock my door in Paisley in 35 years), like the Rev. Ian Paisley, they - and I - thunder: “Never... never... never.”
When the second – and successful – devolution ABOVE:
John Smith, Labour party leader until his death in 1994.
referendum finally arrived, Labour leader John Smith, sadly passim, of the roten burgh of Monklands, declared it to be “the setled will of the people,” and everyone nodded gravely.
It was, of course, uter tosh; it was the setled will of the people the first time around; we WON that referendum by 51.6 per cent to 48.5 per cent. Despite shackling the populace hand and foot in a foully unjust, squalid, political stitch-up, Scotland still voted to establish its own Assembly and it didn’t get it.
LEFT:
Messianic and discredited ex-Premier Tony Blair.
The third deep political truth is also about Holyrood. Should pigs fly and a discovery is made that the moon is, indeed, made of green cheese, and the above posses of MPs surplus to requirements at Westminster are reborn as MSPs in creditable numbers by the proportional voting system, it can only strengthen that institution.
July 2015 7
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