The Lorettonian Curse

Monday, 26th January 2009

Now that I think about it, Simon Heffer's broadside against Caledonia-dire-and-rotten, missed one obvious target. Sure, Alastair Darling is a much-ridiculed, much-villified Chancellor of the Exchequer but so too was the last-but-one Scottish Chancellor. Remember Norman Lamont? He may have represented an English constituency but that only emphasised how far he'd travelled from his Shetland roots. Just as Darling is presiding - if that's the applicable term - over the current financial apocalypse, so "Peerie Norrie" was the bluffer in charge during the last economic debacle: Black Wednesday.

I think it unfair, however, to blame Scotland writ large for this sorry duo. Not when there's a smaller, handier target. Both Darling* and Lamont are products of Loretto - Musselburgh's finest private educational ~~establishment~~ penitentiary. The lesson is obvious: just as Mrs Worthington was advised not put her daughter on the stage, so future Prime Ministers ought to be wary of appointing Lorettonians to any financially-sensitive cabinet post. Ignore this and ruin will surely follow.

*Bonus Darling factoid: his entry in Who's Who has, for years, avoided mentioning where he went to school. I daresay that, circumstances being what they are, Loretto are quite happy to have this forgotten too.