Alex Massie Alex Massie

Mr Cameron Comes To Edinburgh

So Dave meets Eck at St Andrews House today. Earlier in the week there had been talk that their tea-time chat was nothing more than a “courtesy call” from the Prime Minister, popping in for a cuppa since, well, he was in the neighbourhood anyway. Perhaps. More importantly, this is the first meeting between the two since Alex Salmond announced he plans to hold a referendum on Scottish independence in the autumn of 2014. The details of that remain unresolved and important but, in terms of mood and optics, Salmond’s meeting with David Cameron bears some resemblance to a press conference announcing and confirming an eagerly-anticipated prize fight is announced. This one is going ahead, the purse his huge and this is the contest that will define both fighters’ legacy.

Mr Cameron has an op-ed published in the Scotsman today. It is not a bad thing but nor does it suggest the Prime Minister is in peak condition. Most of it, frankly, is stuff everyone in Scotland has heard before. That doesn’t mean the Prime Minister’s arguments are necessarily weak, merely that it invites the response “Is that all you’ve got?”. Though properly respectful, even conciliatory, it is not an intevention liable to prove memorable. (Perhaps his speech in Edinburgh will though this, on the basis of his Scotsman article, this seems improbable.)

Not all of this is Mr Cameron’s fault. But he has not – or not yet – found a winning blend of emotion and reason to make a truly persuasive case. He begins with a slight misdiagnosis of the matter: “Our shared home is under threat and everyone who cares about it needs to speak out”. On the face of it this seems fair enough. But those of us who consider ourselves Scottish and British actually have two homes: a Scottish one and a British one.

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