The real threat to Britain (and it’s not the SNP)

What a load of mendacious balls everybody talks about Scotland. It’s like a disease. It’s like, you know how they say Ebola probably started in some festering bat cave in Guinea? Well, the referendum campaign was that cave. We had secret oilfields and fantasies about the NHS and endless guff about austerity being done for evil Tory fun, and the VOW the VOW and, dear God, the relief when it ended. Only it didn’t end. Instead it spread. And it set the tone.

People talk now, for example, about an SNP/Labour coalition. As though this would make sense, when they must know it wouldn’t at all. As though Ed Miliband would even fit in Alex Salmond’s pocket, and Salmond (or Nicola Sturgeon, but only Scottish people talk about her) would want him there. As though these were two parties which somehow had aims in common. Only they don’t, do they? Sure, they both veer to the left, but in utterly different ways.

For Labour, it’s because that’s what they are; why they get up in the morning; what it says on the tin; no further questions required. For SNP, it’s more of a strategy. It’s the haircut you have not because it’s getting in your eyes but because you’re going on the pull. This is the party, remember, that the middle classes used to vote for in Scotland, in lieu of effective Tories, to keep Labour out. That whole ‘Ooh, we’re the proud cheerleaders of an avowedly socialist nation!’ routine seems impregnable now, but it only really started during the referendum campaign, and as a quite transparent ruse to woo Labour voters. Sure, they’d been offering free university tuition and opposing prescription charges and suchlike before, but that was straightforward electoral bribery.