The Spectator's Notes | 18 October 2012

Probably it will all be all right. Probably the Scots, rightly offered an either/or rather than a third way, will vote to stay in the Union in 2014. But there is something unhappy about the choreography of this week’s announcement of a referendum agreement. It is not clear why David Cameron had to negotiate this with Alex Salmond. Votes on the future of the United Kingdom are not a devolved matter. They should be settled by all MPs with, in this case, a decisive role for Scottish MPs. Obviously it was prudent to seek Mr Salmond’s views, but the process has contrived to make him look like the leader of his nation’s liberation struggle. When Mr Cameron was filmed shaking hands with him in Edinburgh this week he had the colonial air of an Englishman embarrassed by his country’s arduous commitments in a foreign land. Tubby little Mr Salmond, though he lacks actual power, seemed somehow in charge. This is a matter on which a Labour government, knowing more about Scotland, would make fewer unforced concessions than the Tories.

Why doesn’t anyone stand up for Jimmy Savile? For decades, thousands said how marvellous he was. I remember thinking myself rather daring for suggesting in this column just after his death that he was frightening and creepy — the BBC had been reporting reverentially that there were plans for his body to ‘lie in state’ in a Leeds hotel. There was a feeling of ‘Santo subito!’ in the air. The tabloids which now almost literally spit on his grave were fulsome in their praise, even though they knew the long-standing rumours against him. Isn’t there a single, solitary person who will maintain that Savile devoted himself to charity work for good reasons as well as bad? Is there no priest who will testify that the man was a repentant sinner, no unmolested child grateful that Jim Fixed It for him? What a dreadful warning all this is about the perils of fame: when you are up, no criticism, when you are down (and dead), no mercy.