George Osborne will give his speech in a few minutes, and we’ll analyse it straight after. But I’d like to pick up on something he said this morning on Radio 4. It was an aside, a claim that
For the first time in my lifetime, the march of the separatists in Scotland has been reversed
This is, of course, not quite true – the SNP have been pushed into reverse many times. Depressingly they tend to bounce back, stronger than ever. After devolution, it looked as if their fox had been shot. After Salmond quit the first time, they looked like a quaint irrelevance. Yet just eleven days ago the ‘yes’ campaign won 45pc of the vote in a separation referendum, more than many unionists (like me) would ever have thought possible – driven, to a depressingly large extent, by despair with and contempt for the political status quo. Much of it well-founded.
A deep wound has been exposed in Scotland, and it will take some time to heal. There really was nothing to celebrate, and if the Conservatives seek to govern the United Kingdom for another five years they should not pretend otherwise.
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