Davie, get your veto

In the House of Commons yesterday, the Secretary of State for Scotland, David Mundell, slapped down Pete Wishart. There were, he insisted, no vetos in the Scotland Bill:

"The Bill contains no vetoes, as he will be well aware if he has read it in detail. What it contains is mechanisms to allow two Governments to work together on matters of shared interest and application. To me, the meaning of a veto is that when someone says they want to do something, someone else has the capacity to say, “No, you can’t.” Not a single provision of the Bill relates to such a proposal."

On any fair minded, careful reading of the Scotland Bill, Mundell is being economical with the actualité here. His legislation contains several provisions which, to use his definition, give UK ministers the capacity to say, “no, you can’t” to the Scottish government.

For example, section 50 of the Bill will amend section 9 of the Energy Act to allow Scottish ministers to devise schemes for reducing fuel poverty. Hitherto, this has been a function reserved to UK ministers. But what’s this? The Scotland Bill reads as follows: "the Scottish Ministers may not make regulations unless" they have "consulted the Secretary of State about the proposed regulations," and "the Secretary of State has agreed to the regulations being made." Consultation and information sharing between governments is eminently sensible. But the Secretary of State clearly has the capacity to say, “No, you can’t” to devolved fuel poverty schemes under the Scotland Bill.

  

Nor is this an isolated example. Section 51 amends the Gas Act 1986 to give Scottish Ministers the power to set targets for the promotion of reduction in carbon emissions in Scotland. And yes you’ve guessed it: they must secure the Secretary of State’s agreement to bring the regulations into force too. And the same goes for the new devolved powers allowing Scottish Ministers to encourage reductions in home heating costs and carbon emissions. “No, you can’t”. “No, you can’t”. “No, you can’t”.  

Even if you believe, as Mundell presumably believes, that these are sensible, defensible strictures allowing the UK and Scottish governments to work harmoniously together in areas of shared concern, they clearly give the London government the whip hand. 

  

Responding to Martin Docherty yesterday, Mundell boldly concluded that "there are no vetoes in the Bill. The honourable gentleman and others will see that clearly when we scrutinise it line by line." It might have been an idea if the Secretary of State had taken the care to read his proposals, line by line, before coming to parliament to spout transparent guff about their contents.

 

24 Carat Poppycock

I coughed. I sputtered. I spat my Earl Gray down the wall. In awed silence, I goggled, caught between astonishment and incredulity. 

Last night on the BBC's Scotland 2014 programme, Alistair Carmichael dumped a clanger.  Around four and a half minutes into the broadcast, the following exchange occurred between the host, Sarah Smith, and the Secretary of State for Scotland.

Smith: "The Lib Dems have been talking for a long time about a federal Britain. But Labour and the Tories only came up with plans for more devolution very, very recently. They could have done this - they've both been in government since the Holyrood parliament was opened. They could've legislated for this easily by now if they wanted to. Do you trust the other leaders, that they'll actually deliver on this if there's a No vote in September?"

Carmichael: "Well, there has never been a time, Sarah, since we started this devolution project, where part of the United Kingdom has asked for powers for a parliament or an assembly where this has been denied. We have twice delivered powers for the Scottish Parliament. The Labour government set it up in 1997, we within the coalition government, then added to these powers, following the Calman Commission - so that was, eh, a project started under the last Labour government, that was completed by the coalition this time around-"

Which is. Er. Demonstrably untrue. To say that you have devolved some additional powers since 1998 - and that's beyond dispute - cannot substantiate Carmichael's much more extravagant claim that no devolved parliament's demands for additional powers has ever been disappointed. The point went unchallenged in the interview, but it's 24 carat poppycock. But don't take my word for it. Ponder the recent record. 

Scrutinising the Scotland Bill in 2011, the majority of the Scottish parliamentary committee urged Westminster to (1) give Holyrood power to vary income tax thresholds and banding (2) to raise excise duty on alcohol (no doubt with one eye to the 1725 malt tax riots) (3) air passenger duty (4) corporation tax (5) regulation of firearms (6) more authority over the Crown Estate - and so on, and so on. Indeed, the Scottish Government, backed by the parliamentary majority, generated this helpful list of their proposed amendments to the Scotland Bill for the Westminster government just a few years ago, in 2011. 

In the starry parallel reality in which Carmichael appears to dwell, every single one of these demands has been met and devolved by the responsive and yielding government in Westminster. Because after all, "there has never been a time, Sarah, since we started this devolution project, where part of the United Kingdom has asked for powers for a parliament or an assembly where this has been denied."  

But gosh darn it - I can't seem to find any of the powers we know the Scottish Government demanded in the final text of the Scotland Act 1998, or in the 2012 Act, or in any other order or statute. Are Her Majesty's ministers discreetly concealing all of the tax powers they've given us in the chancellor's Downing Street water-closet? Are the relevant papers, putting the Crown Estate in Scotland under Holyrood control, bundled in Michael Gove's drinks cabinet? Or does Eric Pickles' tupperwear hold all the secret, promised authority over guns and pills? 

Good things come to those who wait, as some liquor-peddlar once said. I'm sure they'll turn up eventually.  Because the Secretary of State is an honourable man, and he assures us that "there has never been a time, Sarah, since we started this devolution project, where part of the United Kingdom has asked for powers for a parliament or an assembly where this has been denied." 

One or two of the Scottish Government's demands did make it into the final cut: boozing and speeding. But almost all of the tax and monetary powers petitioned for, over and above the Calman proposals, were turned down by Westminster as recently as 2012. The process of extending devolution in Wales has been marked by similar marches and countermarches and demands going unmet.

Still, Carmichael's grand proclamation that everything is up for grabs will no doubt be welcomed by the popping of corks in Northern Ireland, which is still waiting for Whitehall's decision on whether or not to give Stormont authority to vary the tax rates levied on businesses to make the six counties more competitive with their southern neighbours. Presumably, Carmichael's colleagues would have a similar open door policy to Scottish ministers, tripping south to petition for powers to match those which will, in the Secretary of State's fantastical parallel reality, inevitably come Belfast's way.

There's an important point to all of this.  The best reason to be sceptical about the promises from the Tories and Labour on further devolution is not 1979, but 2012. From experience, we know that both parties are capable, with prodding, of devolving some additional powers. The record speaks for itself in that respect. But we also know that as recently as 2012, both political outfits were dead set against introducing the very schemes which they now array juveniles with purple placards across incomplete monuments to "guarantee". 

They had a golden opportunity to introduce this flexibility into the devolution system less than two years ago. They declined to do so. The Liberal Democrats, the Tories, the Labour Party: all. Just two years ago. The question I'd like to hear credibly answered is, what has changed since the spring of 2012, to convince Johann Lamont, Ruth Davidson and their colleagues that the proposals they blocked less than two years ago are now grand ideas, "guaranteed" to the Plain People of Scotland if they have the douce good sense to say "No thanks"? If these ideas are wizard, what was so wrong with them in 2012?

 

We also know, all three of the Better Together parties having reported, that none of their devolution wheezes remotely approaches a vision of "devo-max", whatever their more breathless proponents might claim. All three plans will continue to reserve a whole tranche of critical decision-making to Westminster, on everything from renewable energy, to taxation -- and critically, social security and welfare. 

We've a snowball's chance in hell of seeing any of these powers accrue to Scotland if the opportunity of independence is forgone in September.  Even if we batter on Mr Carmichael's door, send a flurry of letters to his office, despatch tender scones to woo him to the advantages of devolving these powers - the Labour and Tory reports make clear that the door is firmly shut to all such petitioners, be they bearing scones or sconeless. 

But never fear. Don't let our recent past behaviour or our current policy trouble you, because "there has never been a time, Sarah, since we started this devolution project, where part of the United Kingdom has asked for powers for a parliament or an assembly where this has been denied." 

I coughed. I sputtered. I goggled. 24 carat poppycock.

Mr Moore: Whose must, your must or my must?

Shortly before the election results rolled in, Liberal Democrat blogger Caron Lindsay mused....

"I have always been reasonably relaxed about the idea of a referendum on independence. After tonight, I'm not so sure. I had always assumed that if Scotland voted for independence negotiations to begin, then we'd get another chance, once they were concluded, we'd have another say on whether we'd back the deal. It gave me the absolute creeps to hear that we wouldn't. I can't believe that Alex Salmond thinks that's legitimate."

I thought Caron would have been made of sterner stuff. The creeps? The haunted shudder brought on by the sleekit and Machiavellian process of giving the whole nation a free say? The diabolical machinations of Richard III it ain't. Yesterday, the two-referendums question revived again, with the jittery Michael Moore's latest pronouncement that in his learned constitutional opinion, two ballots would be required, if Scotland is to slip the bonds of the Union. This proposition is, in great part, supplied by benign "constitutional experts" of various stripes, shamelessly issuing imperatives about "needing" two referendums. Vernon Bogdanor shared his opinion with the Telegraph, who were frightfully keen to present the Professor's view as purified of its naked politics because he happens to be "a world-renowned expert". "Scotland's future will be decided by the people of Scotland, not by Oxbridge professors", was the Mouth of Eck's snarky riposte. UCL's Constitution Unit has also argued that for Scottish independence to succeed, a consultative first referendum (expected in this Holyrood term) would require to be followed by a second, affirming referendum on the given terms of the independence agreement. But necessary in what way? Who says? On what authority?

There are, I think, at least two distinct points being made by proponents of the two-referendum position, which are being unhelpfully (but productively) conflated. Firstly, a point is being made about the domestic constitutional order and the limits of Holyrood's powers under the Scotland Act. As has been discussed here before, Holyrood's power to call any referendum on independence is less than clear - however, all agree that if a plebiscite of any character is within the Scottish Parliament's legislative competence, such a plebiscite will not be legally binding in nature, but advisory only. The SNP government would gain no new legal powers to exercise thereby and Westminster priapists, obsessed with the sovereignty of that Palace, need not fear being put under the thumb of a higher sovereign. As Alan Trench has noted, "The Secretary of State is right here constitutionally speaking, however difficult that may be in political terms."

It is also useful to be clear about why the language of negotiation has become so prominent. I dare say many SNP and independence supporters would be much happier with a question framed thus: do you believe Scotland should be independent, yes or no? Indeed, some Unionists would share such sentiments and call for a clear and simple poll. Suspicious souls, they seem to believe that heretofore, the precise phrasing of the referendum question has been driven primarily by politics - with Salmond seeking a soft-soap phrase to lull Scots into supporting independence. Oppressed by such ungenerous thoughts, they do not seem to have considered the real source of the obscurity of the referendum's language: just another chimerical consequence of the legal detail. The SNP's draft Referendum Bill from the last parliament proposed to ask the following (arguably totally absurd) referendum question...

The Scottish Parliament has decided to consult people in Scotland on the Scottish Government's proposal to negotiate with the Government of the United Kingdom to achieve independence for Scotland:

Put a cross (X) in the appropriate box

I AGREE that the Scottish Government should negotiate a settlement with the Government of the United Kingdom so that Scotland becomes an independent state.

OR

I DO NOT AGREE that the Scottish Government should negotiate a settlement with the Government of the United Kingdom so that Scotland becomes an independent state.

The only reason that the whole question is being couched in the ludicrously obscure, contortionist terms is the limits of the Scottish Parliament's devolved competence. It is a creature of domestic legal nicety and an attempt to get around the limits of Holyrood's powers. Which is certainly not to say that the whole question of negotiation is unimportant. Far from it. However, negotiation of a settlement emerges as the primary terms of the referendum as it has been drafted, purely for domestic legal reasons. The first question I'd ask folk pushing the "necessity" of two referendums is, do they think the Scotland Act's limits on the Scottish Parliament's powers are a good political reason, by themselves, to "require" two referendums, if Scotland votes "yes" to the first? Are you so attached to UK constitutional peculiarities, that if they are superseded by a collective decision of the Scottish people to form a distinct state, you'd insist on two polls, just so the legals are all tidily tied off? Isn't it just a touch suspicious, that we find ourselves in this predicament because of the eccentricities of the devolved settlement - and folk who are pro-Union are suddenly united in the analysis that it is a truth universally acknowledged, that a brace of referendums are required, if the institutions of our united polity are to unravel?

And for that matter, if you have an obsessive concern for strict legalities in political matters, why only have two referendums? After all, if Scotland voted "yes" in an advisory referendum, this affords Scottish Ministers no further legal powers. Their authorisation to negotiate independence would be "merely" moral and political. Surely, if we're full of legal stipulations, we should have one referendum to decide whether Scottish ministers should acquire legal authorisation from the people to negotiate independence, another once such legal powers are in place to decide whether they should exercise those powers, followed by still another to seal the deal? If there is to be a third, the hurdle of the Scotland Act still needs to be o'erleapt. As any constitutional expert might tell you, legally, this would require Westminster to step in, as the devolution legislation clearly doesn't permit a legally "binding" poll. Oh. And by English constitutional norms, such a referendum wouldn't be binding anyway, as Parliament is sovereign and can do what it damn well pleases. So we may have to organise another referendum to strip out parliamentary sovereignty, so the second independence poll really is legally binding. All neat and expert-like, wouldn't you say?

And there's the rub. When you look into the authority being summoned up by these constitutional experts, it is arid and quibbling fare, likely to convince the odd legalist but utterly lost on most folk. It is one thing to ask, how would a Scottish court deal with the legislative competence of an independence referendum under the Scotland Act? In our system, the judges would be bound by the law of the land, obliged to give effect to constitutional principles. Expertise matters, where that expertise will determine the practical outcome of a controversy. It is quite another thing, as a matter of politics outside of the courtroom, to corral together dreary constitutional pundits, with access to the mythic authority of the constitution, confidently to provide the benighted generality with answers and prescriptions, throttling us with commas and quibbles, telling us when expressions of our national self-determination "really counts". This is a familiar - and indeed, understandable - political stratagem. Expert knowledge is a splendid way of framing the debate in a manner satisfactory to oneself, turning opinion and the debated stuff of politics into objects of abstract knowledge, about which one can be right or wrong. The delight of doing so is that disdaining politics can actually afford political advantages. We must resist Moore's attempt to petrify the issues and cleave fast to the conviction that this is a political dispute, about which we can, should and must disagree, sincerely and candidly. No avuncular academic can easily rescue us from the predicament of deciding for ourselves what we take to be legitimate. There is no sacred book of rules from which the inducted can read off solutions for us, and shame on the old devils for pretending that they're doing so.

Here's where the second, more lively argument comes in: the idea that a gap separates agreement with the proposition of independence in principle - and accepting the final shape of an independent Scotland, once those negotiations have been concluded.  Basically, it is an issue about the extent of the authority being afforded to Scottish Ministers as the agent of the people's will. Should that agent be entitled to bind its principal, or does the latter reserve a right of ratification, of accepting or refusing the terms reached? For example, we might envisage that an individual might support independence on the first ballot, but would withhold their vote in any second plebiscite, if Trident wasn't expelled from the country. Is this a good argument or not? If so, let the historical precedents be marshalled, reasons given, and a case made. What is clear, however, is that this is an argument amongst other arguments. The legitimacy of a referendum is, quite properly, contested terrain. Certainly, let's have a discussion about what we should do, but for heaven's sake, let's all of us forego the language of needs, musts and the dowdy compulsions of confounded constitutionalists.

EXCLUSIVE: Aitken's penguin shame...

Sources close to Baillie Bill Aitken have informed me that his parting shot before leaving Holyrood in May 2011 was to be a private member's bill unilaterally claiming Scottish regulatory sovereignty over Antarctica. Aitken suffers from an unusual psychological syndrome, the tragic result of a traumatic, humiliating experience which occurred in Edinburgh zoo during his late middle-age.

This obsessive neurosis penguinus means that the People's Baillie boasts an obsessively keen desire to hold tyrannical sway over the lives of Emperor Penguins. This wheeze risked significant public embarrassment for the Scottish Conservative Party, who have privately confirmed that Aitken had been informed by "short, meatily proboscised party figures in black tie" that the end of his parliamentary career was necessary "in the national interest".

Bill is nothing if not a doughty prosecutor of his causes and was not to be dissuaded and has apparently been taking soundings behind the scenery to secure enough votes to see his proposal debated by the whole parliament, a la Margo MacDonald's End of Life Assistance (Scotland) Bill, being debated and voted on this afternoon in Holyrood. 

Ministers and Conservative party figures have been showing signs of mounting panic as Aitken secured signature after signature from spiteful fellow backbenchers, keen to make fun of Baillie's penguin peccadilloes. It is understood that SNP MSP Christine Grahame backed Aitken's proposal on account of her long-standing, bitter feud with an Antarctic Snow Petrel. Ms Grahame hopes to use planning laws to disrupt her snowy foe's nesting sites.

Evidence of how closely the Liberal Democrats have come to identify with their Conservative coalition partners in Westminster, Secretary of State for Scotland Michael Moore entered the fray on behalf of his Tory colleagues to head off Aitken's South-Pole-tending imperialism. However did he do it I hear you cry? The sleekit Secretary sneakily introduced a novel clause to the new Scotland Bill, launched yesterday, to foil his plots. Section fourteen of the draft enactment reclaims the Scottish Parliament's powers to regulate activities in Antarctica - for instance orders requiring all penguins to wear epaulettes and march only in full military array - and innocently explains, in the Bill's explanatory notes, that:

60. This clause re-reserves the regulation of activities in Antarctica. The effect of this clause is that it will no longer be within the legislative competence of the Scottish Parliament to pass Acts which relate to the regulation of activities in Antarctica. The Scottish Parliament has never in fact exercised this competence.

Rather inexplicable? Not for you, my fortunate readers, who have the inside scoop. Christine Grahame has angrily denounced the move as a "snowscreen" tactic. The veteran Nationalist suspects American involvement and has called on Wikileaks to release all diplomatic cables in which the Snow Petrel was discussed. Aitken is reportedly furious at the development and was spotted brutalising a robin in Edinburgh's Meadows yesterday.

(Eck's)press remorse...!

"I apologise". Say it properly. "I repent." With more feeling, if you don't mind. "I regret my actions". Really? "Yes". I don't believe you! Can't you make the answer catch in your throat, your eyes mist? "Er..." You see, he doesn't mean it! "I humbly beg your forgiveness, I assure you". Not good enough! Etcetera, etcetera. I've written here before about the odd conceptions of responsibility and purgation which attach to political apologies. In fairness, this week's John Swinney, guilty silence and the Scottish Variable Rate ballyhoo is a different case. For those who think they've detected a knowing, abashed restraint in the SNP blogosphere on this tale, no doubt my brief, belated thought or two - apologies having already been elicited from both Swinney and Salmond - could be seen as taking my line from the party's high heid yins and only endorsing an assessment of failure which they themselves are willing to sanction. However, in brief, here is my sense. In his budget statement of the 17th of November, for John Swinney to utter the following sentence was foolish:

"Within the Parliament's existing revenue powers, we have explored options for maximising our income. We have been mindful of the need to consider the effect of the significant tax rises that the UK Government has announced before we act. I therefore confirm that we will not raise the Scottish variable rate of income tax."

Although on one level, this is perfectly consistent with a number of facts including (a) no revenue power has been theoretically lost and (b) the use of the power would entail significant expenditure, no doubt weighing against any income-maximising assessment, frankly I'm bemused at why this information didn't receive a public, parliamentary airing before now. In which context, we should remember that the Liberal Democrat Secretary of State for Scotland was able to access this information, and amid the great gulps of Loch Lethe which Labour are inviting the electorate to swallow, we shouldn't forget that they only left Westminster office earlier this year.  Even further back in time, it is absolutely relevant that contrary to the impressions given by some, when the SNP entered office, the SVR does not seem to have been "fully" operative at all.  Yet fundamentally, as Swinney and Salmond both recognised this week, this is a screw up.

As I suggested in my previous piece on apologies, curiously, repentance is often a great falsifier, turning accident into intention, in part because making a wrong decision looks more robust than simply blundering. I have no insight into what transpired internally and scanty time or interest to spend combing through the wads of paper to find out.  That said I also agree, by the by, that effectiveness is the important criterion here and critics are right to talk about the effective loss of powers, insofar as they caveat that observation with the condition that large expenditure could effectively revive them. Equally, I think those members of the SNP benches who attempted to offer a cavilling defence of John Swinney based on legalities were not helping, primarily because thinking in terms of effectiveness is the friend to the SNP here because effectively it doesn't make a blind bit of difference. For those who live in a Manichean universe, who like to see things sharply delineated in black and white, all that matters is what side of the schism an issue falls. Am I right? Is he wrong? Often - all too often - people who conceive the world along these lines fail to examine the issues along the vital third axis - how much should we care? What is a proportionate analysis of the right or wrong? It isn't a tasteful little irrelevance that no party save for the Greens proposes employing the SVR mechanism. I noticed there was talk in yesterday's Holyrood debate of conflating the issue of justifying the decision with the argument that parliament should have been informed and have a chance to contribute to that decision, basically, that process values were being commingled and confused with substantive issues.  Maybes aye, maybes naw. While I'd agree that folk like Linda Fabiani were jumbling the issues - its important to notice that various members of the opposition made precisely the same conflation. Where they disagreed and why both sides might well wield the language of missing the point - are their profoundly different positions on the bigger question what matters here? What is the more significant issue? Are angry opposition parties all saying that they'd have made a different decision? If not, is this only about institutional process, parliamentary prerogatives? In his contribution, Patrick Harvie most clearly and helpfully distinguished the two related but distinct issues, primarily because unlike many of the  toerag Labour members, his position on using the SVR is clear:

"I do not want this debate to be seen as a debate between the Labour Party and the SNP; it is, most centrally, a debate between Government and Parliament. Both sides in the debate have a detailed narrative about which Governments said what or did what at what time, but I am clear that, soon after coming to power in 2007, the current Scottish Government understood very clearly that this situation was developing and was not being resolved. Why was I, as a member of Parliament, not told at that time? Earlier, Stewart Maxwell said that everyone in the Opposition parties should have said which budget the money was to come from if we wanted it to be paid. I would have been delighted to have the opportunity to say what I think ought to have been the priority—but I was not told."

How you respond to the brouhaha will depend, I fancy, on what you think is more important, where you put the emphasis. Like Mr Patterson and others:

"I’ve had time to do no more than skim-read the various acts of correspondence on this matter and have only just made the time to ask myself what would be the obvious consequences of action X. And having done so, I have concluded and argued that the consequences of letting the SVR lapse are less negative than actually using the SVR either way, and less perverse than just letting it sit there."

Incidentally, I also recently heard it suggested that the SNP sends e-mails around bloggers, suggesting issues, individuals or subjects we ought to blog on. For the sake for categorical certainty, I for one have never received any such e-mails nor know of anyone else who has received such a communication. But since tu quoque allegations of hypocrisy are in vogue this week, just a little mischievous thought. Understandably enough given his employment, I'm not sure I've ever read James criticising Scottish Green party policy, so even the most loyal cybernat must dissent from the party line in public more often that Mr MacKenzie. Or alternatively, perhaps he would like to identify a particular issue where he has criticised his masters and thereby transcends our particular benighted Tartan Taliban band of ardent adherents? (I'll file this one on the "damned if you do, damned if you don't" shelf...) 

Its a rather interesting question actually, why are nationalists more amenable to characterisation in this way? After all, think about the wee column of Scottish Labour bloggers which have popped in and out of the scene. Hardly notable for their rousing critiques of their own tribe's orthodoxies, are they? One familiar answer would be a consciously biased, scornful Unionist media, who sit in their offices perpetuating a conception of the party and its supporters as a band of unserious cranks, Quixotic romantics, with every opportunity to scoff or condescend greedily seized. Yet the phenomenon is broadly based beyond the press, often curious so. I had lunch a few days ago with an English chap -  who was actually educated at the University of Edinburgh - who rolled his eyes when another friend said he was minded to vote SNP in May 2011. Indeed I discover that all Scottish Nationalists who stray into England should brace themselves for often passionate contempt, at best only vaguely connected to particular policy positions or perfectly mainstream convictions. A thought to be expanded on another day, that...

"The infant Robespierre..."

"That this House, aware of the rejection by the Scottish nation of the policies of the Conservative Party at the General Election of 1987 and the further decline of the Conservatives into third place behind both the Labour Party and the Scottish National Party at this year's district poll, believes that the Government has no mandate to continue to impose its alien values and divisive programme upon an unwilling population; notes the Government's refusal to allow the Scottish people to determine their own constitutional future by the holding of a referendum or the establishment of a constitutional convention; further notes the developments in the European Community towards a single market; and considers that it is in the overwhelming interests of the people of Scotland to seek full independent status within the European Community, rather than accepting continued colonial status within the United Kingdom."

More than two decades may have passed, but the late Margaret Ewing's House of Commons motion of 1988 poses questions that many Scots are undoubtedly asking themselves today. Plus ça change and all that. In the subsequent debate, the Conservative Secretary of State for Scotland, Malcolm Rifkind remarked:

"I begin by complimenting the hon. Member for Moray (Mrs. Ewing) on the style of her speech. My hon. Friends and I find her style and approach considerably preferable to that of the infant Robespierre, her Honourable Friend the Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond), who takes a different approach to the conventions of the House and who consequently fails to impress."

This memorable description of the Salmond features prominently in David Torrance's recently published biography Salmond: Against the Odds. I don't blame Torrance for plucking out this emphatic characterisation, but as someone who entertains a fascinated fixation on the French Revolution, its life, complex progress and characters, I can't say I find Rifkind's historical parallel particularly convincing. Between Orczy's Scarlet Pimpernel and the Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle, our own age has been left a curious compound picture of Robespierre. A man associated with radical vehemence, an earnest humourlessness, but also effeminacy and prissy fopperies, stiff exactitude in wig and dress.  Impractical, abstruse - a copy of Rousseau's work kept under his pillow - a friend of the people, but the people conceived in their abstract, not the rough Sans Culottes. A man with Manichean sensibilities, ultimately Maximilien is most often recalled as a canting Tyrant, in his quiet, brittle little voice - giving orders for men and women to be trimmed by the patriotic shortener, in one of the morbid phrases of the day. In his The French Revolution, a History (1837), Carlyle was particularly keen on describing Robespierre as a "seagreen Incorruptible", reptilian, uptight, unspontaneous, lecturing and sententious - always critically contrasted with the manliness, fleshy, laughing, rabble-roaring political creature that was Georges Danton:

"A Danton, a Robespierre, chief-products of a victorious Revolution, are now arrived in immediate front of one another; must ascertain how they will live together, rule together. One conceives easily the deep mutual incompatibility that divided these two: with what terror of feminine hatred the poor seagreen Formula looked at the monstrous colossal Reality, and grew greener to behold him; - the Reality, again, struggling to think no ill of a chief-product of the Revolution; yet feeling at bottom that such a chief-product as little other than a chief windbag, blown large by Popular air; not a man, with the heart of the man, but a poor spasmodic incorruptible pedant, with a logic-formula instead of heart; of Jesuit or Methodist-Parson nature; full of sincere-cant, incorruptibility, of virulence, poltroonery, barren as the eastwind!"

In the event, Danton lost his head first and Robespierre misplaced his own in the end. In all probability, their bones mingle fraternally in the catacombs beneath Paris. While he may not share in Danton's love of women wine and song - if he was to be identified with a French Revolutionary character, I'd suggest the hardly ascetical, hardly sartorial Salmond would find much more in common with Georges  Danton - a clever, jesting, jousting, provincial, roistering fellow who pulled himself through life by dint of his wits and ended up at the heart of the politics of his time. I can hardly imagine Eck partaking in the young Robespierre's Rosati, a gathering of the young bourgeois men of Arras reciting garlanded verse, cultivating literary pretensions and sipping wine enlivened by rosepetals. I've always felt a certain sympathy for Robespierre's vulnerabilities, his strange passions - and some of his virtues. Yet as someone who values the ironic and the Voltairean over the rigorously unsatirical spirit of Rousseau - as someone who is long on questions and short on certainties - we part ways and part sharply. Folk do change across their course of their lives. Young Eck may have been different from the Maximum Eck of today, but I struggle to believe that a Robespierre could ever grow into a Danton, or vice versa.