Plus ca change

While clearing the house today I found a book of cartoons. It includes one showing a Scots Prime Minister of the UK, with two of his most senior lieutenants, also Scots, and all wearing full traditional Scottish dress.

The chairman of the governing party is reading a letter, and saying

"Goodness, Prime Minister! Now it's the English demanding independence and the right to run their own affairs ..."

Not an unfamiliar situation to those who want either an English parliament, or as the Conservatives are proposing, an English Grand committee to take those decisions for England which in Scotland and Wales are delegated to the devolved bodies.

But in fact, this cartoon was published in 1961, and it showed the Scots leaders, not of the present Labour government, but of the early 1960's Conservative government. This cartoon was drawn at a time when nobody would have imagined that the Conservatives might lose out in Scotland by being seen as the English party, nor that there might be a significant demand for devolution in either Scotland or England.

Depicted in the caroon were Prime Minister Harold MacMillan, Foreign Secretary Lord Home, and Conservative party chairman Iain MacLeod.

But apart from the political role reversal it seems quite apposite today.

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