A first blast of the trumpet against the monstrous regiment of scotchmen

Spectator, The, Dec 2, 2000 by Johnson, Paul

The first important decision of the new Scotch Speaker of the House of Commons was to deny MPs the chance to debate the European army. The Scotch Labourites are strongly in favour of it, believing it will demoralise the English still further and thus facilitate the imposition of Scotch rule. It is the first time in history that Scotchmen are presiding over both Houses of Parliament. Lord Irving, who sits on the Woolsack, is an enthusiastic member of the tribe, to judge by the number of Scotch legal cronies who have been attracted by `the noblest prospect a Scotchman ever sees' and have taken the high road to England, since `ma guid friend Derry' became Lord Chancellor.

This is the third attempt to set up a Scotch government here. The first, under James I, was the prolegomenon to a civil war. James's earliest recorded act, on crossing the English frontier to take up his throne in 1603, was to refuse a cutpurse the right to trial by jury, ordering him to be `hangit forthwith'. The present government's hatred of trial by jury, and determination to end it, is thus part of a tradition. James I also began the sale of honours, to raise cash for his bare-arsed Scotch friends. He even created a new order, the hereditary knighthood or baronetcy, to expand the trade. Here again, the present Scotch government has carried on the tradition, though on a much bigger scale than James and, of course, for far more cash. It was the same story during the second Scotch regime, of John Stuart, Earl of Bute, George III's favourite and chief minister from 1760 to 1763. As the Dictionary of National Biography puts it, `The details of his administration are peculiarly disgraceful, and for corruption and financial incapacity it is unlikely to be surpassed' (this was written before the present lot took over). Bute was, the English believed, bribed by the French to make the Peace of Paris, and remembering this, one wonders how the French have contrived to keep their infected beef flowing freely into our supermarkets, or to get us to rubberstamp their new European army.

Every week that passes sees a tightening of the Scotch hold on our Cabinet, Parliament, institutions and power centres. And the English are becoming cowed. At least in the 1760s Bute, symbolised in cartoons as a petticoated jackboot, was frequently mobbed by patriotic Londoners and `his house was always the object of attack whenever there was a riot'. Whereas when Donald Dewar, that aggressive Scotch Labour loudmouth and power-grabber, finally `went to John Knox', as they say, there was a sickening chorus of eulogy even down here. He always struck me as a mean-spirited fellow to agree to sit in Cabinet with Chancellor Irving, who walked off with his wee woman, wife-stealing being part of the culture in the Lowlands Labour belt. And Dewar could be impudent, too. At a meeting of Anglo-Spanish notables in Granada in 1998, a spectacular sung Mass was held in its superb cathedral, attended by half the Spanish cabinet as well as ours. The local cardinal asked me to compose a prayer for the occasion, and I did. It included an invocation to Almighty God to guide and protect `their Majesties the King and Queen of Spain and the Queen of England and her consort the Duke of Edinburgh'. An enraged Dewar stormed up afterwards and told me in his rasping, know-all Scotch way that I was an ignorant loon and should have referred to Elizabeth II as the Queen of Scotland too, or indeed as `Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland', her 'correct' title. I told him I was not prepared to be told how to pray by an atheistical Scotch Calvinist.

I will not weary the reader by listing the number of Scotchmen who have come down since Blair, Brown, Cook, Irving and co. took over the great offices of the kingdom. The Scotch not only dominate the government and Parliament, but quangoland too. To judge by the number of Scotch voices you now hear on the BBC, they are in charge there also, with their incomprehensible accents and bad manners. To hear James Naughtie bully an English Cabinet minister he is supposed to be interviewing is to gain an insight into the self-importance of our new master race. It was a sign of the times when the strictly impartial political editor of the BBC was rudely ordered into early retirement to make way for a pushy Scotch leftie called Andrew Marr. I have had experience of this little mousie, too. He once accused me in the Independent of `castle-creeping', a term new to me but apparently of Scotch manufacture, implying a readiness to suck up to the lairds. This seemed odd as I thought all Lowland Scotch sucked up to the lairds when not actually cutting their throats. However, I put a letter in saying I was indeed a `castle-creeper', or rather strider, as I had visited more than 100 Scotch castles when working on my book Castles of England, Scotland and Wales, adding that a new edition of it had just been published by Weidenfeld, price L12.95.

Now I hasten to add that, in complaining about Scotch rule, I am not referring to the gallant, soft-spoken Highlanders, whom I know well and love. I have climbed with them all over their delectable mountains, and have walked from east coast to west in a single day, by different routes, several times, something I bet not a single member of our Scotch occupying army has done. The voice of the Highlander is music to my ears, and the smile of a choice Highland girl is worth the whole of an Edinburgh Assembly Room. Nor do I refer to the loyal Hebrideans or the truthful Orcadians or the generous Shetlanders. All these good people hate Scotch rule as much as we do. The Scotch provide some of the best regiments in the British army, including the socalled Royal Highland Fusiliers, recruited mainly from Glasgow and as brave and dangerous as lions. There are countless good men and true, and admirable women, south of the Highland Line, especially in Kirkeud-- brightshire, that Eden of the south-west.