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

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

No, what I object to are those nasty, envious, rude, coarse-voiced, bitter and unscrupulous people whom Labour has recruited from the Lowlands for its one-party state. They have all the venom of their forebear John Knox plus the materialism he despised. They fit perfectly into J.M. Barrie's dictum that `there are few more impressive sights in the world than a Scotsman on the make'.

They illustrate Sydney Smith's remark that `it requires a surgical operation to get a joke well into a Scotch understanding. Their only idea of wit ... is laughing immoderately at stated intervals.' Humourless and grasping, insensitive to the feelings of others, while thin-skinned about their own grievances, real or imaginary, they are now a scourge of England's green and pleasant land. Behind all New Labour's undermining of our institutions, denigration of our record, and determination to sink what is left in our country into a Franco-German Euro-empire, there is the poison of Low Scotch malice - the antiEnglish `Ould Alliance' in a new form.