Blighty Finished? I've Heard It All Before...

There are not all that many advantages to age but here is one: when the world is becoming hysterical and the headlines scream, one can remark, “I remember when that happened last time.”

- Frederick Forsyth

Since yesterday week and Labour’s massacre at the polls, the pundits have been in their pulpits telling us it is all over for them as a political force. Others glance at Scotland and predict the United Kingdom is now all history bar the shouting.

Well, the Tories were slaughtered in the general election of 1945 and, seemingly impossibly, Winston Churchill was out. They came back under Macmillan, then out again, then back under Thatcher in 1979 who by 1983 had a majority in the House of 144 when Labour was led by poor old Michael Foot.

Tony Blair crushed the Tories three times under who-he? leaders, and here they are back again.

North of the border Labour once owned the landscape.

Their votes were collected by the tipper truck, assessed by tonnage. Then they took their voters up there for granted for too long and the SNP took over.

But here is my minority opinion. I suspect the Scottish mood will change if, as a nation, we recover from Covid, prosper again and share that prosperity from Land’s End to John O’Groats.