English Democrat's London Challenge

The following is the conclusion to this week's Spectator column by Fraser Nelson, linked here: New political currents are flowing in this direction. Londoners turning on the evening television news last Friday would have seen an impassioned broadcast by the English Democrat party’s mayoral candidate, Matt O’Connor. He denounced Ken Livingstone as the stooge of a ‘Scottish-run government’ which apparently ‘rules over our capital with an iron fist’. He referred to the Prime Minister as ‘Gordon, “I’m all right, Jock” Brown’. He asked: ‘Why is it that students in Gordon Brown’s constituency do not pay university fees, but students in London do?’ This last question is precisely the one Mr Salmond wants raised. He is pursuing what one of his advisers once described to me as ‘Operation Rile The Daily Mail.’ This means flaunting Scotland’s spending advantage, splashing out on drugs not available south of the border and generally trying the patience of Middle England. His strategy is not to provoke nationalism, but to offend a sense of English fairness. The intellectual case for English independence was made powerfully some years ago by Simon Heffer in his prescient book Nor Shall My Sword. The cause might not drive many people to march on the streets; and the Union of 1707 may never be formally torn up as a result of a popular uprising on either side of the border. The greater risk is that it unravels in slow motion — not as a result of Scottish fervour, but English indifference.