by Rob Marchant
The local and Euro-elections are done. As always happens in the unfailingly cyclical business of politics, we take a breather and start thinking about the next one.
This year, of course, our normal annual cycle is disrupted by that pesky little referendum. Yes, the one that could conceivably break apart the United Kingdom and throw politics-as-we-know it into convulsions, whose aftershock would last for decades, if not centuries.
Conceivably, of course, does not mean probably. While not impossible, it seems pretty unlikely that the Yes campaign will win (and if it does, all bets are clearly off).
Assuming it doesn’t, the scenario we might project is that Labour, which has largely spearheaded the campaign (in view of the little love the Scottish electorate at large has for the Conservative Party), comes off as the proxy winner and that that winning momentum rolls us through the following half-year until a close-run, but ultimately successful, general election result.
That, at least, is how we would like to see things. However, although we might have a pleasant moment in the sun as we enjoy having led the charge which defeated Salmond, it may also be neutralised by an effect few have even considered.
The annoying thing for us is that Cameron has, as John Rentoul observed in his Independent on Sunday column, actually done rather a good job on Scotland – it is a moment of bipartisanship, after all – and it is likely to be as much his moment as ours.
Let us now look at why he has done well (the areas of his leadership where he has done poorly are numerous enough). It is easy to say that he has done nothing; but take a look at the counterexample of his Spanish counterpart, Mariano Rajoy. Catalonia, which has had a nationalist government for most of the last forty years, is asking for a similar referendum.
