Terrifying Together

In London today The Times headlines are about Alex Salmond "holding Labour to ransom" and his "threat" that the SNP would control the next Parliament. He is quoted as saying on the Andrew Marr show that "if you hold the balance, you hold the power." Anna Soubry, the Tory defense minister, said on the same show that the prospect was "terrifying."

The irony from Scotland's point of view could hardly be greater. People we did not elect holding the balance of power? True all the way through Conservative and Coalition governments since WWII. In Scotland we have lived with a Conservative Westminster government that was not elected by us in 22 of the years since 1970.

The effects of the Tory, and later Red Tory, governments have been truly terrifying. Terrifying if you are poor and needed a Council house (Thatcher sold them off). Terrifying if your son or daughter was sent off to one of Westminster's horrible wars. Terrifying if like a million people in Scotland you live downwind of Europe's biggest nuclear arsenal at Faslane.

Now, perhaps for one short Parliament, Scotland might get a word in edgeways. Tories and Labour wanted us to stay Better Together... so long as we did not offer the terrifying prospect of actually deciding anything.

Now we are Terrifying Together. And it feels GOOD.