The
Scotsman's Bill Jamieson is concerned about some of the new members of the Scottish Parliament:
If MSPs continue to behave in Parliament as they did on Wednesday, it will not be long before the snigger turns to a sneer. If this is the way the Scottish Parliament means to go on - a dress-down disco freak show dominated by cranks, Trotskyists, show-offs, misfits, quixotic Greens, class-war redistributionists and ranters - then this Parliament and its fantastical £400 million building will swell those most corrosive and destructive emotions in politics: ridicule and contempt. And for that, a whirlwind will be reaped. So laugh our heads off while we can. This joke will soon turn sour.
Jamieson goes on to say that the Scottish economy is "losing ground faster than the rest of the UK" but, as Andrew Duffin has pointed out to me, the rest of the UK is actually gaining ground economically, thus making the Labour/Lib Dem coalition's record even more shameful. Jamieson writes that:
Those who write off any prospect of a centre-right renaissance in Scotland have only to consider these two developments and the backlash that is likely to follow from them. It should encourage an opposition coalition that would draw a firm line against the untrammelled growth of government and in regulation, and turn to classical liberalism for a new approach to devolution.
I think that is correct. There will be a backlash against the socialist regime and a turn to
real liberalism. Let it start now.