Drumlanrig

Snippets from the past week in the political sphere

Lord Tebbit packs a low punch

The prospect of Scottish independence has become a hot topic for peers in the House of Lords, even for those who don’t hail from north of the Border.

Lord “get on your bike” Tebbit – Margaret Thatcher’s “semi trained pole cat” – has been musing on what the new Scottish currency in an independent state might be called.

He suggested that it should be the Darien, named after the ill-fated attempt to start a Scottish empire in 17th-century central America, which bankrupted Scotland and led to the Act of Union with England 300 years ago. A scurrilous low blow.

Buttonholed over flower faux pas

Lest we forget. Dunfermline and West Fife MP Thomas Docherty has managed to persuade the parliamentary authorities in Westminster to stock Scottish poppies for MPs and peers from north of the Border.

The Labour MP was apparently inspired by the sight of the SNP’s Scottish rural affairs secretary Richard Lochhead giving evidence to a Commons committee, embarrassingly wearing an English two-petaled poppy instead of the four-petaled Scottish version. Docherty argues that Scottish poppies have to be made of hardier materials to withstand the sterner weather conditions.

Just the ticket for Labour hopefuls

At least hostilities in the Labour leadership contest don’t appear to have blighted all sense of comradeship among the hopefuls.

Tom Harris revealed at his campaign launch on Thursday, that he had issued a late plea to MSPs for tickets for First Minister’s Questions in Holyrood later that day. The first to come up with the goods? Rival candidate Ken Macintosh. Drumlanrig wonders if relations will still be so amiable by time of the result next month.

‘No toff’ claim is hard to swallow

The newly elected Scottish Conservative leader, Ruth Davidson, has been heavily touted as a new breed of Tory, with one of her strongest supporters David Mundell, the party’s only MP in Scotland, yesterday describing her as leading the “radical, generational change that the party needs”.

But it was funny that Ms Davidson, who, Mr Mundell insists, is not a toff, chose one of Edinburgh’s swankiest restaurants and bars – Oloroso in Castle Street – as the place to make her first keynote speech as leader yesterday.