Drumlanrig: Bannockburn bashing point for Ian Davidson

Cantakerous Labour MP for Govan, Ian Davidson doesn’t appear overly concerned about restoring damaged relations with the SNP.

Nationalist MP Eilidh Whiteford is refusing to attend meetings of the Scottish Affairs Select Committee, which Davidson chairs, over the way he talked to her in one behind-the-scenes-spat.

This week Davidson told a meeting that the SNP’s 2014 date for the referendum, on the anniversary of Bannockburn, was “a dog-whistle reminder to their own supporters that we hate the English”.

Drumlanrig has been unable to locate this in the Scottish Government’s referendum consultation document.

Braveheart hits out in Holyrood magazine

Jim Sillars may not have been present at the SNP conference in Glasgow yesterday, but there is no doubt that the former MP still hits the spot for the party’s patient activists better than anyone.

In an article for Holyrood magazine, he declared: “Scotland is shackled to a fading power, one that is skint and holds out no prospect of anything except economic decline and the further tearing apart of the social fabric of our society. The only way out of years of cuts and rising unemployment is to break free and take command of our own destiny.”

That’s more like it!

Devine intervention in Eric Joyce’s battle

The fall of Eric Joyce, the Labour MP who last week pleaded guilty to assaulting four politicians in a Commons bar, exemplifies Labour’s self-inflicted problems when it comes to choosing candidates.

But the problem goes deeper than just those it picks. A Falkirk resident recalls how in 2000, when Joyce was selected, he had to beat off stiff opposition from another Scottish Labour Big Beast. His name? Jim Devine, the former Livingston MP who went on to serve jail time after being convicted of false accounting over his expense claims.

Not exactly a dream team.

Independence has women in stitches

If it is to win independence, the SNP has a big job to convince women, who remain far more sceptical than men about the merits of secession.

To that end, things looked up yesterday morning at the SECC, where ladies easily outnumbered gents in the conference centre’s entrance hall. Was this the breakthrough?

Sadly not. Alongside the SNP conference, the SECC was playing host to Creative Stitches, an event for aficionados of knitting. It is not sexist to say women outnumbered men at this event.