Scotland will pay a heavy price for McConnell's ego

We have gone from Comic Relief to comic singers in a couple of decades. The antic duo on this occasion are Geldof and his vicar on Scottish earth, Midge Ure. They are not even singing from the same hymn sheet. While Geldof stubbornly refused last week to rescind his nihilistic edict summoning the huddled masses of Agitprop nostalgia to Edinburgh, Ure was gabbling disloyal apologies for his master's vagaries: "People have taken this figure one million literally, but it's purely symbolic, it's just Bob being Bob."

Ure sounded like a dysfunctional single mum in front of a children's panel, excusing her wayward offspring for microwaving the cat. In case anyone became concerned at the prospect of a million anarchists treating Edinburgh in the style of the Protector Somerset on his Scottish gig of 1544, a wise guru quickly provided reassurance. "One million is not a possibility," proclaimed Ian Dickenson, assistant chief constable of Lothian and Borders. "It will not happen." Ah so, rittle glasshoppah! So that is all right: the tealeaves in Plod's cup have spoken.

There are some pretty gargantuan egos clashing over this issue; anyone who navely imagined it was to do with global poverty needs to wise up fast. Abune them a' is the prime mover in this farce-verging-on-tragedy, our own skirted crusader, Jack McFondle. The First Minister started all this by bringing Geldof to Edinburgh to address a purposeless conference at Holyrood and giving him hospitality, on the taxpayer, at Bute House. He did so to promote his own self-advertising initiative over poverty in Malawi (Easterhouse, Pilton, Blackhill - job done!).

The nearest thing to an ageing rock star in need of the oxygen of publicity is a brain-dead Scottish First Minister who knows he is a laughing stock. Bob Geldof and Jack McFondle found a community of interest; but now the Boomtown loose cannon has rolled across the deck and Jack is a casualty. If this farce turns into a catastrophe (the G8 riots in Genoa claimed human life), then it must be a resigning issue for this clown. The last national political leader who deliberately provoked disorder in his own backyard was Mao Tse-Tung, when he started the Cultural Revolution. The closest our own national embarrassment has achieved to a cultural coup was his chalkstriped skirt in New York.

If there is violence, then the grandstanding First Minister must be held to account. So must the super-rich poseurs from the so-called music world who are using the dirt-poor populations of Africa as a prop to their own ego trips. Paul McCartney is worth 800m. How much of it is he giving away, when his wealth still accumulates on such a scale? If that is his own business, then let him stop hectoring everyone else on his pet themes. MSPs earn over 100,000 in salaries and expenses. If Holyrood wants to be taken seriously, MSPs should 'tithe' themselves - donate 10% of their excessive incomes to Malawi. With 129 bleeding hearts in the chamber, that would provide 1.29m. Don't let anyone hold their breath in Blantyre, though: talk comes cheap.

Malawi has had a long record as fashion accessory to the unco guid in Edinburgh. When the Kirk and the Scottish left were lambasting South Africa, they were simultaneously dribbling with enthusiasm over Hastings Banda, graduate of Edinburgh University and elder of the Church of Scotland. In Malawi, the dictator was called Messiah and it was his Christian practice to feed his political opponents to crocodiles. There are plenty of those in Scotland today and naturally they are in tears. Their grief is largely provoked by the alleged intransigence of America on environmental and social issues.

It typifies the hypocrisy of the progressive consensus that the United States is the one nation on earth that has a coherent, practical, informed strategy to overcome poverty. The US understands economics better than other countries: that is why it is the world's richest nation. It knows globalisation is not the problem, but the solution. Bush's people have done their homework. They have noted that world poverty, which peaked in terms of extremes of wealth around 1970, has declined since then.

Defining extreme poverty as living on less than $1 a day, one-sixth of the world population was at that level in 1970, compared with under 7% by the end of the 20th century. This improvement was due to economic growth during the 1990s in China, India and Indonesia - the globalisation that Geldof and Co attempt to demonise. In the same period the numbers subsisting at the level of $2 a day halved, from 40% of the global population to 20%. America has got the message.

During the last two decades of the 20th century, the United States handed out $167bn in "aid" to 156 countries. Under this no-strings dependency system, the median per capita income in beneficiary states fell from $1,076 to $994, with state and private corruption, protectionist practices and incompetence all taking their toll. The new model is Millennium Challenge Accounts - Dubya's commitment to channel $5bn over three years to nations that open their economies, promote good governance and invest in health and education. The free flow of goods and services is the chief requirement of 16 criteria that must be met.

Neither Africa nor any other continent should be mollycoddled into unending dependency: the anti-globalisation programme is actually neo-colonialism - denying nations the recipe for economic autonomy and turning them into charitable colonies. Most famine is caused by wars waged by Africans against one another, while Aids has its origins in acts of personal irresponsibility. People must take responsibility for themselves: that is what independence means. Realism must prevail at Gleneagles, even if self-indulgence swamps Edinburgh.