Wind of change blows to the north
I’M liking the #takeuswithyouscotland campaign.
It began when a light-hearted poll in the Manchester Evening News found 72 per cent of readers would prefer to be governed from Edinburgh than from London.
Then a 40,000-strong online petition demanded Liverpudlians, Mancunians and Geordies be allowed to secede from the UK and join a future independent Scotland.
The northerners are fed up being ruled by Tory governments they don’t vote for – just like us.
I saw this days after the general election vote when I found myself in deepest Conservative Surrey.
My mission to the Home Counties was entirely non-political, watching my daughter’s college diploma show.
But one of the other proud parents, a dad from Leeds, spotted my “See Me – I’m SNP” badge.
He nodded approval and went on to say he was a committed, traditional Labour voter. But he was incensed at the way Ed Miliband had danced to a Tory tune when challenged to distance himself from the SNP.
He promised not to forgive Labour’s leaders for this error, saying: “All he had to say was, ‘We are planning to win a majority but we will work with progressive parties to end austerity in the UK.” His analysis was spot on.
Now thousands of English northerners like him feel like foreigners in their own country.