It would appear that some chaps in the ruling tribe in Westminster are getting in touch with their inner feudalist at the moment.
Apparently the Scots are all well and good within the United Kingdom as long as they pay homage (and the bedroom tax) to their lords and masters on the Thames.
Now that IndyRef is over the triumphant Englishness of these high-born fellows is becoming more and more apparent.
I first noted this last month when, during his budget speech, the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced that there would be £1m of public money set aside to celebrate the battle of Agincourt.
The governmental title that Gideon Oliver Osborne currently holds dates from the time of Henry I (c. 1068 – 1 December 1135), also known as Henry Beauclerc.
He was King of England from 1100 to 1135 and Henry was the fourth son of William the Conqueror.
Ah, those damn French again!
In his speech at the Dispatch Box, our Gideon stated that the historical significance of the Agincourt was that:
“a strong leader defeated an ill-judged alliance between the champion of a united Europe and a renegade force of Scottish nationalists”
Only one problem with that is that there is no evidence that the Scots where anywhere near that battle!
Now, in fairness, Gideon may have been thinking of the Battle of Baugé in 1421, now the Scots WERE there and gave the English a sore face.
Or he might have been confusing Agincourt with the Battle of Verneuil in 1424, where the English prevailed and the Scottish army were destroyed as a distinct unit in the Hundred Years’ War.
This is a trifling mistake anyone can make at the Dispatch Box, but I really would have expected better from a chap with a degree in history from Magdalen College, Oxford.
I hope someone pointed out to Gideon that England lost that particular war and that the feudal system slowly disintegrated partly due to the pressures of the conflict.
The French and the Scots were certainly allies during that period of history although the ‘Auld Alliance’ is probably more warmly remembered in Scotia than in France.
What this vignette shows is that, perhaps, the Westminster tribe do not seem to feel too lovingly British these days when it comes to the Jocks.
Last September they urged the Scots to stay in the United Kingdom and they duly got their wish.
Perhaps they should have been careful for what they wished for.
The prospect of the entirely constitutional SNP gaining a hefty mandate at the ballot box is spoken in Westminster as being a clear and present danger to the Realm.
The lexicon of subversion is being deployed to describe the scenario where citizens of the United Kingdom vote in a British General Election for a legal, political party.
Just consider that for a moment dear reader.
For the avoidance of doubt Nicola Sturgeon and her duly elected colleagues are not the South Armagh Brigade.
In this decade of centenaries in Ireland, I think that the UK General Election of 2015 could cause a similar seismic tremor as the one in 1918did here in Ireland.
All analogies ultimately fail, but the Irish Parliamentary Party was destroyed by the post-Easter Rising Sinn Féin.
Redmond’s party was the local bulwark against the local separatists.
The victory of the Better Together folk last September is now looking increasingly Pyrrhic.
Since 1955, the Conservative Party in Scotland has not won a majority of Scottish seats in a General election.
The idea that could ever happen again is risible.
They currently have one.
It is the Labour Party that holds the standard for dear old Blighty north of the Border.
The Daily Mail now talks openly about tactical voting for “pro-Union parties”.
What this means is that the national question in Scotland is now the central issue for politics in Britain.
Rather than extinguishing the demand for separatism the IndyRef result has further fuelled it.
I now expect the Westminster chaps to get seriously devious about the totality of relationships with the Scottish people.
Expect Britannia to waive the rules.
One of the most controversial aspects of the Battle of Agincourt was that the English King ordered the killing of French knights who had been taken prisoner.
This happened while the fighting was still raging. King Henry told his guys to kill the captives they were guarding and get back into the fray.
This slaughter broke the accepted rules for chivalric combat in the Middle Ages when noblemen would be ransomed back to their own side.
Of course, if taken captive mere commoners had no value and their worthless lives were quickly extinguished there and then.
For the French ruling class to be treated like this on the field of battle was an outrage to the accepted feudal order.
Chaps like Gideon Oliver Osborne expect to rule the rest of us because that is the way it has been for generations.
His father, Sir Peter George Osborne, is the 17th Baronet, of Ballentaylor, in County Tipperary, and Ballylemon, in County Waterford.
No doubt there are times when these election thingies must seem like a terrible waste of time to a chap like Gideon.
All of that ‘asking the oiks what they want’ palaver.
I have just travelled back home to Ireland from Glasgow and in my native east end the once bedrock Labour seat of my childhood is simply no more.
At a family gathering, I was able to speak to several generations of my clan and find out how this whole period had impacted upon their views.
From eighteen to eighty they had all voted in IndyRef.
With the exception of the oldest generation in my family, the Labour brand is now utterly toxic.
I believe that the filial piety of the Glasgow electorate to the People’s Party is now a matter for historians rather than psephologists.
Of course Gideon was incorrect in his budget speech; the French did not have any Scottish allies that bloody day in 1415.
However, if Lord Ashcroft is correct, then the feudal overlords in Westminster are about to lose most their elected native troops north of the border.
Thankfully this defeat will be suffered only at the ballot box, not on the battlefield.
At Agincourt the French Knights found that the boggy terrain did not suit their heavy steeds.
Today the grandees of the Labour Party in Glasgow find themselves suddenly wrong-footed by a pissed off peasantry and an agile media savvy enemy.
In the last TV rammy I witnessed wee Sturgeon found the target with a few Scottish arrows.
At the end of the day the people-well those who turn out and vote-will decide.
Now if a shell shocked Jim Murphy turns up at Westminster with a battered platoon as opposed to a well-armed brigade of pro-union MPs then that will be a truly historic event.
However I doubt the chaps in the Mother of Parliaments will be of a mind to celebrate…
