August is festival time in Edinburgh, but naturally politics still intrudes, although usually politely. Last month, the director of the Edinburgh International Festival, Fergus Linehan, admitted that Brexit had given cultural organisers “a fright”. Then Nick Barley, his counterpart at the book festival, called on the political classes to map out a future for Scotland beyond “managerial government”. A noble aspiration, certainly, but the question on everybody’s lips remains the possibility of a second independence referendum.
Speaking at the University of Edinburgh Business School, the former Liberal leader David Steel predicted that it wouldn’t take place any time soon, not least because Nicola Sturgeon was being typically “cautious”. “She says it’s ‘highly likely’,” he said after reflecting on his half-century in politics. “Highly likely when? And highly likely how?” Steel was articulating how those two words have become a hostage to fortune for the First Minister. He was also asked to comment on the support of the shadow Scottish secretary, David Anderson, for a coalition between Labour and the SNP following the next general election. Steel was unconvinced, recalling attempts at co-operation between Scottish Liberals and nationalists in the 1960s, tentative negotiations that came to nothing. Anyway, such talk infuriates the Scottish Labour leadership, which realises, unlike its southern colleagues, that the SNP would only be interested in supporting Labour, to quote Lenin, “in the same way as the rope supports a hanged man”.
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