WE are slowly getting back to business as usual after the orgy of British nationalist exceptionalism which has totally dominated the media for the past 12 days, although it feels like it has been far, far longer.
Among other stories that have been drowned out by the royalgasm: all is not at all well in the ranks of the Scottish Conservatives. You would only have needed to look at the gurning presence of Stephen Kerr looming over the Conservative benches like a refugee from the Munsters to know that. Today, he has been appointed shadow education spokesman, despite being the stuff of children’s nightmares.
Douglas Ross seems increasingly beleaguered, losing one MSP entirely and seeing Oliver Mundell resign from the education role. Dean Lockhart stood down as a Scottish Conservative MSP on September 5 and on the same day Mundell announced that he was resigning from the Scottish Conservative shadow cabinet, citing personal reasons.
Party aides are also leaving, including Ross's chief of staff Jon Novakovic, the party's director of communications David Bateman and head of digital Harley Lothian. They have announced that they will leave almost immediately after the UK Tory party conference in Brighton.
Novakovic is to be replaced by Craig Paterson, a senior policy adviser to former Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy – a wee reunion for the Better Together gang and further evidence of the revolving door between Labour and the Conservatives in Scotland.
It speaks of the increasing desperation within the Scottish Unionist camp. After all, it's not as though Jim Murphy's term as the Labour branch manager in Scotland was a resounding success. Thanks in part to the advice of Craig Paterson, Murphy lost his seat and Labour in Scotland were almost annihilated. Here's hoping that Paterson can repeat the trick with Douglas Ross and the Scottish Tories.
Speaking of his new adviser, Ross said: "Craig arrives with extensive knowledge of Scottish politics, having once been a key part of Scottish Labour's operations."
And this would be true. He advised Jim Murphy on taking Labour from 41 Westminster seats in Scotland to just one. Murphy's adviser and the Scottish Conservatives are fundamentally suited to each other.
But if you are one of those Labour voters in Scotland who still holds out hope that the Labour Party can save Scotland from the Tories, Paterson's appointment ought to give you pause for thought. If a former senior Labour adviser can be happy as a senior adviser to the leader of the Scottish Conservatives then there is not so much as a fag paper separating the two parties.
Ross did his utmost to keep his head down during the Conservative leadership – however, it seems a safe bet that he was not happy that Truss won, despite his apparent conversion to the Truss cause the moment that the result was announced.
Ross will now be in the uncomfortable position of trying to sell Truss's nakedly English nationalist supremacist policies to a deeply sceptical Scottish public. So-called “muscular unionism” might play well to the Tory gallery, but that is not going to win the Scottish Conservatives any new votes, and even puts at risk the seats the party currently has. The Tories are once again unquestionably the Nasty Party.
It is a disgrace that at no point during the Conservative leadership contest did the BBC pin down Douglas Ross or Scotland Secretary Alister Jack for an interview about what a victory for either candidate would mean for Scotland. BBC Scotland's chief news correspondent James Cook was far too busy attention-seeking and goading demonstrators outside the sole Scottish Conservative leadership hustings, in Perth.
However, we do know what we are in for. We can expect more enrichment of the wealthy while the poor suffer. We can expect more authoritarianism, more hatred of migrants, more fights picked with Europe and more undermining of the devolution settlement and the powers of the Scottish Parliament. We can expect more attacks on Scottish democracy, more gerrymandering, more strident British nationalism and more self-serving Conservative double standards, none of which the people of Scotland will have voted for.
No wonder then that BBC Scotland didn't want to draw attention to it.
This piece is an extract from today’s REAL Scottish Politics newsletter, which is emailed out at 7pm every weekday with a round-up of the day's top stories and exclusive analysis from the Wee Ginger Dug.
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