Clear Tartan Water

Colin Kidd writes about the election in Scotland

An embattled oil executive with personal experience of the formidable ‘Scottish lobby’ once observed that you could tell when a planeload of Scots had landed at Heathrow because the whining noise continued after the engines had stopped. For the past thirty years, since Winnie Ewing’s triumph for the Scottish National Party in the 1967 Hamilton by-election, the rest of Britain has become ever more accustomed to hearing Scots drone on about their distinctive identity and needs. At last we Scots have had an opportunity to redress our grievances. On 6 May 1999 we cast our votes for the first Scottish Parliament since the Union of 1707. And almost 42 per cent of the electorate stayed at home. It did rain, I suppose.