Bagehot Manhandling Britannia

摘要

In the chilly wee hours of referendum night, George Square in Glasgow presented a dissolute scene. Slumped against its Victorian monuments were gaggles of puffy-faced separatists, looking crushed and exhausted, after a night of Bacchanalia and disappointment. Yet one displayed, on a placard attached to his bicycle, a new slogan: "Glasgow said aye". In that lonely protest, your columnist saw encapsulated one of the two big lessons of the independence referendum, both of which, it appeared, in a wretchedly cynical constitutional debate on October 14th, British political leaders have ignored.