They were too extravagant to be buttonholes. The SNP’s MPs wore elaborate corsages. The unextinguishable impression is that they were going the extra mile in dressing up as particularly obsequious flunkies chuffed to be appearing before Her Maj, herself bedecked with the Koh-i-Noor and other jewels gained by the rape of conquered peoples, and enrobed in the furs of butchered rare animals.
Even if the white rose really were a symbol of Scotland – and a single allusion by Macdiarmid does not make it so – I would not want it used to make us look like the class creeps on a Royal visit. Much has been made of the battle for Dennis Skinner’s seat. But at least that awkward old man has repeatedly had the guts to make plain he does not approve of all the ludicrous flummery of faded but still vicious power – still vicious as the snooper’s charter and attacks on coastal Libya will shortly make clear. The SNP looked like a very determined set of entries for the toady of the year competition.
We should leave this loyalist monarchical crap to the unionists. An independent Scotland should not be a place where you dress like a florist’s advert before some fur-draped billionaire pensioner.