12 October 2007

What has Whitehall ever done for us?

Handbags at dawn. The Scotsman highlights the continuing spat between St Andrew's House and Whitehall:
As a direct result of the row, The Scotsman has discovered senior Labour politicians have taken the extraordinary step of warning all Whitehall departments not to share any information with the Scottish Government which could be used by the SNP for political purposes.
At a stroke, the carefully constructed edifice linking the governments in Scotland and Westminster for the past eight years has come crashing down, and the tremors will be felt right across Scottish life.

I'm not wholly convinced. Does The Scotsman really think that London shared politically sensitive material with Edinburgh, except when it was forced to? Is a declared enmity significantly worse than the benign neglect or consummate indifference which has characterised Whitehall's attitude to Scottish issues since well before devolution? To put it another way, when has Whitehall ever done us any favours, other than those which conveniently suited its own purposes?

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