By Fairy Nuff, Our Pantomime [aka Westminster] Correspondent

Scrooge woke with a start as a series of explosions and an intense light lit up his room. Standing by his bed was a terrifying, smiling figure.

"Are you the first Spirit that Darling foretold? Who, and what are you?" quavered Scrooge.

"Hi", the Spirit said, "Just call me Tony. I'm a straight up, trustworthy kind of guy, so just take everything I say as having been officially authorised by the hand of History. I'm the Ghost of Christmas Past and you voted for me in 1997."

It put out its strong hand as it spoke, and clasped Scrooge firmly by the ear. "Rise! and walk with me!"

It would have been in vain for Scrooge to plead that the weather and the hour were not adapted to pedestrian purposes; that bed was warm, and the thermometer a long way below freezing; that he was clad but lightly in his slippers, dressing-gown, and nightcap; and that he had a cold upon him at that time.

The grasp, gentle as Ed Ball's voice and as firm as Johann Lamont's grasp of reality, was not to be resisted.

"Ignore the fighting that you see around you", said Tony. "I like to keep these images of my greatest triumph in Iraq nearby. They have no real existence, rather like WMD as it turned out.

"My pal Dave has asked me to give you a quick tour of what will no longer be yours if you split away. Hold tight, for we have many years of history to get through. That nice David Starkey has whittled it down a bit, so we'll just see the important bits.!

Scrooge's eyes became adjusted to the rapid changes of scene - Roman Londinium : a Saxon homestead : Alfred the Great : the Battle of Hastings : Agincourt : the signing of Magna Carta : Henry VIII's six wives (including a remarkably explicit portrayal of his attempts to father a son) : Sir Walter Raleigh : Drake and the Armada : the Virgin (so they said!) Queen : the English Civil War : .....

"Stop!", shouted Scrooge, "I learned about all those things in English history at school."

"Exactly", said the Ghost, "and if you don't stick to joint ventures with Westminster, your children won't be allowed to study them because they'll be foreign history. They'd be limited to things that happened in Scotlandshire. Obviously there aren't many things that did or you would have been taught about them."

Scrooge stood silent; deep in thought. "Does that mean that we also lose the responsibility for and guilt over the British Empire's treatment of the colonies, if we go our own way?"

The Ghost almost hid his sneer. "No. There will be a fair distribution of history. We will keep all the glory. You can have all the guilt – just as we’ll keep all the assets, but you will get all the debts.

"But enough of this. Let's move on to your time of greatest happiness - when I was Prime Minister."

Tears welled up in Scrooge's eyes as the glorious voice of Sheena Wellington (along with the rather inglorious voices of the newly elected MSPs) celebrated the reconvening of the Scottish Parliament with a rendering of Burns' anthem, "A Man's a Man".

Then Scrooge cried in great excitement, "Why, it's old Dewar! Bless his heart; Donald Dewar is alive again!

"And there's the Queen! And the flunkey that carries her dish of Bombay Mix for her! Oh! What a day that was!"

"You would give all that up?" asked the Ghost sorrowfully. "Splittism means the end of devolution."

Seeing the consternation on Scrooge's face, the Ghost pressed home his advantage. "I know what you really, really want is Devo-Max", he said. "There will be no chance of that if you go it alone, but you can trust the Parliament of England to give you that, as long as you stick with us, and carry on investing in our wars and WMD."

As Scrooge sat silent, lost in thought, he was transported back to his bed, and given a carefully measured dose of LSD and mescalin to increase his susceptibility to suggestion.

"You'll sleepwalk back into union", sniggered the Ghost

---

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