Jon Bright (London, OK): Benazir Bhutto was a divisive figure, and I don't wish to get into her politics, of which I know quite little. But her death does prove yet again that politicians are rarely masters of their own destiny. From the moment she returned to Pakistan newspapers will have been keeping her obituary up to date, for an event which she of course wanted to defy but, sadly, felt somewhat inevitable.
There is also a certain feeling of inevitability about an aspect of Cameron's seemingly all-but-assured premiership - he will not be popular in Scotland. John Harris sums this up nicely in the Guardian today, below this neat Matt Kenyon cartoon:
Cameron, as he points out,
not only gives off the whiff of very English privilege, but also personifies a malign political combination - leading a party once again fond of paying tribute to the blessed Margaret, with pronounced personal echoes of the hated Blair
It seems very unlikely that Cameron will be able to improve his party's standing much north of the border, and his legitimacy there will therefore be flimsy - especially if Alex Salmond has retained his grip. Upon an election victory this could mean, in Harris' words, that "separation could prove to be only one watershed move away" - of which the obvious example would be another hated military adventure. The irony is of course that Cameron and his party are pro-Union through and through - he recently traveled North to pledge as much. But it will be his victory, if it comes, that puts the Union most at risk. It is beginning to seem more and more likely that Britain's obituary should be kept handy as well.
