Watching the Westminster commentariat over the weekend reminded me of a lesson I learned from my pet hamsters when I was nine. There is something particularly sickening about seeing a mammal eat its own pups.
As it became clear that a majority of MSPs elected in Scotland would be from parties who had committed to an independence referendum, the cheerleaders of the Westminster system started to invent new tests for whether there is a mandate for such a vote.
‘The mother of parliaments’ claims to have parented parliamentary democracies around the world. And in a parliamentary democracy, a mandate for doing something is derived from securing a parliamentary majority for those promising to do it.
