Swift journeys to visit Edinburgh to review the current political turmoil in Holyrood

News reaches Swift here in London, which it is my unhappy duty to relate to my readers.

Mr Humza Punch and his esteemed spouse(s) Mrs Patrick-Lorna Judy had recently announced a conscious uncoupling – as we say these days – after many years of a tormented, sorry correction, devoted, marriage. Shortly afterwards Mr Punch was eaten by a crocodile.

Mr Punch – erstwhile Mayor of North Toytown, should my Southern readers have forgotten - and Mrs Judy – who does something remarkably indeterminate but no doubt just as important  - had both in their several and joint ways worked on plans to reduce the once proud Scotch education system to a laughing stock; reduced – indeed virtually eliminated - freedom of speech; employed the forces of law and order to persecute those misguided folk who affect to believe that men and women are different; discouraged the tedious business of industry and creating wealth; all the while concentrating on the far more important business of separating North Britain from the rest of the nation, thus making it (certainly) poorer and (possibly) prouder.

At the same time, they had encouraged the independent spirit of the people of the Western Isles by practically removing their opportunity to visit the Caledonian mainland by ferry, thereby cementing that sturdy self-reliance which is the product of separation from civilization. And indeed from healthcare, visiting relatives, and other matters surely of little consequence to the sturdy Hebridean folk.

This strategy had been accompanied by a fruitful exercise of Mr Punch and Mrs Judy repeatedly hitting one another over the head with a truncheon, thus building a partnership of trust and amity that has scarce been seen since the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of 1939. With, it appears, the same result.

Swift’s Scotch friend, a most distinguished gentleman called Mr Adam Smith, writes to observe that: ‘people of the same trade seldom met together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public’.

It would appear that Mr Smith’s views on trade might have some applicability to the world of Scotch politics, but that, O reader, you shall decide.