Tory MSP Brian Monteith puts the boot in to Malcolm Rifkind in the Sunday Times today:
In normal circumstances, and even after devolution, there should be no bar on a Scot becoming the UK’s prime minister. These, however, are not normal circumstances. I sense there is a growing English preoccupation about the influence of Scots in English public life, and it would be an advantage to offer an English man or woman against the Celtic Gordon Brown and Charles Kennedy. To opt for a Scot, albeit from a metropolitan English seat, would be to throw away that probable advantage.
Monteith’s preferred choice is particularly interesting, as are the reasons for it.
Step forward the shadow home secretary and current leadership front runner David Davis and we find a man who has in the past suggested fiscal autonomy as a way to make the Scottish parliament more prudent and responsible as well as removing or reducing the subsidy to Scotland that many English MPs believe their constituents pay for.
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