“It is never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine,” wrote P G Wodehouse. Those words, as many English literature scholars working on doctoral theses will excitedly confirm, raise the tantalising question: did the great “Plum”, perhaps in later life, at some point encounter the then youthful SNP leader Ian Blackford?
The now resigned Blackford is not a politician: he is a cultural icon. In the same way that classical gods such as Mars represented war and Apollo music, Blackford is the personification of grievance. A self-described “simple crofter with 10 acres”, he was inspired to shoulder a sack of oatmeal for winter sustenance, leave his humble kailyard at Deutsche Bank and trek to Westminster to advertise Scotland’s grievance more widely.
