The award for best and most cynical piece of political phrase-making this summer goes to Alex Massie. On hearing the amusing news that Joanna Cherry MP QC has been effectively blocked by the SNP leadership from running for the Edinburgh Central Holyrood seat at next year’s elections, my colleague and friend Massie described it perfectly online as “Cherrymandering”.
Joanna Cherry will be furious. Or, rather, Joanna Cherry will be even more furious than usual. During the extended Brexit fandango, the able lawyer Cherry was periodically so furious about the Westminster government’s legal shenanigans, and so comically scunnered in her demeanour, that she made the party’s doom-laden Westminster leader Ian “Mr Speaker, Scotland has been shafted” Blackford look like a cheery Eric Morecambe singing “Bring me Sunshine!”.
