22 Britain The EconomistMarch 14th 2020
J
ust a fewyears ago, in 2014, he came
within a whisker of realising his dream of
leading Scotland out of the United King-
dom. The former leader of the Scottish Na-
tional Party, Alex Salmond, transformed
the politics of his homeland, dragging the
snpfrom the fringes to the centre-ground,
from where it now dominates elections to
both the Westminster and the Edinburgh
parliaments. Today, Mr Salmond’s public
appearances are from the dock at Edin-
burgh’s High Court, where he is on trial in a
series of sexual-offence charges. The trial,
which began on March 9th, is expected to
last for four weeks.
Mr Salmond’s relationship with Nicola
Sturgeon, his former protégé and successor
as both snpleader and Scotland’s first min-
ister, has been badly damaged by the alle-
gations against him. But in truth the two
had been growing apart for some time,
with the strategy for how best to achieve in-
dependence lying at the heart of their dif-
ferences. And the division between them
now extends right through the party, with
members tending to cleave to one side or
the other.
As first minister from 2007 to 2014, Mr
Salmond backed a slow and steady ap-
proach to the question of Scotland’s inde-
pendence. This culminated in the Septem-
ber 2014 referendum, which he lost by
55-45%. Ms Sturgeon, who took over soon
afterwards, has been similarly cautious, re-
jecting suggestions by some colleagues
that she should mount a legal challenge to
the right of the British government to de-
cide whether to allow a referendum, or per-
haps even (like Catalonia) attempt to call
one unilaterally.
But since he stepped down, Mr Salmond
has become more radical. And he has wil-
fully ignored the convention that former
bosses should keep their views to them-
selves and allow their successors freedom
to follow their own path. Mr Salmond’s fre-
quent interjections on the question of
whether and when a second independence
referendum should be held have, at times,
undermined Ms Sturgeon. Her patience
with her former leader had worn tissue-
thin even before his arrest.
Mr Salmond remains a hugely popular
figure among many in the party. There are
those who would have him back as leader
in an instant. Hardliners in the party see
him, even now, as the true standard-bearer
for the cause of Scottish independence. Tosuch acolytes, Ms Sturgeon seems too cau-
tious, too managerial. She lacks the swag-
ger that was a part of Mr Salmond’s appeal
to ordinary Scottish voters.
Historians of Scottish politics say that,
until Mr Salmond began his second stint as
the party’s leader in 2004, the snpwas per-
petually split. On one side were the gradu-
alists, who favoured a cautiously drawn-
out campaign for independence. On the
other were fundamentalists, who wanted a
more swashbuckling approach, including
such options as a unilateral declaration of
independence.
Mr Salmond’s achievement was to bring
these two warring factions together, in-stilling a discipline that was crucially im-
portant for the snp’s victory in the 2007
Scottish parliamentary election. In effect,
he brought the fundamentalists to heel be-
hind a gradualist strategy. But now he has
become a figurehead for those who favour a
more radical approach.
It is difficult to see how what emerges
from the trial in the weeks ahead will help
Ms Sturgeon to repair the split. Her reputa-
tion may suffer from persistent claims that
she mishandled the allegations against Mr
Salmond when they first surfaced. And
whatever the outcome, she leads a party
that now looks more divided than it was
when she took it over. 7EDINBURGH
The fallout from the Salmond trial will
damage the Scottish NationalistsScottish politicsSturgeon at bay
I
n george orwell’s“Coming Up For
Air” (1939), a novel about a middle-
aged, middle-class Englishman bitter
about the destruction of good old-fash-
ioned English values, the lead character
complains about his area, where the
homes are “alike as council houses and
generally uglier. The stucco front, the
creosoted gate, the privet hedge, the
green front door. The Laurels, the Myr-
tles, the Hawthorns, Mon Abri, Mon
Repos, Belle Vue.”
House names in Britain are held in
low esteem. They are either sneered at or
ignored by current residents, who often
prefer numbers. A citation in the Oxford
English Dictionary for the word “naff”
says “it is naff to call your house The
Gables, Mon Repos, or Dunroamin’.” Yet
no such embarrassment surrounds
smart people’s houses: Buckingham
Palace is not 1 The Mall. The reason,argues Laura Wright, a linguist at Cam-
bridge University, in a new book, “Sun-
nyside: a sociolinguistic history of Brit-
ish house names”, is, as ever, class.
House names were rare until late
Victorian times because single-family
homes were exceptional. Even a century
ago, nine in ten homes were privately
rented. A post-war housing boom created
hundreds of thousands of homes. By 1939
a quarter of homes were owner-occu-
pied. With the surge in homeowners
came a rise in home-namers.
Ms Wright classifies these into five
groups: the transferred place name (Han-
over Lodge); the nostalgically rural (Or-
chard House); commemorative (Albert
Villa); names linked to nobility (Gros-
venor House); and fads (Dunroamin’). All
show a striving to talk up the owner’s
social standing. A Royal Mail survey in
2015 found 230 homes named Clarence,
133 Sandringhams and 67 Balmorals.
In London, fancy apartment build-
ings were named So-and-so Court in the
early 20th century as a signifier of luxury.
That spread to blocks of flats and coun-
cil-built towers after 1945. Names started
by denoting sophistication until they
were adopted by enough people to be-
come, well, a bit naff. (Something similar
happened with garden gnomes, which Dr
Wright says were first installed in Long
Island in 1924 to commemorate a visit by
the Prince of Wales.)
House names are less common today.
Address conventions have been standar-
dised and few people build their own
homes. Those that remain are no less
imbued with class connotations. In 2017
Savills, an estate agent, saw interest in a
new country house grow when its name
changed from a “farm” to a “manor”.Dun Namin’
House namesWhat Britons call their homes reflects class anxieties