I admire Brian Taylor's patience and determination. He had to put up with half an hour spent with Nicol Stephen, grilling him on what the Liberal Party's for (clue: nothing). The Liberals' shamelessness was on display on more than one occasion during the interview.First, Stephen claimed that they had to oppose any referendum on independence because they oppose independence itself. Brian then said (I paraphrase) "but wait, you're pressing for a referendum on leaving the EU". Nicol's response was "ah, but we believe in Europe". The parallel is exact: they believe in the Union too. So why do they not support a referendum there? I make no case for the merits or otherwise of such a vote. Just sayin'.
Second, he claimed that they wouldn't talk to the Nats in May last because the SNP wouldn't drop their call for a referendum. When we contacted the Liberals to ask them down to New St Andrews House it was made clear to them that it was to meet us and discuss working together with the SNP on issues of agreement only, which obviously wouldn't have included a referendum. That was still rejected.
Anyway, inspired by Brian's patience (and mine) I took the BBC's wee quiz on the Liberals. I scored 7/10, having known about the cheese but not about some of the sport. When the BBC marks scores for these quizzes, they normally say things like:
0-3 Jeremy Thorpe
4-6 Ming Campbell
7-10 William Gladstone
On this occasion I was amused to notice that all the scoring options were simply as shown to the left (click to expand). How fitting.
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