You're listening to the London Review of Books podcast. I'm Thomas Jones. Today I'm joined by Rory

Scotson, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Sterling, who has a piece in the

current issue of the LRB that takes a historical look at the realignments in Scottish politics

over the last century or so. It's a review of politics and the people, Scotland 1945 to 79,

by Malcolm Petrie, which he describes as a tale of unintended consequences that challenges received

wisdom. Hello, Roryan. Thank you

very much for joining me. Hello, thanks very much for having me on. In 1968, Tonnen criticized what he

called the common myth of Scottish leftness, questioning the idea that Scotland was inherently a politically

radical country. But if it is a myth, it's a very resilient one.

Is there some truth behind it?

I would say there's a very obvious electoral truth behind it,

which is what tends to substantiate it in popular discourse.

I mean, if you challenge anyone on it,

they can just point to a map of Britain's political geography. And it will show

parties broadly on the centre-left doing significantly better in Scotland than in England. Generally

speaking, if you top them up as national units, Scotland votes to the left of England. And that's

been the case since

1959. Where it becomes complicated is if you break it down by comparable regions. So if you compare

Scotland with, for instance, parts of the north of England, there's not a huge difference

in electoral performance, although you still do see some interesting

differences if you break it down by class. So in Scotland, typically middle class people have

been more likely to vote for central left parties than even parts of the north of England,

...