An almighty looming collision between May and Sturgeon

Here are two obdurate women, neither of whom are given to retreating, in eyeball-to-eyeball conflict over one of the great issues of the day, which will affect these islands for generations to come.

Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s First Minister, says Prime Minister Theresa May should not dare challenge the expected decision of the Scottish Parliament over an earlier, rather than a later, referendum on independence.

May says a referendum cannot be countenanced until after Brexit. In short, never the twain shall meet. The word “compromise” does not appear in either of the combatants’ vocabularies. So we could be looking forward with trepidation to an almighty collision, with the Scottish Parliament, in political terms anyway, at war with Westminster.

And that would be a constitutional nightmare.

Btu that is the direction it appears to be heading. Tin hats at the ready!

• The key question now hovering, like the Sword of Damocles, over British politics is this: Will the Prime Minister let hangdog Chancellor Philip Hammond loose on another Budget in the autumn, following the disaster of his first one?

It should be easy, you might have thought, for her to sack Hammond, but it is not so simple as that. His dismissal now, so soon after he was appointed, would reflect badly on Theresa May’s own judgement.

So she is stuck with him. Here is a man who not only did not read the small print, but did not even bother to read the large print either, with the Tory General Election manifesto shouting at him: We will not raise taxes or national insurance.

Why didn’t May spot it? Why didn’t his Cabinet colleagues point it out when he gave them details of the Budget the night before? Perhaps he did not show them that bit. And what on earth were the civil servants doing?

It all adds up to the biggest Treasury howler and humiliation in living memory. Yet, so far as I am aware, not a single head has rolled.

• May 4 is being quoted as the possible date for the general election. I am not sure how true that is, but certainly the Government should not assume that whenever the election does come, it is simply a walk in the park for the Conservatives.

Sir Tony Robinson, famous for his role in the Blackadder comedy series on TV, historian and Labour Party activist, says Jeremy Corbyn may not be the best Labour Party leader available, but should not, however, be written off as a future Prime Minister.

Who would have thought a year or so ago that Donald Trump would now be President of the USA? How many people expected Brexit to win the EU referendum? And who thought Corbyn would not only win the Labour leadership but would successfully face off challenges to his leadership?

In short, the diktat of the Establishment is now being defied or ignored in several different ways. So it would be foolhardy in the extreme to assume what has been described as the worst Opposition anyone can recall at Westminster could not emerge as victors.

Stranger things have happened

• “I don’t see why we can’t just get out. What’s the problem?” - That allegedly is what the Queen said about the EU at a private lunch.

She does not realise that the great juggernaut of the EU will complicate even the simplest issue.

I remember when the Euro grandees were encouraging farmers to over-produce, they cheerfully generated food mountains and wine lakes and scandalously destroyed the excess.

When I asked why this unwanted food was not sent to stricken areas of African where people were starving to death, the official replied deadpan: “It doesn’t work like that.”

I am sure it didn’t, but it should have done.

• Britain ‘s latest trainee journalist, ex-Chancellor George Osborne is to become editor of the London Evening Standard, an announcement which triggered a huge political uproar. But what intrigues me is how he can satisfy six different masters at once, this is multi-tasking on a scale that puts Cherie Blair’s puny efforts to shame.

I would not have thought there were enough hours in the day to take on even one extra job while editing an evening newspaper. But Osborne’s self-confidence is quite stunning. Perhaps he is Superman in disguise after all.