Brit Nat Tomkins isn't quite the king of the castle

Not for the first time, Professor Adam Tomkins took part in a discussion on Newsnight Scotland last night without having his hard-line anti-independence views sufficiently flagged up by the presenter. (He was described as an "adviser" to Better Together, but really it should have been "anti-independence lawyer", or more realistically "member of the No campaign".) In a characteristically ill-mannered and pompous display, Tomkins evidently thought he was comprehensively wiping the floor with uppity Yes-supporting non-lawyer Andy Myles, and at least one journalist on Twitter appeared to agree with that verdict. But I suspect he significantly over-reached himself at one point.

"And what those negotiations will be about is the distribution, the equitable apportionment as we lawyers call it {pause for self-satisfied micro-smirk}, of the United Kingdom's assets and liabilities. But not the United Kingdom's institutions. The UK would have no greater share of Edinburgh Castle than an independent Scotland would have of the Westminster Parliament or of the Bank of England."

Now wait just a cotton-pickin' minute here. As far as I can see, the sole basis on which an independent Scotland would have a greater claim than the rest of the UK to the state-owned Edinburgh Castle is the building's geographical location. That certainly seems to be the 'common sense' logic that Tomkins was appealing to. Therefore, the only conclusion it is possible to draw is that he was implying that the state-owned Bank of England would exclusively become an institution of the continuing United Kingdom due to the simple fact that it is located in England rather than Scotland. But there is nothing inevitable about a key institution of the state being physically located outside any specific geographical part of that state - and if there is something inevitable about it in the imperially-organised United Kingdom, that's something Tomkins and his ilk ought to be reflecting on at considerable length.

So let's imagine for a moment that we live in a parallel universe where the UK's central bank is located in Scotland rather than London. If the Edinburgh Castle analogy holds true, that means Scotland would inherit both the bank and the currency after independence, and the rest of the UK would (absurdly) be completely frozen out in spite of its supposedly all-important status as the successor state.

And there really is no point in whinging about this surprise development - Adam Tomkins has spoken. THAT'S THE LAW, don't-cha-know.

With that, he devoured the entire logic of his own argument without even noticing.