Remember back in 2014 when the BBC gave Rory Stewart - then a Tory MP actively campaigning against independence - 2 hour-long programmes to advance the idea that the Anglo-Scottish border was artificial and that beneath Scotland and England lay a forgotten "Middleland"? His own publicity described the border as "fabricated", while Stewart, during the 2014 plebiscite, presented “Middleland” as a lost nation with its own kings, languages & traditions. His BBC series went out 5 months before the vote. Stewart is still banging that same drum. Here's the problem with starting from a conclusion and then making the history fit it: Stewart begins with an invented "Middle land" and works backwards, selecting genuine historical facts that can be arranged to look like evidence for it. Strathclyde existed. Cumbria existed. David ruled the Cumbrians. David later held Carlisle. Put those surface facts beside one another, compress the chronology, blur changing jurisdictions and insert a couple of "hences", and suddenly they appear to describe a continuous "vanished kingdom". In contrast Neil McGuigan does what historical method requires: he takes the evidence on its own terms, separates periods Stewart telescoped together, distinguishes titles from territories, & asks what jurisdiction David actually exercised at each stage of his life. David's earlier position as ruler of the Cumbrians/Strathclyde and his much later control of Carlisle were seperate political arrangements. As McGuigan points out, Carlisle came decades later and in a different political context, when David was pursuing the Northumbrian earldom for his son Henry. Remove Stewart’s chronological compression and the neat Dumbarton-to-Carlisle continuity disappears. What makes this particularly telling is that McGuigan’s own specialist field is almost exactly the ground Stewart is trying to turn into "Middleland". His PhD was Neither Scotland nor England: Middle Britain, c.850–1150. Its subjects include Northumbria, the Kingdom of Strathclyde, Cumbria, Bamburgh, the Anglo-Scottish border, David I and the formation of political structures across northern Britain. That illustrates the methodological difference rather neatly. McGuigan uses "Middle Britain" as an analytical description for a complicated region and respects the distinct kingdoms, political communities, lordships, boundaries and chronologies revealed by the evidence. His thesis explicitly investigates those political structures and how they changed over time. Stewart does something different. He takes a politically motivated modern umbrella concept, turns it into invented history - a supposedly lost "nation" or "kingdom" - and then selects pieces of the histories of Strathclyde, Cumbria, Northumbria and elsewhere to give apparent substance. Dumbarton, the capital of Strathclyde, consequently becomes for him the "ancient capital" of Middleland. The individual facts are precisely what make this persuasive to a non-specialist. Many of them are perfectly real. The distortion occurs in the joins: what's left out, which centuries are collapsed together, which changes in political control disappear, and Stewart's repeated "hence" encourages the audience to infer without actually demonstrating it. That's the danger of reasoning backwards from a desired conclusion. If you've already concocted a conclusion almost any cross-border connection can become another piece of corroboration. Open historical enquiry works in the opposite direction. Establish the evidence and chronology first. Preserve distinctions that complicate your argument. Keep separate things separate when the sources require it. Acknowledge discontinuities and uncertainty. Then ask what larger interpretation the evidence will actually sustain. You don't begin by deciding that an invented "Middleland" existed and then range across several centuries collecting facts which, stripped of enough context, can be arranged to make it appear that it did.

Thread. Present Anglo-Scottish border can be argued to date in practice to 1157 when Henry II confiscated the earldom of Northumbria from young Scottish king, Máel Coluim IV. The latter's father Henry & grandfather David I had acquired it during the 'Anarchy' of Stephen's reign.

You can read some of the new research done in recent years (by myself) about the topic here: pure.st-andrews.ac.uk/ws/por… Also have a piece forthcoming about how Scottish claims to the 'legacy of Waltheof', i.e. Northampton/Northumbria, can be seen in writings of the 12th/13th cent.

🎼Bye Bye Labour, Labour, Good Bye 🎶 Bye bye Labour We won’t cry … 🎵 You can guess the tune

A word to the younger ones among us. They’re not just cutting our pension, they’re cutting yours too. You’ll still pay the same amount in but you’ll get less back when you retire. It’s not to fund social care. It’s to pay for foreign wars, tax cuts and breaks for political donors

Don’t you just love those sanctimonious, well-heeled types who believe everyone can ‘make prudent financial plans for retirement’? Do they understand that many people can’t keep up with their bills, let alone save?

Pension age has change 3 times in my life, I will soon be there if not changed again. Energy is scary as winter comes. I am paying £115 per month live alone one bedroom . Its getting OTT with this and petrol. Disabled and need heat and many more worse off than me. UK GOV brutal

QUOTE OF THE DAY "Some folk in England seem to have this idea that we want independence, specifically, to hurt them. That it's a cruelty on our part. It's just another extension of "Scottish independence is all about Anglophobia" - everything always has to be about England never about us!" Wilderness of Peace

Not sure pensioners are going to buy the line that scrapping the triple lock is going to help them.

A brief summary of Andy Burnham's approach to Scotland following his speech. Shut up whilst I'm fixing England.

Hydrogen Powered Bikes Debut in Shanghai Two Wheeler Market fuelcellsworks.com/2026/09/2…

All that unionist tsunami of propaganda to hammer home a contrived gotcha "You said once in a generation" Yet, Lisa, right on cue..... 'promises not delivered' - like voting No to keep our EU citizenship, Lisa? @iScotNews Feel free to circulate this bolt of truth.

😛 Always read the small print, Kenny. It would appear that Labour are proposing something the SNP have been doing in Scotland for years. Not that you would know that from how Burnham badged it up in his speech. A tad deceptive.

John Swinney In Scotland, we provide free personal care for older people without punishing pensioners. Andy Burnham removing triple lock would simply repeat mistakes of Keir Starmer. Blame for the UK’s financial mess lies with successive Westminster governments, not pensioners.

TUV to AI chat instructions 😶😶 TUV-Can you make the crowd at Jamie Bryson’s protest look bigger? AI -Sure thing. TUV- Any chance you can make it look like there was actually a crowd? AI- Now you’re asking for miracles. 🤣🤣

it’s a sectarian event, the TUV had AI edited the post and claimed they have a big turnout, and this is making satire about it by even further expanding the crowd

1980: Margaret Thatcher broke the link between pensions and wages. Pensioner poverty hit 3.9m by 1989 2026: Andy Burnham vows to break it again, calling it social care. Full state pension is £12,548 a year. Britain’s richest 350 hold £783.5 billion Labour went after the £12,548

Comparison of state pension in G7 shows that the UK state pension is the least generous. Countries have wide variance in how retirement incomes are funded and how returns are calculated. Purists might want more nuanced data but this is what we have. independent.co.uk/news/uk/ho…

Andy Burnham isn't promising a National Care Service for England. He's promising to emulate Scotland's *Social Care* Service. Moreover, he isn't going to begin work right away. England's new Social Care Service, as things stand, is a pipedream that might never happen.

Scottish Labour MPs cheering a PM who says he's going to weaken Scottish pensions to help fund social care in England is just bizarre. This will hang around Scottish Labour necks until the next general election. Meanwhile Scottish energy bills are going to skyrocket. They'll be far higher than the UK average given our colder climate.