Only English/British vanity has prevented us from long ago acknowledging that for each of us it matters far more who is elected president of the United States than who emerges as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Anyone who failed to appreciate this fact in past years must surely be well aware of it now. Mr. Blair may be telling the truth when he claims to share the opinions of Mr. Bush regarding Iraq, but that is all  by the way. It doesn't matter whether he does or doesn't, his freedom of action is totally limited because the economic interests of his country require him above all to stand well with the American President. Poor Blair cannot convincingly defend his involvement in Iraq because that involvement was simply inescapable, and had nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction., real or imaginary, or any of the other cover stories offered us. Blair is like the child in the crowded bed--when Father says "Turn" we all turn.

Scots have, even in this sad situation,an opportunity to make serious progress in their own constitutional struggle. They have the chance to realise that future immunity from such involvement can be guaranteed only by attaining  independence. However, being Scots, bamboozled and befuddled by their inherited tribal loyalties to Labour party bosses, they ignore their opportunity, and instead take up, with zealous irrelevance, all the anti-American rhetoric of the Cold War years.

Certainly it is difficult to argue affection for America while Mr. Bush sits in the White House. You may agree, but don't be too noisy about it. Long years ago a British ambassador was tricked into expressing a warm preference for the Democratic candidate over his Republican opponent. His indiscretion was briskly circulated and his apparent interference led a million or more Americans to vote against his favourites. So if you'd like to see Mr. Bush replaced in November keep quiet about it, and don't give his  managers the chance to pass themselves, and him, off as victims of foreign meddlers.

At the same time, however, remember that Bush is not America. Governor Stevenson twice failed to win the Presidency, but the word was that he could have been elected President of the World. His own typical comment was, "I always run in the wrong country". Remember too the response of people  in all continents to the Kennedy Presidency. There is another America to which we can look in hope for behaviour that the rest of the world will find more acceptable; and those who speak for that other America are every bit as distressed as we are  by the actions of an administration that was not even elected.

America ran in my mind, perhaps prompted by the D-Day remembrances The sadness which went with the event was not entirely due to the death and horror and sacrifice and cruel unfairness of the war; sadness arises also from the fact that those of us who remember have no hope of explaining our feelings to those who do not.Displays of memory will remain no doubt, but appreciation of how things really were has long disappeared into the generation gap. The formative years of most people now alive were dominated by other events, other issues and other causes, and they have grown up a different kind of people.

So all of us, young and old alike, even if we can't understand we can at least tolerate. With the Euro election behind us and a rare quiet spell ahead we have a chance to take stock with a calm assessment of Holyrood and our place and performance in it, and to consider how best the interests of Scotland can be served in the wider world.