Are the SNP MPs beginning to feel too cosy in London?

Scottish schoolkids returning to their classrooms will already be knuckling down to the traditional first task of term the ‘what I did on my holidays’ essay.

MPs don’t start a new term for a couple of weeks yet but in honour of the more impressive work ethic of children over politicians this column is also looking back at the recess weeks.

Instead of a lengthy and lumpen report on two weeks’ camping in France I’m focusing on a couple of intriguing straws detected in the political wind over the last couple of months in London and in Edinburgh.

A number of SNP MPs chose to spend some of their summer not in their new constituencies but in the belly of the beast they’d been elected to bring down.

There was a theory that a large nationalist presence in Westminster would be good for the union, that SNP MPs would get a taste for London life and grow cool on the idea of severing ties via independence.

At best that’s counter-intuitive, at worst crazy. But there is already a sliver of evidence to support it.

Glasgow South MP Stewart McDonald speccy Stewart as he’s been dubbed by those driven to desperation trying to differentiate him from Cumbernauld colleague Stuart McDonald published a column on why the SNP needs to come to an accommodation with London.

He wrote: “We’ve always had this thing in Scotland that London is this great, big evil thing,” a claim somewhat undermined by the millions of Scots who captured the capital over the last 300 years, SNP MPs being surely the last group to take the road south.

Another Scottish MP who chose to wait in Westminster before going home joined a growing chorus of nationalists commenting on the Conservatives, particularly how friendly and constructive some of them have been since the election.

Nationalists who have spent a political lifetime demonising Tories have come up against the reality that Conservative backbenchers may have some outlandish ideas but that doesn’t necessarily make them bad people.

Sir Edward Leigh in particular has become something of a hero to some since it was he who tabled amendments to the Scotland Bill that would implement full fiscal autonomy giving Holyrood full power for raising money as well as spending it.

Different motives, but Sir Edward and the SNP want the same thing.

And there’s a rich irony in hearing an SNP MP denounce Labour as ‘red Tories’ while singing the praises of Leigh, who is literally a red Tory his face having taken on a crimson colour, courtesy of a life well lived.

Perhaps most pertinent was the MP who, upon hearing my plans to spend some time in Edinburgh, warned against talking to MSPs suggesting they were second-class.

This was how the Scottish Labour civil war began, with MPs and MSPs sharing a similarly low opinion of each other.For now, all SNP politicians share the same goal and the same opinion that independence is within reach.

That will prevent significant splits.

But if the dream were to become more distant that could change.

And it was in Edinburgh that that second straw caught my attention and it could be described as no more than a straw.

But while last year’s Edinburgh Festivals were marked by jokes about what was then the imminent independence referendum, this year’s event, in my experience, was not.

One passing reference to the most significant political event in recent Scottish history was all I heard.

It felt as if society had moved on from the engagement and excitement of last year while Holyrood politicians and press alike still obsesses about the next referendum.

It’s ultimately the public that set the political pace.

And if the voters are moving on, the SNP MPs might start settling down in London.