At the beginning of March 2011, Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, expressed his surprise to the British Treasury Select Committee (in the ‘Thatcher Room’ of all places), that there had not been more public anger in response to the financial crisis. In this respect, the muted response in Scotland to the crisis is little different to that in the other nations of Britain. But what is at least as surprising is that there has not been more public anger in Scotland at the absence of a Tory mandate to govern Scotland. We are, after all, talking about a government that was rejected by almost 85 per cent of Scottish voters and that won barely 2 per cent of seats in Scotland at the last British general election.