Theresa May giving her speech. Image, 10 Downing Street.
Being a woman, there was some discussion about what she wore. But most missed a key detail. The suit, you see, wasn’t just any tartan. It was what’s sometimes called ‘government tartan’. Or, more usually, ‘Black Watch tartan’. Probably Scotland’s most famous regiment, the Black Watch was founded to calm the Highlands after the 1745 uprising and has been on the front line of British military adventurism for the centuries since. This was not a kitsch nod to tourist tat on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile, but evocative of the generations of interwoven history of a Union which conquered the world.
Perhaps it was a sensible choice. If I was a prime minister telling Scotland to ‘get in line or go fuck yourself’, I’d probably wear a Black Watch Tartan suit, too. Or, maybe it was a foolish choice. If I was a prime minister wishing to quell a troubled Northern Ireland, I probably wouldn’t choose the symbology of a regiment which did eleven tours during the Troubles. Or am I reading too much between those green and black lines? Perhaps she just liked the pattern, and was unaware of its meaning. But that tells a story too.
