Yesterday, we brought you Charles Dundas’ Toast to the Lassies from the Edinburgh South Burns Supper.

The reply below comes from Scottish Party Convener Jenni Lang.

She mentions the “Naughty Table” which is a bit of a tradition started by me and a few friends about 15 years ago. We even brought our own sign to show where the most fun was to be had. Jim Wallace was doing the Immortal Memory that year and he started off saying “Ladies, gentleman, and, pretending to look at us disapprovingly, “the Table there.”

Jenni makes a lovely tribute to Jim, the man on all our minds last night. He was exactly the sort of person the world needs in abundance right now.

Enjoy:

Good Evening, and firstly, thank you so much to Charles for his kind words, and thank you to the SELD organisers and Faith for inviting me to make the reply on behalf of the lassies tonight, unexpectedly for the second year in a row! Here’s me thinking I was off the hook and allowed on the naughty table…but no!

It’s been quite the year since I last joined you, and frankly, the world feels significantly more fragile.

You look around at the carnage, at the chaos. And then you look at the global picture and wonder…..what’s missing?

The Women. The women are missing.

Remember the ‘Before Times’? The era of Angela Merkel, the world’s governess, who could stare down a dictator with nothing but a sensible blazer and a look of profound disappointment. She treated the G7 like a difficult parents’ evening.

Or Sanna Marin, a woman who could successfully navigate a Finnish winter, join NATO, and still find time to go to a party without the world ending. She proved that you can run a country with one hand and hold a glow-stick in the other, which is still infinitely more dignified than anything most male leaders do with an X account.

Or Jacinda Ardern, who managed to run a country, raise a child, and show basic human empathy all at the same time.

Since the women have stepped down, it’s like the adult supervision has left the building. We’ve traded ‘steady hands’ for ‘shaky egos,’ and ‘global stability’ for ‘whatever happens when a billionaire gets bored at 3:00 AM.’

Now, for those of you who were here last year, you may remember my fond reflections on the different species of Liberal Men I’ve encountered in the party over the last 25 years. The Liberal Gentlemen, like the wonderful Charles; the Policy Geeks; and the Super-Campaigners who can’t look at a letterbox without feeling an uncontrollable urge to shove a leaflet through it.

But let’s be honest….those are the ‘domesticated’ varieties.

It feels only right that we widen our scope this year to the Alpha Males currently roaming the global stage.

Over the years, I’ve realised that these male world leaders fall into a few distinct archetypes. Much like whisky regions, each has its own distinct aroma, its own fiery finish, and, in most cases, a very high probability of giving you a massive headache the next morning.

So I decided to highlight a few of note……let me know if any sound familiar…..
First, we have the Narcissist Billionaire…..the only man on earth who can look in a mirror and see a victim of radical leftist conspiracy looking back.

He is a man who has never met a ‘Fact’ that couldn’t be improved with a gold-leaf border and a bit of imagination.

This leader operates on the principle that success is measured entirely by the size of your skyscraper, the height of your hair, and the sheer, aggressive boldness of your font.

He runs a country the way he runs a golf course: loudly, expensively, and with the firm belief that ‘par’ is whatever he says it is. To him, ‘cheating’ is just another word for ‘winning,’ and ‘the Truth’ is something that happened to other, less successful people.

He believes diplomacy is best conducted via capital letters on social media, preferably at 3:00 AM, in a fever dream of AI-generated images showing him as a Roman Emperor or a muscle-bound Rambo.

In his world, Facts are optional extras, like the sunroof on a car. Advisors are purely decorative…like the salad that comes with a steak. And if something goes wrong, it is never his fault. It is the fault of the media, the judges, the deep state, or….as we know all too well in Scotland……. windfarms that are ‘killing all the birds’ making us poor, and ruining the view from his 9th hole.

At the other end of the spectrum, we have the European Technocrat.

This leader does not ‘rule’…..he administers. He doesn’t have a ‘base’; he has a ‘stakeholder group.’ And he doesn’t give speeches so much as he issues software updates for society.

He believes deeply in three things:

Committees.

Sub-committees to monitor those committees.

And a Bold Vision for 2047, pending consultation.

He will never shout, he will never boast, and he wouldn’t dream of threatening you. Instead, he will ‘express grave concern,’ commission a three-year feasibility study, and ‘harmonise a framework’ until everyone in the room falls asleep.

He has the unique ability to make a declaration of peace sound like instructions for assembling IKEA flatpack furniture. He doesn’t ‘seize power’; he ‘coordinates a multi-level, transitional regulatory alignment.’

If the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse appeared on his watch, he wouldn’t panic. He would simply inform them that their horses didn’t meet current Euro-6 emissions standards and ask them to resubmit their paperwork in triplicate.

Then we have the Strongman. A man who believes that the primary qualification for high office isn’t a manifesto, but a portfolio of shirtless photos taken while riding a horse, or perhaps judo-chopping a teenager.

He is the master of the ‘Aggressive Table.’ You know the one, a piece of furniture so long that his own Foreign Secretary needs a telescope and semaphore flags just to ask for a pay rise.

He views democracy as a tedious Western ‘app’ that keeps crashing, so he’s replaced it with a simpler system: The Permanent Invitation.

You are invited to vote for him.

You are invited to agree with him.

And if you’re not careful, you’re invited to stand near a very high, very slippery window.

He doesn’t do ‘press conferences’; he does ‘national monologues’ that last longer than a Wagner opera and contain significantly more threats of nuclear winter. He believes history will judge him kindly….mostly because anyone who might write a different version is currently ‘holidaying’ in a penal colony in the Arctic Circle.
He’s the only man alive who can look at the 21st century and think, ‘You know what this needs? More 19th-century border disputes and a much higher budget for face fillers.’

And then finally, there is the Reluctant Hero. The man who proves that sometimes, the best person to lead a country isn’t a career politician or a billionaire, but someone who actually knows how to tell a joke, and, more importantly, how to take one.

He is the only world leader who can make a grubby olive-green fleece look more authoritative than a three-piece Savile Row suit.

While the Narcissists are bringing chaos, and the Strongmen are behind their thirty-foot tables, he’s the one standing on a dark street corner with a smartphone, reminding the world that:

True power isn’t about how many people you can intimidate.

True leadership isn’t about the size of your ego.

And true courage is staying put when everyone else is offering you a taxi.

He is the ‘Adult’ we didn’t see coming, the one who reminds us that leadership isn’t a brand; it’s a spine. He’s the exception that proves the rule: that while the rest of the world’s ‘Laddies’ are playing a dangerous game of Risk, some men actually remember what they’re fighting for.

And that, really, is the definition of a ‘Laddie’ we can all get behind. Which brings me to a final example of a leader who didn’t need a thirty-foot table or a gold-plated skyscraper to command respect.

Jim Wallace was the ‘Adult in the Room’ long before the world realised it was running out of them.

I was so sad to hear of his passing yesterday. I feel very lucky to have gotten to know Jim back when I started working for the party 25 years ago. I traversed the country over three elections with him whilst he was leader, and we had a lot of adventures.

Jim was wildly intelligent, wise, strategic, with an incredible attention to detail and deeply liberal to his core. He was also kind, funny, passionate about his religion, his football and mostly his family and his beloved wife Rosie.

Jim helped to shape our nation, and he reminded us that politics can be a noble calling if you have the right heart.

So, in the spirit of Rabbie Burns, who knew that a man’s worth lay in his character, not his title, I ask the ladies to rise.

Let us toast to the gentlemen who don’t need a smartphone to be heroes, and to the memory of Jim Wallace.

To the Laddies and to Jim!

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social