The Big Question: What has been the record of previous Scottish prime ministers?

Why are we asking this now?

On Wednesday Gordon Brown - born in Glasgow, the son of a Church of Scotland minister, alumnus of Edinburgh University, parliamentary representative of Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, supporter of Raith Rovers - was appointed Prime Minister of Great Britain. Much has been made of Mr Brown's "Scottishness", with some questioning whether it is appropriate for someone with his background to be appointed to govern the United Kingdom.

What makes a 'Scottish' prime minister?

Good question. For instance, does it refer to where a prime minister was born? Alec Douglas-Home was unequivocally a Scottish lord, but was born in Mayfair. Perhaps ancestry is the key? But William Gladstone, Harold Macmillan (not to mention the present Tory leader, David Cameron) had Scottish roots. But no one would seriously consider them Scottish.

Is a Scots accent important? The problem with this is that the political elite of the Scottish aristocracy were often educated in England and, so far as we know, did not sound particularly Scottish. So self-definition is probably the safest way to identify them. If a prime minister considers himself Scottish, that should be our guide.

So who was the first?

John Stuart, the 3rd Earl of Bute, was appointed as George III's Prime Minister in 1761. After moving to London in the wake of the 1745 Jacobite rebellion he met Prince Frederick, the Prince of Wales, and the two became friends. When Frederick died in 1751, Bute was appointed tutor to the prince's son, George. When George ascended to the throne in 1760, he appointed his old teacher to head up his government.

How did he fare?

Working closely with the monarch, Bute helped break up the Whig dominance of Parliament. He also brought an end to the Seven Years' War with France. But his premiership ended badly. Bute fell out of the King's favour. He also had a terrible time with the press. He was viciously and unremittingly attacked by that great journalist and campaigner, John Wilkes (the "feral beast" of the age), in his newspaper The North Briton. Particularly damaging was the rumour, that Wilkes helped to spread, that Bute and George III's mother, the dowager Princess of Wales, were engaged in a sexual relationship. But that was not the only reason for Bute's unpopularity. The London mob despised him for his Scottishness. Bute was constantly accompanied on his travels by prize-fighters for protection. On a visit to the Guildhall his coach was smashed up by angry crowds. It all became too much for Bute and he eventually resigned in 1763. The dowager Princess of Wales's tried to reconcile him with the King in the following years, but to no avail.

What was Bute's legacy?

He was not fondly remembered. The 18th century expression "Jack Boot" meaning a stupid person was supposedly derived from Bute's performance as Prime Minister. But on the other hand, he made a significant contribution to the intellectual life of the nation as an artistic patron. He helped the careers of the authors Samuel Johnson, Tobias Smollett, and the architect, Robert Adam. He also gave generously to Scottish universities.

What about his successors?

George Hamilton-Gordon, the Earl of Aberdeen, was appointed Prime Minister by Queen Victoria in 1852 at the head of a coalition of Whigs and Peelite Tories. This reserved and scholarly man thrust Britain into the Crimean war to protect British imperial interests from Tsarist Russia, but resigned when a motion was passed in Parliament to launch an inquiry into the war's incompetent conduct and mismanagement.

A foreign intervention was also unkind to the East Lothian-born Tory Prime Minister Arthur Balfour. Balfour presided over the final stages of the 1899-1902 Boer War against the descendants of the Dutch settlers of South Africa. Our troops were so humiliated in the conflict, that it has since come to be regarded as "Britain's Vietnam" by historians. Shamefully, it was also the first conflict to feature "concentration camps" to intern civilian populations.

The Glasgow-educated Andrew Bonar Law, who reached the summit of the greasy pole in 1922, promptly slid down it again, resigning seven months later when he was diagnosed with throat cancer. Rather cruelly, he is now referred to as "the unknown Prime Minister", supposedly after a quip by a previous Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, at Bonar Law's funeral.

On the Labour side, Mr Brown will not be encouraged by the precedent of Ramsay MacDonald, born in Lossiemouth, Morayshire to a farm labourer and a housemaid. MacDonald became Labour's first prime minister, but has gone down in party history as a treacherous figure after he formed a national government with the Conservatives in 1931, amid the chaos of the Great Depression. He was duly expelled from the party and attempts to rehabilitate his reputation since then have failed.

How about more recently?

The last Scottish prime minister, Alec Douglas-Home, another aristocrat, had an unhappy time in No 10. Despite his interesting background as a first-class cricketer and his renunciation of his earldom, Douglas-Home was ejected only a year after being chosen as the surprise successor to Macmillan in 1963. His conqueror was that self-styled "man of the people" Harold Wilson.

Surely some Scottish prime ministers must have been successful?

Thank goodness for the Glasgow-born Liberal, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman. His government laid the foundations of the welfare state, overseeing the introduction of old age pensions. When he died in 1908, David Lloyd George, one of his ministers and a future prime minister himself, said of him: "I have never met a great public figure who so completely won the attachment and affection of the men who came into contact with him." Mr Brown will also like to note that Campbell-Bannerman slaughtered a divided Tory party in the 1906 election.

Where does the resentment of Scottish politicians in England come from?

It goes back to the days of the Civil War, when the Scottish aristocracy sided with Charles I against Parliament. It lingered throughout the era of Jacobite sedition and risings in the first half of the 18th century, despite the 1707 Act of Union and the fact that many Scottish aristocrats, like Bute, rallied to the Hanoverian monarchy in the face of the Stuart pretenders to the throne. The tendency of Scottish MPs to vote in a bloc for the Tory faction in the later half of the century gave the resentment a more focused political twist, especially among English Whigs. Animosity began to wane, though, in the years of empire and industrialisation, when Britain's prosperity soared and the Scots made a particular contribution through their labour, administration and genius.

But does it matter now?

Some would have it so. Scottish devolution in 1998 has created some bitterness in England, with the complaint that Scots have double political representation. The "West Lothian question" - Why should Scottish MPs vote on strictly English matters, but not the other way round? - is being asked more often, not least by the present Tory leadership.

These complaints have been linked to the character of the new Prime Minister, with attempts to portray him to the English as an untrustworthy outsider. But Mr Brown might be forgiven for wondering why geographical origin seems to matter more than other aspects of a politician's background? Poor old Bute was a Tory aristocrat, educated at Eton. It might therefore be argued that his spectre haunts Mr Cameron just as much as Mr Brown.

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