Ash Regan of the Alba party has said that what we really need in Scotland is more roads, specifically a new motorway, but I have a message for Ash Regan of the Alba party: remember Ernest Marples.

Chances are the name Ernest Marples doesn’t ring a lot of bells and that’s fair enough: he’s largely faded from history. But I recommend having a read of his life as a politician and minister because it’s a cracker. There’s all kinds of scandal in there – proper scandal as well, not the piffling modern kind – and my favourite bit is the fact that as minister of transport in the 60s, he introduced the ban on drink-driving then got arrested for drink driving. Brilliant.

But it’s his influence on motorways I’m particularly interested in because it was Marples who opened the UK’s first stretch, the M1 from Watford to Rugby, with the promise of more efficient and less congested roads. He also ordered a review of Britain’s railways and appointed someone to do the job called Beeching, whose name really has gone down in history. What’s more, Marples ordered lots of other roads to be built, many of which were completed by an engineering firm which he owned. You’ve got to have a sneaking admiration for the guy in a way: he just went for it.

The real lesson of his career, though, lies in the difference between the promise and the reality. There are famous pictures of the M1 on its opening day in 1959 and they’re glorious in their way: sheets of sleek new tarmac, lines of carriageway stretching into the distance, into the future, and adventurous cars, just one or two, zooming swiftly to their destination. The pictures are like those visions you used to see in science-fiction movies from the 50s of the glittering cities of the future that........

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