The Royal Wedding is Conveniently Timed

Here's one for the conspiracy theorists amongst you.

It is April 2011. You are a national newspaper editor.

Do you choose to fill your pages with

a) The build-up to the royal wedding;

b) The build-up to the referendum on the alternative vote;

or

c) The devolved elections in Wales and Scotland?

If you answered b) or c) you probably won't last long in Fleet Street but there are fears that Prince William of Wales and Catherine Middleton's choice of wedding date may disrupt the political process.

In England it's highly unlikely that we will receive much coverage, if any at all, of the Scottish and Welsh elections and the debates on devolution and the Barnett Formula that will accompany them. And by quirk of fate the right royal pasting that the Conservatives and Lib Dems receive in Scotland and Wales will go under-reported due to a frenzy of tabloid Britishness.

The Scottish elections will be a straw poll on the Scotland Bill which starts the process of implementing proposals of the Calman Commission on Scottish devolution, and the Welsh elections are to coincide with a referendum on further devolution to Wales. What England doesn't know cannot hurt it.

However, any suggestion that the Royal Wedding is deliberately timed coincide with St George's Day, English local elections, the Scottish general election, the Welsh general election, the referendum on Welsh devolution and the referendum on the Alternative Vote, is complete swivel-eyed lunacy.