The FBI had somebody wearing a wire at the London Olympics to capture the FIFA corruption taking place in the margins. What were the British authorities doing? Nothing.

Britain prides itself as having in London the world’s leading financial centre. Substantial assets, both financial and real estate, from FIFA corruption are located in London. But Britain has taken over the crown from Switzerland as the major financial destination which will always protect ill-gotten wealth.

Alisher Usmanov played a major role as bagman for the corrupt Russian World Cup bid, particularly with delegates from FIFA’s Asian Confederation. His place as Britain’s third richest resident is very obviously based on extreme Russian corruption and he rose to power and wealth solely with the use of gangster muscle and contacts he gained and expanded while serving a prison sentence for blackmail. But he is a billionaire and beloved by the City of London so there is no danger of him ever being investigated in the UK.

That a key figure in FIFA corruption over Russia’s World Cup bid, is undisturbed in his large shareholding in Arsenal FC, says everything about the complicity of the British establishment.

Usmanov’s friend Gulnara Karimova is a startling example. She is now under formal investigation in Switzerland, France, Sweden and the Netherlands over the glaringly corrupt origins of her billions. Only a fake house arrest by her father has prevented her real arrest. Yet in the UK, where she has three homes including one in the No.1 Hyde Park criminals’ hangout, where she shops regularly and her son is at university, there is no move against her whatsoever.

I am delighted to see the moves against FIFA. But to me they illustrate very plainly what a corrupt stinking hole London has become.

They were too extravagant to be buttonholes. The SNP’s MPs wore elaborate corsages. The unextinguishable impression is that they were going the extra mile in dressing up as particularly obsequious flunkies chuffed to be appearing before Her Maj, herself bedecked with the Koh-i-Noor and other jewels gained by the rape of conquered peoples, and enrobed in the furs of butchered rare animals.

Even if the white rose really were a symbol of Scotland – and a single allusion by Macdiarmid does not make it so – I would not want it used to make us look like the class creeps on a Royal visit. Much has been made of the battle for Dennis Skinner’s seat. But at least that awkward old man has repeatedly had the guts to make plain he does not approve of all the ludicrous flummery of faded but still vicious power – still vicious as the snooper’s charter and attacks on coastal Libya will shortly make clear. The SNP looked like a very determined set of entries for the toady of the year competition.

We should leave this loyalist monarchical crap to the unionists. An independent Scotland should not be a place where you dress like a florist’s advert before some fur-draped billionaire pensioner.