Exposing Sturgeon’s dismal record is the way to save the Union

Every Christmas the Dogs Trust, or perhaps the RSPCA, issues a warning to people thinking of buying a puppy: a dog is for life, not just for Christmas. Quite so. I thought of it one day last week when The Guardian gave a headline to a good article by David Clegg, the editor of the Dundee newspaper, The Courier. He was discussing the question of Independence, but the sub’s headline suggested that the determining factor would be the choice between Boris Johnson and Nicola Sturgeon.

Now it’s quite probable that if we have a referendum some Scots will vote for independence because they dislike, even despise, Johnson. While others, perhaps fewer in number, will choose to stick with the Union because they have had enough of Sturgeon and regard her as a tiresome and bossy woman.

Distaste for either of these politicians, is of course perfectly reasonable. To cast one’s vote in a parliamentary election on the basis of dislike or approval of a party leader may be sensible. To allow such feelings or opinions to determine or even influence one’s vote in a  referendum on independence is stupid, even grotesque.

In any democracy politicians are like roses; they blossom and wither. They have a limited shelf-life. Even Margaret Thatcher lasted only eleven years and a few months in Downing Street. We grow tired of party leaders and tell them it’s time to go. Even their own party wearies of them. There are, even now, murmurings about Johnson on the Tory benches in the Commons, though he has been Prime Minister for little more than a year. Sturgeon is now close to her seventh year as SNP leader as First Minister of Scotland. Anyone remember that movie about marriage The Seven Year Itch?

If people decide they have made the wrong choice in a general election, they can get rid of the politicians in power in a year or two, But a constitutional and national question like independence is very different. It isn’t for the life of a single parliament, but for a very long time, even for as near to “forever” as is possible in a political and constitutional question. Ireland was partitioned in 1922; it is still partitioned. The treaty of Union between England and Scotland is more than three hundred years old. The men who negotiated it are dust in their graves.

Two questions will dominate  any referendum on independence, and both render the character and qualities of today’s Prime Minister and First Minister irrelevant.

The first is the question of identity. Few doubt that the sense of Britishness is weaker in Scotland today than it was fifty years ago. In the 1978 devolution referendum, those calling for a No vote campaigned under the slogan “Scotland is British”. That banner won’t be unfurled again. The Empire, two World Wars and the Welfare State were the bonds of Britishness. The Empire is long gone. Even the Hitler war is receding into history and has become a matter for nostalgia or empty and often irritating vainglory. The Welfare State is so deeply established that the term has become superfluous. Brexit, the most recent assertion of Britishness – more exactly Anglo-Britishness – dismayed many in Scotland where the vote in favour of Remain was 62-38. The indifference since shown to Scottish opinion has done nothing to repair the damage.

So it’s not surprising that a majority of Scots under the age of fifty identify themselves as Scots, and fewer and fewer as also British. As Angus Robertson, the former SNP leader at Westminster, triumphantly crowed the other day, elderly Unionists have been dying and young Nationalists coming on the electoral register since the 2014 referendum.

If the next referendum was merely a question of identity, independence would win the day. But, of course, it isn’t. There is also the question of feasibility, of what happens after the vote. Questions aired in 2014 haven’t been satisfactorily answered and they haven’t gone away. The question of the currency is still there. So is the troubling but unavoidable fact that public spending in Scotland exceeds the sum of taxes paid in and by Scotland. So is public spending to be cut or are taxes to be raised in an independent Scotland? This question, aired repeatedly in 2014, has received no satisfying answer.

Then there is the question of Europe. In 2014 Nationalists assumed, perhaps too easily, that an independent Scotland, seceding from a member state of the EU, would be granted admission to the club without too much difficulty. Now post-Brexit, the welcome might be warmer still. But, unless a free trade agreement between the EU and the UK was in place when Scotland voted for Independence, membership of the EU would mean erecting a tariff barrier, a hard border with customs posts, between Scotland and England. How many practically-minded folk would vote for that?

The problems for Unionists in any referendum will be severe – problems of organisation and leadership first and then the problem of making their case without appearing to “do Scotland down”. They will find themselves opposing an idea and defending the status quo. Resisting the dream of the Promised Land can never be inspiring. Unionists can’t at this late stage in the history of the United Kingdom compete on sentiment. One might wish that they could, but the wish is a vain one.

Can they then avert a referendum? Legally, of course, the answer is yes. It is provided for in the Act which set up the Scottish Parliament. That Act, while delineating the powers devolved to Edinburgh, reserved constitutional affairs to Westminster. Yet this more and more seems a frail barrier if there is a majority at Holyrood for a referendum and the first Minister demands one.

At present all the polls indicate that there will be such a majority after the May elections. Logically, therefore, the best way of averting a referendum is to deny the SNP that majority. It’s long odds against achieving this – long odds but not impossible ones.

If the election is about a referendum and possible independence, the SNP will win. If, however, the three Unionist parties turn their fire on Sturgeon and the Scottish government’s record in office – and there is no shortage of ammunition – then it is just possible that the SNP might be denied a majority, even one with the help of its Green allies. Then, as a minority government, its freedom of movement would be limited.

In short, the message for the Unionists should be: concentrate on day-to-day politics. That is where the SNP is weak. For instance – to return briefly to personalities: Sturgeon may have managed the PR side of dealing with the Covid epidemic more competently than Johnson, but in practical terms her record is every bit as bad as his.