The latest SNP fantasy: Scots will leave the Union post-pandemic

“The road to independence is open.” Er – up to a point, Lord Copper. It is cheering news that Kenny MacAskill, sometime SNP Scottish justice minister, is again giving political utterance, since we need a good laugh in these grim times. The further   heartening intelligence is that MacAskill has maintained the high standard of fatuity he set at the height, if that is the correct term, of his political career and taking into account the fact that “Free the Lockerbie one” was an aspiration that set the bar pretty high.

MacAskill, with a political insight that has eluded other Scottish politicians, believes the coronavirus pandemic has created the ideal conditions for Scottish independence. Criticising Boris Johnson’s handling of the crisis, MacAskill said: “A man who cannot even look after his own country can’t restrict the forward march of another. The road to independence is open.” He added: “With the Tories firmly in charge there’s little sign of change or even moderation. It’s full on for Brexit and ever closer links with the USA. The demands that there has to be a better way, and indeed a diverging way, from the UK path are only going to increase.”

There is much to ponder in those thoughtful words; for the less cerebrally acute it might take up to thirty seconds. Why would Scots be concerned about the performance of Boris Johnson when they have a separate pandemic regime, holding very tightly onto Nurse Nicola? Has not the SNP government trumpeted its distinctive lockdown agenda at every opportunity? Yet when a BBC reporter suggested this week it was “obvious that Nicola Sturgeon has enjoyed the opportunity to set her own lockdown rules and not have to follow what’s happening in England or other parts of the UK”, it provoked a Force 9 on the Richter scale temper tantrum from Wee Krankie that resulted in an apology.

It is true that, for the time being, the Tories are firmly in charge south of the border, by mandate of the UK electorate, to which the Scottish electorate confirmed its adherence as recently as 2014. It is for that same reason government policy is, in MacAskill’s phraseology, “full on for Brexit”. There is something quixotic about the SNP’s attachment to referenda, considering that within the past six years plebiscites have rejected Scottish separatism and delivered Brexit. What is intriguing, though, is Kenny MacAskill’s Gnostic perception that the pandemic has paved the way to Scotland’s departure from the United Kingdom.

It takes a very special gift of discernment to penetrate the superficially discouraging aspects of the various post-pandemic scenarios and recognize the inevitability of the majority of the Scottish electorate seeking salvation in independence. Scotland is already out of the EU. A putative independent Scotland would have to sue for admission on whatever terms Brussels might impose, undoubtedly including a commitment to join the euro and acceptance of the most advanced integrationist conditions. Scots would learn the meaning of “Independence in Europe”.

This, too, would take place at the height of the EU’s own existential crisis, which there is no guarantee the ailing leviathan will survive.

And what of Scotland’s own economic situation? While the full scale of the post-lockdown financial crisis is as yet unknowable, though the UK chancellor is already warning of an impending recession of unprecedented severity, there is no authoritative entity that rates the prospects as better than catastrophic, at least in the short term.

In that context, while Scotland’s precise predicament similarly cannot be accurately predicted, it is a reasonable assumption that, like every other country, it will find itself looking back nostalgically to the conditions prevailing immediately prior to the crisis as a golden age. For Scotland, that entailed a deficit of £12.6bn, or 7 per cent of GDP, compared with 1.1 per cent for the UK, and North Sea oil revenues of £1.2bn – a fraction of the extravagant forecasts made by the SNP at the time of the independence referendum.

That situation, which hopelessly discredited any notion of Scotland’s economy being viable under independence, now rates as the good old days. Separatist propagandists who were embarrassed by those disconcerting statistics just a few months ago would now give much to be able to cite them as current realities. Kenny MacAskill, however, has a clearer insight into his compatriots’ Braveheart instinct to quit an oppressive Union of 66 million people, in which state spending in Scotland is £1,661 more per person than the UK average, and immerse themselves either in a more integrationist Union of 446 million people or go it alone in a recession-stricken world.

Does MacAskill know something nobody else does? Or is he simply a desperate separatist seeking refuge in delusion? It is only fair to say that Kenny MacAskill has always enjoyed certain inspirations denied to lesser mortals. This first became evident after his appointment as Scottish justice secretary when he told the Scottish Police Federation conference in 2008 that the traditional idea that the police had a duty to protect the public was “an anachronism in this day and age”. In that view he was ahead of his time and it is now mainstream thinking among progressive police forces: by 2016 Police Scotland’s published list of priorities placed “inclusion” ahead of catching criminals.

MacAskill’s fifteen minutes of global fame came when he released the Lockerbie bomber back to Libya – even Hillary Clinton remonstrated with him about that piece of grandstanding, which embarrassed the Obama administration. Then there was his proposal to remove the need for corroboration in evidence in criminal cases. All in all, MacAskill’s was a controversial tenure of the justice ministry. He is still vocal: following the recent acquittal of Alex Salmond it was his leading supporter MacAskill who declared some resignations would be in order.

That was a reminder of the other hazard that awaits the SNP once anything resembling normal public life is resumed. Following his criminal prosecution and acquittal, do you think that Alex Salmond is a) spending time with his stamp collection; b) benevolently urging his supporters to let bygones be bygones; or c) preparing a vengeful offensive to blow Nicola Sturgeon and her faction out of the water and end her political career? Answers on a postcard…

Nicola Sturgeon also faces mounting public disquiet over the state of public services, notably health and education. The pandemic lockdown regulations furnished the First Minister with one of the few opportunities to discuss public health issues without facing recrimination. Nor should we be surprised if, following months of home education and auto-didacticism replacing attendance at the SNP’s state de-schooling centres, the next crop of examinations shows a spike in Scottish pupils’ academic attainment.

Counter-intuitive is hardly an adequate term to describe Kenny MacAskill’s belief that, in the dystopian world that awaits post-lockdown Britain, Scots will eagerly embrace a leap in the dark beyond any previous imaginings. If that is what he is reading in the tea-leaves, it is time he switched to teabags. Historically, of course, it has always been at moments of great disruption that seers, prophets and eccentric projectors have delivered their portentous messages. In that context it is perhaps unsurprising that, amid so much current instability, Kenny has been hearing his voices again.

Out, Braveheart Scots, out of the stifling Union that has coddled us too long and into a fateful future… Very good, Kenny, we’re right behind you – just you go first, we’ll catch you up… There, there, there.