Tory leadership: Union being in peril will help to decide the winner

There has long been a habit of some English Conservatives for disregarding the interests of their Scottish colleagues. Many an English Tory will, when pushed, emit a snort when it is pointed out that some manoeuvre or other will not be popular with the Scottish Tories or that it overlooks the imperative to hold the Union together.

Scotland has devolution and its own distinct political set-up. The Scots cannot, runs the argument, expect to have all that and also exercise some kind of veto or have a disproportionately loud voice at the table in UK matters.

To quote Billy Connolly mocking the anti-Scottish sections of God save the Queen: “Oh, you bloody think so?”

The UK is not a federal set-up. It is lopsided and improvised. The Scottish Tories are a bulwark, one of the few left, against the Nats and the potential break up of the UK. If you are a Tory and you want the United Kingdom still to be a thing, and it is possible you do not, which makes you an English nationalist, then you will need during what comes next to pay considerable attention to the situation in Scotland.

The Scottish Tories need there to be an orderly Brexit via a deal. If there isn’t one, and there is chaos, then the Scottish Tories are in serious trouble in 2021 where they’re trying to prevent the SNP getting a majority (with radical Green loony support) at Holyrood and holding another independence referendum. Brexit meltdown could break the Union.

For that reason, after the Brexit shambles, in which the Tory party has engaged in epic amounts of bungling, I suspect that the role and condition of the Union is about to become potentially much more significant in the looming leadership contest.

When Michael Gove today criticised the concept of no-deal this was, I suspect, what he was getting at.

“No deal is bad for our economy and bad for our Union,” he said.

His die hard Brexiteer critics leapt on the economic component of that remark, as ever accusing someone they disagree with of betrayal. The Unionist element of the warning was was what struck me.

I haven’t mentioned Ruth Davidson so far. The Scottish Tory leader and dynamo in the Scottish parliament is on parental leave. She returns soon. She and Gove get on.

Davidson has strong views, not least on Boris Johnson. His is not an act which translates north of Carlisle, or indeed in large parts of England south of Carlisle. Indeed, Davidson has long thought Boris is – again to mine the oeuvre of Billy Connolly – about as popular with Scottish voters as a “fart in a space suit.”

The Tories will be fighting for the Union. How their UK leader composes and presents himself or herself will matter, a lot, especially after the chicanery of recent months, or years rather.

When the Tory leadership race begins expect to hear a lot on this, from Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish quarters. They will want to hear a convincing, serious commitment to the Union in terms that are credible.

It is possible, I suppose that Davidson, will in her absence have decided that Boris is the bee’s knees. It is also possible that later this year the Beatles will reunite and appear with Elvis at the Glasgow Empire.