Westminster stupidity is endangering the future of the UK

That the Union is imperilled is one of the current maxims of public discourse; it has become as prevailing a mantra in Tory circles as an earlier tocsin, in the reign of Queen Anne: “The Church in danger.” While the future of the United Kingdom is indeed threatened by Scottish separatism, the reiteration of alarmist forecasts of imminent dissolution, by the people supposedly most committed to the preservation of the Union, is cowardly and irresponsible, increasingly in danger of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The croaking must cease and give place to a coherent, calculated and cool-headed strategy for maintaining the United Kingdom by highlighting its benefits to all four component nations. It needs to be an integrated, four-nation strategy, not a haphazard reactive exercise in fighting bushfires as they spring up in different locations. An umbrella programme is required for all of the UK, taking account of the very different cultures of the member countries.

We have just had a striking example of that cultural variation, in political terms, at the recent elections. Historically, Labour relied for support on its Celtic heartlands in Scotland and Wales. Since the War, three general elections – in 1964, February 1974 and 2005 – were won in England by the Conservatives, but the massive contribution of Labour parliamentary seats from Scotland ensured that Labour formed the government. It is worth noting that the English submitted to this electoral consequence of the Union without crying foul, unlike the Scots after the Brexit referendum. Ironically, in 1951, England voted Labour, but a temporary change of mood in Scotland imposed a Conservative government on the UK.

All that has changed. At this month’s elections in Scotland, supposedly rock-bottom Labour lost a further two seats at Holyrood. In Wales, by contrast, Labour not only held on, but made a modest gain of one seat, returning to devolved government. Clearly, the two Celtic nations have dramatically diverged in their politics. Boris Johnson’s government needs to develop an informed policy based on familiarity with all the issues concerning the electorates in the Union’s four nations – with England very much included.

There is no sign of such a coherent and informed approach. Critics say that the Scottish Conservatives have been incompetent in their defence of the Union and there is much justification for that charge. It dates back to 1997 when, under the shock of devolution, the Scottish Conservatives went native and queued up for their gongs with the other newly-minted MSPs on Holyrood’s opening day, when the first thing the new legislature did was award its members short-service medals. Since then, the Scottish Tories have vacillated between sometimes competent opposition and frequent crass complicity with the antics of Holyrood administrations.

But their failings are minor, compared to the potentially fatal lack of understanding of Scotland at Westminster. Since Holyrood opened its doors, and more particularly since the SNP came to power in 2007, London politicians have been content to leave devolved administrations to their own devices. UK ministers are seldom seen in Scotland and it is the SNP’s policy that they should be marginalised as much as possible.

In this way, the SNP has succeeded in creating an illusion of de facto separatism: Scots live in a one-party state, with no visible evidence of UK institutions.  So extreme is this North Korean-style isolation that when the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, arguably the most popular members of the Royal family, went to Scotland last December to thank NHS staff for their pandemic efforts, Nicola Sturgeon churlishly criticised them for travelling, although the trip, for work purposes, was within the Covid rules. No icons of United Kingdom identity are to be tolerated in SNP-ruled Scotland.

The Government needs to break down this Berlin Wall and end Scots’ isolation from the public life of the rest of the United Kingdom. But the way to prevent separation is not to concede more devolved powers, fuelling the insatiable hunger of the SNP for ever-increasing control north of the Border. Presumably, the Johnson administration is privately addressing the problems of the Union, with a view to developing a strategy, but it will fail if it does not grasp one crucial principle: although the four member nations have very distinctive problems, addressing them piecemeal would be a huge mistake.

It is a mistake that the Government has been aggressively making in recent months. It has failed, for example, to recognise the synergies between Scotland and Northern Ireland. It has assumed that political developments in one country are divided by a Chinese wall from the others when, in reality, they interact. The political culture at Westminster and in Whitehall, behind a veneer of neutrality, is unmistakably hostile to Northern Ireland.

The enduring Remainer instinct is favourable to the border down the Irish Sea that Boris so incautiously conceded to the EU. A significant number of politicians and civil servants would view with equanimity Northern Ireland’s return to Brussels control via Irish reunification. It is also widely canvassed that changes in Northern Ireland’s demography make such reunification likely. However, that supposition has been over-hyped. Although the Northern Irish electorate is now about 46 per cent Catholic, old assumptions regarding political allegiance may be outdated and patronising: in the 2011 census 13 per cent of Catholics identified as British, rather than Northern Irish or Irish.

The continuation of the Union is more likely to be endangered among the Unionist community itself: the experience of EU membership engendered among middle-class Unionists a less strongly British identity and a more irenic view of the Republic. What is the UK Government doing to persuade lukewarm Unionists to remain British? Trampling over their sensitivities and trashing the devolution settlement which they value as semi-sovereignty, is the answer. It beggars belief that Westminster should be treating Northern Ireland in the way it is.

If there is one red-line issue, for both communities in Northern Ireland, it is abortion. All political parties except the Greens are opposed to abortion or allow a conscience vote, though Sinn Féin, despite tightening its approach in 2018, favours some availability, including the increasingly controversial grounds of foetal abnormality. Yet during the recent suspension of the Northern Ireland Assembly, Labour MP Stella Creasey opportunistically inserted into the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Act 2019 provisions for imposing on Northern Ireland an even more permissive abortion law than Britain’s, to take effect if the Assembly was not restored by 21 October 2019.

The deadline was missed and overnight Northern Ireland was transformed from a jurisdiction with very limiting abortion laws to an ultra-liberal regime. This was done within legislation supposedly concerned with constitutional issues and despite the fact that abortion has been a devolved matter in Northern Ireland since 2010. This was, by any standards, legislative sharp practice. But Westminster was technically within its rights since the Northern Ireland Assembly was in suspension, though it was undoubtedly bad politics, from a Unionist perspective.

Since then, however, the situation has been seriously aggravated. The provision for abortion of babies with disabilities provoked widespread concern in Northern Ireland and in mid-March a bill to prevent abortion in cases of non-fatal disabilities passed its second reading at Stormont by 48 votes to 12, before being progressed to scrutiny by the health committee. Yet, incredibly and provocatively, on 27 April, without debate, the House of Commons voted by 431 votes to 89 to pass the Abortion (Northern Ireland) Regulations Act 2021.

This is designed to give the Northern Ireland Secretary powers to compel the centralised commissioning of abortion services in Northern Ireland. But what on earth was the UK Parliament doing, passing legislation on abortion in Northern Ireland, which is a fully devolved power, while the Northern Ireland Assembly was not only sitting, but actively legislating on the matter?

As Baroness Hoey said when it was debated in the House of Lords: “Today’s debate is not about abortion: it is about allowing a devolved Government to make their own decision on a devolved matter.” Baroness Fox, who is pro-abortion, said that “the imposition of these regulations by Westminster decree without consent – indeed, in flagrant defiance of a rejection of these regulations by democratically elected Northern Ireland politicians – is an obvious flouting of democracy.” Lord McCrea said the regulations would “throw a hand grenade into the fragile structures of devolution”…

So, when is devolution not devolution? At the whim of ministers and parliamentarians, it would seem. During four years of fractious Brexit debate, the constant mantra of politicians was the need to avoid the slightest bruising of the sacred Good Friday Agreement, which established the Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive. Now, when it suits them, the same London-based political class is cynically trampling down the institutions set up by the Agreement.

If Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis enforces these questionably legislated regulations, he will drive a nail into the coffin of Northern Ireland’s membership of the United Kingdom. Those blinkered fools in the political class who would feel indifferent to Northern Ireland’s departure should think again in the context of the whole United Kingdom.

Do they not realise that, at least in the climate of the foreseeable future, if Northern Ireland left the UK, Scotland would be out the door, close behind, like a bat out of hell? The fatal notion that the United Kingdom was dissolving, that Northern Ireland was returning to EU membership as part of the Irish Republic, that it would show a shameful lack of self-confidence not to follow suit, would drive Scottish voters into the arms of the SNP and separatism.

That is what the London establishment has lost sight of: the interdependence of the member nations to sustain a mutually beneficial Union. To loosen one bolt, anywhere, would bring the whole structure crashing down. The provocative overriding of the Northern Irish devolution settlement, either legally while the Assembly was suspended, or illegally now that it is sitting, is an act of madness when the Union is so fragilely situated. Has Westminster learned nothing from the fate of those politicians who indulged in anti-Brexit hubris?

If the Scottish public perceives devolution as being at the mercy of Westminster politicians’ whim, it will conclude that there is no security in devolution and that independence is the sole guarantee of autonomy. The insensitivity and incapacity of blinkered metropolitan politicians threatens to bring about the catastrophe that Nicola Sturgeon has failed to achieve.