There is a conventional wisdom in Scotland about
politics that everyone agrees on. It doesn’t much matter which party the
Scottish establishment support, they still hold the same assumptions. The
problem is that this same Scottish establishment has been wrong about everything
ever since they came up with the idea that the Scottish Parliament would kill
off the SNP.
Those who write for Scottish newspapers and the people
who are interviewed on television are nearly all Remainers. They think that it’s
a good thing if public spending in Scotland increases. While they may agree or
disagree with Scottish independence, they do so in such a way that they form a
consensus with Scottish nationalism. None of them think that the UK is “one
nation indivisible” like the USA, Germany, France, Japan and nearly every other
nation state on earth. Their biggest concern is not to inflame Scottish nationalism
and so they think the solution to every political question in Scotland is to
appease the SNP.
So long as the Scottish establishment thinks of
Scotland as a country like France that happens to be in a union with the other
parts of the UK, then they have already conceded the argument. If you think
that Scotland is a country like France, why wouldn’t you want Scotland to be
independent like France? Why should Scotland be in that rare class of countries
that are not independent? Is it because we are somehow second rate?
The problem with the “pro UK” Scottish establishment
is that they watch too much rugby. They love to have their days at Murrayfield
belting out Flower of Scotland while not quite meaning what they sing. But they
only encouraged those who did mean it.
The SNP play the patriotic card. It’s a very strong
card indeed. The thin gruel of appeasement and subsidy won’t win in the end,
nor does it deserve to. The Better Together argument could equally have been
used by the USSR to discourage Latvia from leaving. After all they had a shared
currency and no doubt leaving the Soviet Union was disruptive.
But as the Scottish establishment shares the SNP’s
assumptions about Scotland and the UK, it really doesn’t have a respectable
intellectual argument left to use. All that is left is to concede the argument
gradually. It’s the post-war declinist consensus that was overthrown in 1979 only
to be resurrected by the pessimism of Philip Hammond and the wet mush and muddle
of Theresa May.
We begin with the Scottish Parliament as some sort of
Hadrian’s wall to keep back the Scottish nationalist hordes, only to find that
a few years later they own it and use it to do the very thing it was built to
prevent.
Why would anyone listen to Gordon Brown about anything?
He was wrong about devolution. He thinks that if we just give the Scottish
Parliament a few more powers the SNP will lose their support. This is like thinking
if only we had given the Germans a few more bits of Czechoslovakia we would
have prevented war in 1939.
The only way to defeat the SNP is to change the assumptions
of the argument. With the assumptions that are shared by nearly everyone who
writes and talks about Scottish politics, the SNP win in the end.
They all think that Remaining was the key to keeping
the UK intact. We mustn’t inflame Scottish opinion. We mustn’t make the SNP angry.
But the Remainer Scottish establishment can’t think through
the logic of Brexit. The reason is that Remain used a “Better Together” argument
and was defeated by a patriotic sovereignty argument. It’s because the Scottish
establishment feel nearly no patriotism for the UK whatsoever that they can’t understand
this. Almost no one feels any patriotism for the EU. This meant that the Remain
argument only had a little bit on the supposed advantages of an organization that
is little loved in Britain and a lot on how it would be disastrous if Britain
dared to leave.
Remainers kept telling Brits that we couldn’t possibly
manage outside the EU, that every disaster possible would follow. But the only
patriotic response to this is that we’ve been through worse and will no doubt
manage again. “We’ll show them” was the correct answer to the Remain campaign,
which is why we did show them.
It is just this patriotic argument about Britain that
we have needed to defeat Scottish nationalism.
Apparently, Boris Johnson will inflame Scottish opinion
so much that we are all going to vote for the SNP. I strongly suspect Ruth
Davidson thinks this. Gordon Brown thinks this. Alex Massie thinks this. But I
wonder if Nicola Sturgeon thinks this.
The SNP desperately wants the UK to remain in the EU.
As I have argued repeatedly for years, leaving the EU is the best way for the UK
to become truly united as indeed we were prior to our joining. Scots were as
patriotic about Britain as anyone else when we faced great challenges together.
The UK is a great country with a great history and a great future. We need no
other story to defeat secessionists, just as the USA needed no other story.
Boris Johnson is patriotic. He is also a fine
communicator. He is by far the best writer in Parliament and incomparable as a
public speaker. His optimism and can-do attitude may just be what is needed to
get us out of the EU completely and then make a success of it. There is a great
story to tell about the adventure that might just be beginning. We could leave
the EU behind and become a beacon of free-trade and democracy and once more an
example of hope for the peoples of Europe who, for the most part, are unwilling
to be united under French and German rule.
Gordon Brown et al will pretend to be intelligent about
Boris. They will tell us that we need to make more concessions to the SNP and
that the EU is crucial if the UK will be kept intact. But Brown has been wrong
about everything for decades as has the whole Scottish establishment. When
Nicola Sturgeon says next that Boris will make Scottish independence more
likely, it’s worth remembering that she wouldn’t be saying it if she thought it
were true.