Back in March when the British Government introduced lockdown
and Rishi Sunak unveiled his furlough scheme, we were all in it together. But
when Boris Johnson wanted to ease the lockdown restrictions in May Nicola Sturgeon
and the other devolved leaders decided they wanted to have their own policies.
When devolution was established in the 1990s no one
thought that it might apply to a national emergency. We thought that the
Scottish Parliament would have day to day control over hospitals and GPs. We
didn’t imagine that the Scottish Parliament would have the power to tell us who
we could meet, whether we could work or who we could sleep with. But for good
or ill Nicola Sturgeon has interpreted her powers to mean she can differ from
the UK Government on the emergency measures introduced because of Covid. But
this cannot give her the right to demand money from the Treasury. It is the
British Chancellor’s job to decide who gets furloughed and who does not.
In principle it is right that all British citizens are
treated equally. But the Scottish Government chose to use the fact that
education was devolved to charge English, Welsh and Northern Irish students
fees to attend Scottish universities while Scots could study for free. If
devolution of education leads to different results for British citizens, then devolution
of health may lead to different treatment also.
Sturgeon obviously cannot say that Scotland will
remain locked down for the next five years, but Sunak must pay our wages. The choice
of locking down is her responsibility but the choice of how this lockdown is
funded is reserved to the Chancellor.
I would hope that the Chancellor treats Scots just as well as any other British
citizen, but I would also prefer that it was the UK Government that we all
elected that decided the emergency matters during the Covid crisis. The reason
for this is that only the UK Government can take into account the whole
financial situation that Britain faces.
The present situation is untenable. Scotland, Wales
and Northern Ireland cannot expect to make their own decisions about lockdown,
but also expect for someone else to pick up the tab. That is power without
responsibility.
So long as Sturgeon demands UK money to pay for furlough
in Scotland, she must be guided by the Treasury’s understanding of how much it
is able to spend. She cannot simply be given a blank cheque.
There is a misunderstanding that the UK Government is
ruling England. The truth is that it is ruling the whole of the UK apart from
those areas which the devolved administrations control. It is one thing for the
UK Government to introduce lockdown, because that decision is backed by the
Treasury, it is another thing again for Wales to have a two-week firebreak or
Scotland to introduce five tiers, because this isn’t backed by anything. This
above all shows the folly of such decisions.
It would be helpful if the leader of the Scottish
Conservatives Douglas Ross pointed out that not only is Nicola Sturgeon
demanding still more money from the Treasury to fund lockdown in Scotland
whenever and wherever she wants to impose it, but she doesn’t intend to pay any
of this money back. Mr Ross surely must know that the SNP’s last plan for independence
involved it refusing to accept a proportional share of the UK’s national debt. Scotland
would pay a token 2.5% of GDP per year while the former UK would pay more than
100% of GDP. Is that fair?
But Mr Ross appears to think that to revive
Conservative fortunes in Scotland and to encourage support for Britain above
all else he must be nice to Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP. He also thinks that
the Scottish Conservatives must differ as much as possible from the party as a
whole. He even thinks Scottish Conservatives must not vote on matters that
apply only to England at Westminster. This rather fails to take into account what
would happen to Government policy if those few Scottish Conservative MPs happened
to make up the balance of power. Would Ross allow Conservative Government
policy on health and education to be voted down by Labour and the SNP just to
prove a rather odd and somewhat nationalistic point? We’re Scottish
Conservatives we don’t vote about England.
Ross is making the same mistake that Ruth Davidson
made over Remain. He thinks that the more that he sides with the SNP the more
Scots will vote for him. But trying to be the same as other Scottish parties is
a terrible strategy. All you end up with is politicians saying the same thing
and agreeing with each other.
The success of a party depends on it having a distinct
vision and different policies from the others. Davidson and Ross were Remainers,
but they forget that 38% of Scots voted for Leave. These voters are represented
by nobody in the Scottish Parliament.
Ross goes along with Sturgeon not merely in demanding
more money from the Treasury he also agrees with her central argument that Scotland
was hard done by in the 2016 EU referendum, because we voted Remain. Sorry Mr Ross,
but this is a nationalist argument. The Pro UK argument is that it was a UK
vote and it was the UK as a whole that decided the matter.
He complains about a winner takes all approach, which
either means he thinks Scotland should have had a veto, in which case he should
join the SNP, or it means that we should have consulted with Nicola Sturgeon
and done what she wanted with Brexit, in which case he should still more join
the SNP.
There are Scots who are angry about Brexit. Some of
them have been flirting with Scottish Nationalism. The task is to win them back
to the Pro UK argument. But we are leaving the EU. We may even be leaving with
a deal. The task for Mr Ross is to argue how this will benefit Britain and make
the SNP’s task of independence still harder. There is a very good argument that
in the medium-term Brexit will be financially beneficial to Britain. Why else
is the EU scared of us undercutting them? But Ross doesn’t even care to make
the argument. He just continues his Remainer sulk.
The Scottish Conservatives made a strategic mistake
after the 2016 Referendum. They remained Remainers and lent their support to Sturgeon’s
grievance about Scotland voting Remain but being forced to leave the EU against
our will. It is the argument of someone who loves the EU more than the UK. It
is the argument of someone who is just about to leap into Nicola Sturgeon’s
arms.
I fear there isn’t a genuine Conservative bone in any
of Scotland’s Conservatives. It’s all rather limp and wet. If Nicola Sturgeon
huffs and puffs, she will blow Mr Ross’s party away.
When Mr Ross chose to resign over Dominic Cummings
journey to Durham, when Mr Ross himself had driven from Moray to London and
back again to get better wi-fi, I worried whether he would be able to take
the fight to Nicola Sturgeon. It seems his method of fighting, if it can be
called that, is to agree with her.
The only argument he has is that England gives us lots
of money and independence would be costly, which is the same Better Together mindset
that nearly lost in 2014. This I’m afraid is weak and rather dim. If the
Scottish Conservatives can’t do better than this, they don’t need a new leader,
but rather need to disband and start again. At least try to be Conservative
otherwise what’s the point.
