The SNP’s model of popularity has always been based on
power without responsibility. Whenever good things happen, they are credited to
Nicola Sturgeon, whenever bad things happen, they are blamed on Boris Johnson,
Tories or the English. Scottish voters have been happy to go along with this.
When I point out that the death toll in Scotland is
much higher than similarly sized countries in Europe, Scottish nationalists
routinely fail to accept that the Scottish Government has any responsibility
for this at all. They argue that Denmark, Norway, Finland and Slovakia, all countries
with five populations of around five million, were able to close their borders and
had all sorts of other advantages because they are independent nation states. But
Scotland can close its border too. We just have.
Whether the SNP have the legal right to impose travel
restrictions on people leaving and arriving in Scotland is immaterial. If
Nicola Sturgeon says that something is a rule and the police are willing to enforce
it, then this de facto is the law whatever the constitutional niceties.
There are of course absurdities. Airports are still
open. If someone can fly in from Paris or Amsterdam he may well have come from
almost anywhere. Someone from Inverness is allowed to drive to Glasgow to take
a flight to Tenerife, but someone from Glasgow isn’t. The Glaswegian is allowed
to get on the plane, but he isn’t allowed to drive, walk or crawl to the
airport.
Meanwhile quite soon anyone who is called a student
will be allowed to travel to Penzance or Pennsylvania to spend Christmas with
his family. He may or may not take a voluntary Covid test before doing so. After
spreading or picking up Covid at home, he will then be allowed to return to his
place of study where all his teaching is online anyway. These journeys are
necessary for otherwise universities would have empty accommodation and would
go bust. It doesn’t matter though if your pub or restaurant goes bust.
So Glaswegians are not allowed to go on holiday, can’t
visit England and can’t even visit Inverness, but people from Inverness can go
anywhere and students in Glasgow can soon go anywhere too because while the
University of Glasgow is a crucial business that must be saved, every other
business in Glasgow can go bust so that Nicola Sturgeon has better Covid statistics
than Boris Johnson.
What we have learned in the past few months is that
the Scottish Government has rather more powers than we thought. There was
nothing to stop it closing the border earlier. If it can do so now, it could
have done so then. So, the idea that it lacked some power that independence
would have given it, no longer applies.
Scotland already is de facto independent in every
single way apart from we get free money from the Treasury and we will get a
free Covid vaccine if and when it arrives. Apart from these things the Scottish
Parliament can pretty much do what it likes domestically. It can raise and
lower taxation. It can borrow. It can make any decision it wants on healthcare
and education and it can enforce any rule or regulation it wants on the
Scottish public and indeed people from elsewhere.
If a student lives in London and can choose where he
lives and what he does his freedom and responsibility is not hindered by the
fact that his university fees and part of his income are paid by a grant he won
by winning an academic prize nor indeed if they are paid by a kind benefactor because
he is an orphan.
The only things that Scotland practically cannot do
are annex the Faeroe Islands and apply to join the European Union or the United
Nations. Only nation states can apply. But there is no other effective limit on
what Sturgeon can do. Even matters that we thought were reserved like borders
are now within her control.
But this is where things become interesting
politically. What have we received because we are part of Britain? We have received
some advice from SAGE. We didn’t have to follow it, because we have our own
experts, but we often chose to follow it none the less while passing it off as
our own thinking. We have received some money that furloughed our workers and
kept some of our businesses running. We have received nearly all of our food
from lorries that we allow to travel freely from England even if no one else
can.
Has the British Government forced the SNP to do
anything about Covid that it didn’t want to do? No. It’s no use blaming English
tourists or indeed English lorry drivers for spreading Covid, because Sturgeon
could have closed the border. She could indeed have closed the border in effect
to international travel if she had said they can fly into Glasgow, but they are
not allowed to travel from the airport. That would have stopped it almost
immediately.
So let’s say you are an SNP supporter in Glasgow and
your business has just gone bust and your mother died earlier this year because
her friend was sent back from hospital with Covid and infected everyone in the
care home, who do you blame? You might tell yourself, it would have been
different if only we had voted for independence in 2014. But how?
If Scotland had voted for independence, we wouldn’t have
got any money from the Treasury. You may choose to believe that we could have afforded
to be more generous, but this depends on the idea that independence would have
immediately made us richer. But how? We would have lost all the money we get
from the Treasury and we would have a hard border between England and Scotland
because it would be the external border of the EU. All those lorries bringing
us food would have to pay tariffs if indeed they chose to come at all. We would
have had to pay for our own vaccine. The British Army would not have built any
hospitals. SAGE would have given Sturgeon no advice. In addition, we would have
had all the costs associated with setting up a new state. Long term you may believe
Scotland would be richer. Perhaps we would, but short term even the SNP admit
that independence would bring austerity and tough times for a decade or more.
So how would we have dealt better with Covid if Yes had won in 2014?
But crucially if Scotland had voted for independence
in 2014 or in the years since, Sturgeon would have had exactly the same power
as now to deal with Covid. The only difference is that she would have had to
accept responsibility and Scottish voters would have had to judge her on her
domestic record.
This is our problem. Only if Scotland voted for independence
would the SNP be judged on how well or how badly it ran Scotland, or would we
continue to blame England for past wrongs just like Ireland does.
Everyone in Scotland votes according to their view on independence
and ignores the SNP’s domestic record. But sorry whatever has happened this
year because of Covid is entirely due to the SNP.
If you think lockdown was a mistake. If you think losing
your job or losing your business was too high a price to pay. If your father
died from cancer because he couldn’t get treatment, your uncle had a heart
attack because he couldn’t see a doctor or your mother died in a care home
because Sturgeon emptied the wards, there is no use blaming Boris Johnson even
if you think he is a posh English idiot who took us out of the EU. Tories had
nothing to do with Covid policies in Scotland. Sturgeon had the power and the
money to what she pleased. She runs Scotland right now as if we were independent.
There is no one else to blame.
