If Boris Johnson were First Minister of Scotland and
leader of the SNP, he wouldn’t have to worry about the cost of decorating his flat,
nor would he need to worry about remarking in a meeting about bodies being piled
high. In Scotland it is necessary to text small boys before you are pressured
in to resigning and only after the SNP does all it can to prevent the story
coming out. Even then the person forced to resign remains loyal to Sturgeon and
the SNP. The payment for silence is usually a quick welcome back into the SNP.
The payment for making a nuisance of yourself may be that there is a police
investigation, an attempt to find witnesses who will tell all about what you
did and when you did it, a court case and if you are unlucky a long-term visit
to the big hoose at Bar L. Funnily enough we don’t have too many whistle-blowers
or former advisors looking for revenge in Scotland.
I haven’t been bothered to follow the story of the
redecoration of Boris and Carrie’s flat in any great detail, nor indeed his
alleged remarks about trying to avoid lockdown and it being worth letting
bodies pile high to do so. The broadcast news is filled with stories that will
be forgotten next month let alone next year, but still, we have to go through
the ritual of journalists swooping on gossip like seagulls trying to snatch
your sandwich. They will tire of it after all and look for their next victim. A
little wile ago it was the unnamed royal who might have made a dodgy remark
about race (swoop, snap, bite). A bit before they were obsessed with ventilators
(flap, squeal, peck). Next month it will be something else and someone else,
but the significance of the press coverage will rarely rise above mere
squawking.
It may have been beneficial if we had locked down
earlier in 2020 and it certainly would have helped if we had stopped people flying
here from where there were lots of cases such as China and Italy. But I recall
no one in the press or on TV suggesting that we do so. The Conservative
Government had a difficult start to the crisis and no doubt made mistakes, but
Britain is now in one of the best positions in the world. We are coming out of
lockdown, there are few cases and almost no deaths. Instead of focussing on what
matters we talk about redecoration and a chance remark in the heat of the
moment.
No one in the press suggested that Britain should go
it alone in procuring vaccines. If we had done what the SNP suggested and stuck
with the EU, we would today be no better off than the average EU country still
stuck in lockdown with months to go before we could get out. The decision made by
Boris Johnson has saved thousands of British lives and will save our economy billions
of British pounds, but let’s worry about the cost of painting his flat.
I cannot remember the last remark that Nicola Sturgeon
made during a cabinet meeting that was leaked by anyone. Even official meetings
are unminuted. Scottish civil servants and special advisors far from leaking
what Sturgeon says cannot even remember what was said, where they were or
indeed what planet they were living on. The Scottish Government has a tame Crown
Office to prevent anything that might possibly be damaging to Sturgeon from
being seen by an inquiry. She has a tame press corps too who are more like
budgerigars fluttering round her head tweeting pleasantly than the ravenous
seagulls from down south.
In Scotland we can fail to build a hospital, we can
pay a fortune for ferries that don’t float, and we can have the same sort of
dodgy meetings with Greensill as David Cameron had, but we can never quite get
into a flap about it let alone a squawk. Imagine if the likely successor to Boris
Johnson was caught sending dubious texts to a teenage boy and that the Prime
Minister tried to prevent the story getting to the press. Would the press be
more or less excited than they are now? But in Scotland Mr MacKay is not
followed by the press. No one much cares that he claims Holyrood expenses though
he does not sit in the building and no one at all is very interested that Sturgeon
hoped to cover the whole thing up.
If the battle between Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon
had taken place in England it would have been the biggest political story in
decades. There would have been an impartial judge compelling all evidence was
provided. If an inquiry had said that the Prime Minister had misled Parliament,
he would certainly have resigned. But in Scotland not merely did Sturgeon not
resign, Labour and the Lib Dems thought she ought not to.
It cannot be that both Sturgeon and Salmond were
innocent. If one of them is telling the truth, the other must be lying. One or
other of their conduct was reprehensible. But the Scottish electorate has
already not merely forgiven, it is as if it has completely forgotten and wants both
Salmond and Sturgeon to be elected to Holyrood as if the reputation of neither
is unstained. It’s like Jeremy Thorpe had a dog shot, nobody cared, and he kept
on leading like nothing had happened.
Sturgeon thinks Boris should resign because of a remark
that if she had made it would never have been leaked. Has she never once in
private, due to exasperation or anger said something to a colleague that she
later regretted and hoped would not be discovered by the rest of us? Which of
us hasn’t? Boris’s alleged remark is merely the equivalent of my saying “I will
arrive come Hell or high water”. It doesn’t mean I expect either Hell or high
water. I am using hyperbole. Only a press that takes everything literally could
think that anyone was proposing literally to pile bodies high.
In Scotland you can allegedly try to have your
predecessor jailed and mislead Parliament about it, in England Boris Johnson
has just been arrested because on returning home from a busy day he said that he
could murder a cup of tea and his former special advisor called the police on
the grounds that cups of tea matter and attempting to murder them is a crime.