Discover more from REACTION
“Stands Scotland where it did?” Well, compared with a week ago, the Union is slightly firmer on its feet. Because Nicola Sturgeon is such a cold creature – not so much a sliver of ice in the heart as a few scraps of tissue clinging to an icicle – people have tended to overrate her abilities. But she is not a statesman in waiting, merely a tricoteuse waiting for a tumbril. She thinks that she can become the Stone-heart of Destiny. All she deserves is a bit-part in a Tale of Two Cities.
Anyway, as if to justify a reduced political valuation, La Tricoteuse has demonstrated that it is not only the PM and the Chancellor who make political mistakes. She had an opportunity, which she turned into a problem. The opportunity was Article 50 and all the references to a hard Brexit: in Scotland, the Remainers won a majority. Yet Miss Sturgeon had a difficulty. Around a third of Nat voters were in favour of leaving. Among the most unrealistic and perverse characters to be found outside a lunatic asylum, most of those had moved over from the primitive Marxist wing of the Labour party. They are miserable, because the organisation which they would like to join is no longer available: the Warsaw Pact.
But they succeeded in spooking the ice-maiden, into her equivalent of the Scots coming down the hill at Dunbar. All she had to say was this. “Theresa May and Boris Johnson are being utterly irresponsible. It is clear that they have no answers to the questions posed by Brexit. In a deeply divided Conservative party, they are only interested in clinging on to power, whatever the consequences for the rest of us. If there is a crash-landing into a hard Brexit, the crash could seriously damage Scotland’s prospects. But those English Tories do not care. So on behalf of the people of Scotland, I, as First Minister, demand a place at the negotiating table in order to safeguard Scotland’s interests. I trust that Ruth Davidson and Kezia Dugdale, both Remainers, will both join me in this. If the English Government remains obdurate, there would be a strong case for a second referendum, but my more immediate priority is a rescue mission, to minimise the damage cause by Mrs May’s irresponsibility.”
Although that would have left many questions unanswered, it has never been part of an Opposition politician’s duty to volunteer for awkward questions. The First Icicle did, and she could not cope with them. Without saying whether Scotland should leave or remain, she merely floundered around in impractical currencies and implausible free-trade deals. It was a delightful come-uppance, all the more so for being self-inflicted.
This may also have a more lasting significance. It is possible that Nicola Sturgeon is less confident than she tries to appear. If so, she has good reasons. As a government, the SNP’s record is appalling. In every department, they have spent more money to deliver worse services. This is especially true in education, which strikes at one of Scotland’s most treasured national myths. To many Scots, it is an article of faith that their education system has always been one of the best in the world: certainly better than England’s. Universal education was the norm much earlier. Scotland had four universities when England only had two – and those mainly acting as finishing-schools for the upper class. North of the border, the lad o’ pairts who was prepared to stick in would enjoy an education worthy of his abilities.
That was the myth. In reality, standards in Scottish education have been declining for at least a generation. Comprehensive education and dumbed-down exams have wreaked the same sabotage as in England. Yet there have been some recent improvements in England, thanks to that proud Scot, Michael Gove. In Scotland, the Nats have ensured that Scottish children will be protected from Gove-ism. In a globalised job-market, this will make it harder for Scots to compete with other nations, including England. Let us be fair to the Nats and assume that they do not actually want to turn out sullen, ill-educated kids only equipped for life on benefits. But that is the current danger.
The First Tricoteuse may see an even more pressing danger. Scots are beginning to notice. In the year up until the independence referendum, a large number of Scots lost their heads. It would be impossible to describe the national mood without reference to psycho-pathology. There was an outbreak of religious mania. Apparently intelligent Scots would insist that oil-fields had been discovered to the West of Shetland, but London was keeping this quiet, for fear that it would encourage nationalism. Alan Cochrane, known to Reaction readers, described the SNP as a cult. He got a text from Brian Wilson, a former Labour minister who is now a peer. In adolescence, Brian was a laird-basher, trying to stir up trouble in the Highlands. He later atoned, by staunch resistance to devolution. “There are a lot of cults out there,” he told Alan.
Since then, there has been a decline in cultish-ness. Given his reputation, it might seem an unlikely dictum to come from him, but perhaps Epicurus was right and no prolonged pain is intense, while no intense one is prolonged. The same may be true of political hysteria. Partly because of the Holyrood administration’s blunders, some of the intensity has gone out of Nationalism. So has all the economics. Between the loss of the Barnett formula – that is, the subsidy from the rest of the UK – and the decline in oil revenues, an independent Scotland would be broke. Those points are getting across. Albeit in a slow and snarling fashion, there are signs that enough Scots are beginning to re-engage with realism. Dickson McCunn has not been eradicated from the Scottish psyche.
La Sturgeon knows that she cannot go on having referendums: “neverendums” in Hugo Rifkind’s felicitous word. The next time, she has to win. That is why she is less self-assured than she might seem. There is a good auld Scots phrase for adversity: “having your kale through the reek.” Although am not exactly sure what that means, it does not sound Epicurean, as the term is normally understood. It is the task of Scottish Unionists, under the admirable leadership of Ruth Davidson, to ensure that Nicola Sturgeon’s political diet is as ungenerous as her personality.
Even so, that will not be enough. The Union could come under threat, from another quarter. It is a tragedy that we even have to think in these terms, for the Union of the Parliaments was the most successful single constitutional development in all history. Some might claim that honour for the establishment of the United States, but that did require half a million dead in a Civil War. Moreover, recent events suggest that American democracy is still only a work in progress.
Before 1707, Scotland was a poor and backward country, in which reeky kale was a delicacy. Within a few decades, with Edinburgh as the Athens of the North, the Scottish Enlightenment was in the vanguard of European intellectual life. A little later, Glasgow was the second city of the British Empire. Although the methods used to bring the Highlands within the rule of law and order rarely erred on the side of lenity, that magnificent landscape became an adornment of the human condition.
Once the Highlands could be safely enjoyed, they could be transfigured into a symphony of sea and mountain: an inspiration for poets and psalmists, mystics and – sportsmen. Add the splendours of Edinburgh, the wealth of Glasgow – it too had plenty of decent architecture – and there was all the material that Scottish romantics needed, from Scott to Buchan. Never had a small nation punched so stylishly above its weight.
So what could possibly go wrong? There is a short answer: everything. Scotland was afflicted by a malign combination of forces: the loss of Empire, size, sport, globalisation, a world-historical political personality who did wonders in England but whose powers turned to poison when they crossed the border – and finally, bad history.
1.a) Empire: the days of dreams and glory. The British Empire was wonderful for Scotland. It meant that Dr Johnson was out of date. The best prospect for a Scotsman was no longer the high road to England, unless that meant a brief sojourn in London, on the way to the colonies. Those lads o’ pairts who had profited (and no doubt occasionally suffered) under a dominie, set off for a high stool in a counting house, to be trained for the high seas. Forget the modern Nova Scotia: as Robertson Davies’s novels make clear, Scotland virtually founded Canada. If you ignore the recalcitrant Frenchmen in Quebec – defeated by that great Scotsman, General Wolfe – the whole place was Nova Scotia.
1.b) Empire: recessional. The effect of the end of Empire on working-class consciousness has been insufficiently examined, largely because the field is dominated by lefties who are only interested in the failure of working-class consciousness to build socialism. But in the inter-war years, even the poorest families must have taken some consolation from the fact that so much of the globe was painted red: that the King-Emperor exercised his dominion over palm and pine. Constitutionally, this was already out of date: the dominions were no such thing. But the brutally sudden loss of Empire in twenty post-war years, while so much else was going wrong, must have struck at many people’s sense of Britishness. Land of Hope and Glory: the glory was vanishing, and the same often seemed to apply to the hope. Though the words are from an English anthem, that was equally true of Scotland.
2. Size. In Scotland, this, or rather the lack of it, was an exacerbating factor. Scotland has around one-tenth of England’s population. This can easily lead to chippiness. Once the Empire had gone, the UK was like a great aristocratic family, which had owned a palace stretching over several acres. This had room for everyone, including the room to avoid unwelcome company. Now, however, the Palace had gone. There was only the old dower-house. People had to share kitchens and bathrooms. Dislikes and grievances festered. The Scots are good at grievance: nursing their wrath to keep it warm. Every time an English politician uses “England” to mean “British” half of Scotland implodes. It is easy for Scot-Nat malcontents to claim that with the end of Empire, Scotland is England’s last colony.
3. Sport. It might seem absurd to mention anything as trivial as sport in this context. Alas, not so. In the UK as a whole, football has become a secular religion. In Scotland, the infection is at its worst. Bill Shankly, a famous football manager, once deplored the tendency to treat football as a matter of life and death. “How could anyone say that? It’s far more important.” Mr Shankly was joking. Not all Scots would have picked up the humour, especially when it comes to rivalry with England. The good little ‘un sometimes beats the big one, but over the years, size inevitably prevails. England qualifies for International competitions far more often than Scotland does. In North Britain, this is gall and worm-wood. It has inflamed the anti-English feeling which so disfigures the Scottish character.
4. Globalisation. That might seem as far away as possible from the petty antagonisms of the football pitch: not so. Two generations ago, probably as many as ninety percent of Scots lived within fifty miles of a coal-field, an steel-works or a shipyard. That all seemed an integral part of Scotland: not only an economic entitlement, but a human right. Those days are over.
5. The Iron Lady. That economic change was inevitable. But it was unfortunate that it occurred on Margaret Thatcher’s watch, so that this English Iron Lady could be accused of carpet-bombing Scotland’s industrial heritage. This was a subject on which it has been impossible to persuade most Scots to see reason.
6. Post-factual history. The Thatcher difficulty is exacerbated by the bad history which fills so many Scottish heads. A lot of Scots appear to believe that they would have been Covenanters in the 1680s and Jacobites in the 1740s. As for William Wallace, he was a poll-tax rebel cruelly put to death by Margaret Thatcher. Anyone who argued that the Highland clearances rescued tens of thousands of Scots from a level of existence that was often nearer starvation that subsistence would be accused of justifying genocide.
All of that ought to be a profound source of regret to any Scot who values his country’s reputation. But it will probably not be enough to break the Union. When the moment of decision occurs, enough Scots will always refuse to secede from England’s cheque-book – and think that in so doing, they are conveying a blessing on the English. That brings us to the threat from another quarter: England. The English might have a different perspective on Scottish benisons. If the Scots vote for the union with all the grace of an ill-favoured cur, deterred from biting his owner merely because the owner carries a big stick, the English might not be impressed.
They have already noticed that the Scots do not seem to like them. During the referendum in 2014, a lot of English observers were waiting to be told why the Scots were so upset. No clear answer emerged. Scots seemed to be saying. “We don’t like you English. But we do want your money. So we’ll forgive you for being English, as long as you continue to pay Scot-geld via the Barnett formula.” Oddly enough, that message was not well-received. The English are one of the politest races on earth. Stand on an Englishman’s foot, and he will apologise. A second time, a second apology. Only on the third occasion will there be a punch on the nose. The Scots are now at 2.9. For those of us who are profound Unionists, it is fortunate that the English have no way of expressing their dissatisfaction. But a Union based on Scots ingratitude and English disillusion is no longer stable.
Subscribe to REACTION
Iain Martin and the team make sense of the news, providing commentary and analysis on the stories that matter in politics, geopolitics, economics and culture.