Yes, she’s embattled, but the PM’s a fighter... and Unionist to her core

Jonathan Brocklebank

AMONG the first words uttered in the first public speech Theresa May gave on the day she became Prime Minister were these: ‘Not everybody knows this, but the full title of my party is the Conservative and Unionist Party, and that word “Unionist” is very important to me.’ To me too. Increasingly so. Mrs May continued: ‘It means we believe in the Union: the precious, precious bond between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. But it means something else that is just as important; it means we believe in a union not just between the nations of the United Kingdom but between all of our citizens, every one of us, whoever we are and wherever we’re from.’ A fine message, but the PM will have forgiven Unionist Scots for digesting it with a side order of scepticism.

For an outfit which styles itself the Conservative and Unionist Party its track record on conserving the Union has too often done little to reassure, far less inspire.

In foisting the hated Poll Tax on Scotland before rolling it out in the rest of the UK, Margaret Thatcher did for the subtleties of the Union’s equilibrium what bulls are wont to do for china shops.

A surge in SNP popularity followed and, thereafter, her decision became a cautionary tale on the catastrophic electoral consequences of roadtesting bad policies in geographical areas where governments are weak.

Thanks to that staunch Unionist Mrs Thatcher, thousands of Scots were converted overnight to Nationalism.

Cricket-loving John Major was another dyed in the wool Unionist. He opposed devolution, clumsily insisting Scotland must be run from London and that a Scottish parliament would weaken the nation. On a visit to Aberdeen in 1997 he told people: ‘Look in my eyes and know this. I will always deal fair and true by this great nation.’

Mr Major was a decent sort. Were he a second-hand car salesman he might have sold a few up here. But in the General Election a fortnight later he and his Conservatives and Unionists were eviscerated. Not one Tory MP was left anywhere in Scotland. A north of the Border thrashing so complete had never happened to his party before.

Charm

We were ten years into the present century before another Conservative and Unionist Prime Minister was afforded the chance to try his charm on the Scots – who, by then, had voted a Nationalist government into the parliament that John Major had not wanted.

This one’s name was Cameron – not a bad start, certainly. Less encouraging for Unionists was the fact that, two years into his premiership, he was signing the Edinburgh Agreement which allowed Alex Salmond through with a first clear shot at the independence goal.

I don’t blame Mr Cameron for putting his name to it. Refusing would have been undemocratic and a denial of all the missteps – Conservative and Labour – which had brought Scottish politics to this point.

Still, for a Conservative and Unionist like Mr Cameron, being the one who signed the Union away would not be a good look in the history books. He would have to dig deep, fight hard, summon all his political talents to ensure that his party’s name still had any meaning in the post-independence referendum era.

‘Golly, that was close!’ the impish grin seemed to say after the votes were counted. And later, when he was overheard joking to the mayor of New York that ‘the definition of relief’ was being the British PM calling the Queen to tell her the Union was safe, he confirmed that was indeed what the grin had said.

I’d rather Mr Cameron had not made light of the situation. It would have been better if he had denied himself even the tiniest gloat.

Instead, with a tin ear to the mood music of the moment, he chuntered about ‘English votes for English laws’ on the very morning 1.6million Scots’ independence dream was denied.

Another staunch Unionist Prime Minister on the wrong page at the wrong time.

Of course, even before Mr Cameron made it out of that referendum with his job intact, he had set in train another one which his premiership would not survive.

Unionists like me voted Remain in that referendum, not through any passionate belief in the serviceability of the European Union but for a quiet life, to avoid booting the constitutional hornets’ nest into paroxysms of fury again so soon.

But it was not to be and fury now fills the body politic, puffing it up to bursting point. Which brings us back to the day Mrs May stood outside 10 Downing Street as Mr Cameron’s successor and told people the word ‘Unionist’ was important to her.

Well, we would see about that. And now, I would suggest, we have. Deep into negotiations which may well end in the political and economic chaos of No Deal on our departure from the EU, the integrity of the Union remains Mrs May’s red line.

There is every chance that, even if she gets a deal, it will be voted down in the Commons and she will have no alternative but to resign.

So be it, is the attitude I am picking up from Mrs May. A Conservative and Unionist Prime Minister does not imperil the Union. Not this one, at any rate.

Nations

Indeed, in the week Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson made it known she would resign if the Brexit deal treated component nations of the Union differently, is it not increasingly clear that Mrs May herself would rather quit than sign off on such arrangement?

‘Now is not the time,’ she told First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, who tried to use Brexit to bounce Scots into yet another independence referendum three years after the first.

Nor is now the time to forget about the commitment she made to the Union on the Downing Street front step.

There is much about Mrs May and, truth be known, about her party, that I do not warm to. But I warm to that.

Beleaguered, mocked, sniped at from all sides and faced with a predicament which appears to offer no logical solution far less a political one, the Prime Minister’s Brexit challenge is of an order which makes her predecessors’ problems seem almost routine by comparison.

Perhaps she will prove unequal to the challenge. Possibly she will go down in history as the Tory PM who first lost her authority and majority by calling an unnecessary election and then lost her way out of Europe as politicians with less to lose than she roared contradictory directions from the sidelines.

Maybe the spoils of her failure will pass to Jeremy Corbyn or – equally worrying for the cause of Unionism – Boris Johnson. And the Scots who cared so passionately about their stake in the Union will learn what life is like under a Prime Minister who barely thinks about it at all.

You think Margaret Thatcher did not get the Scots? In the art of fomenting a disconnect, the utterly self-serving Mr Johnson would prove the Iron Lady a mere beginner.

Mr Corbyn, meanwhile, is so obviously unfussed about the prospect of the Union fragmenting that his Labour colleagues north of the Border live in permanent dread of him being asked about Scotland.

Who knows where the pieces will fall and what might land on Mrs May when they do.

But I know this: that word ‘Unionist’ is very important to her. And I’m grateful for that.