Over to you, Field Marshal Gove. The Union’s future is in your hands
WHO is the most important figure in government? Not Boris Johnson. The Prime Minister is the frontof-house manager but those are subject to change every five years. Nor is it Dominic Cummings, central though he is to this administration’s policy and positioning.
No, the answer is Michael Gove. The ceremonial duties of the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster are so quaintly Elizabethan that reading them aloud can double as an audition for Richard II at the Globe. But Gove’s real post is Minister for Getting Things Done, and the thing he has been assigned to get done now is the most significant matter facing this Government.
As the Scottish Daily Mail revealed last week, Gove has been appointed to chair a new sub-committee of the Cabinet on Union policy. I understand there is growing alarm in the UK Government about the threat to the Union, and with it an increasing impatience with the Cameronera policy of appeasement.
Theresa May broke with her predecessor on this strategy but did not take many with her. Now, I am led to believe, there is the appetite for a fightback.
Downing Street has been convinced by three factors. The first is Brexit. There are no plans to extend the transition period, so ministers are aware that a fresh battle over repatriated powers is looming. The second, and related, concern is the UK single market, something the Nationalists deny exists but also seek to use to their advantage. There is growing recognition that the absence of formal institutions and governance principles is a structural flaw in this market.
The third factor is Covid-19. The pandemic has opened more eyes at Westminster to the scale of what has already been devolved and how this frustrates the centre’s ability to co-ordinate national responses to national emergencies. The penny has finally dropped with an almighty clatter.
That it has taken the Tories so long to arrive at fairly self-evident conclusions is a testament to their unforgivable neglect of the Union. The mistakes of devolution were Labour’s but across a decade in office the Tories have failed to put them right, and during the Cameron years have actually made them worse. Still, the fact that Downing Street appreciates the need for a counter-offensive is welcome. Gove will co-ordinate that counter-attack, a move that should be met with relief by those who value the United Kingdom.
Relief, but nothing more. Gove is a fine strategist and has the nerve for a fight, but he assumes the mantle of the Union’s Field Marshal Montgomery.
He must reverse losses and recover territory, then push the enemy back further. It is not enough to win at El Alamein; the Union must prevail at Tunis, Sicily, Normandy, and beyond. Years of ignorance, cowardice and complacency have come at great cost, and great effort will be required to reassert the Union.
Recalibration
That reassertion will require a recalibration of devolution so that it serves the needs of the Scottish people but can no longer be a battering ram against the United Kingdom.
Part of the Prime Minister’s ‘New Deal’ is using the Shared Prosperity Fund to invest directly in Scotland, something I have previously argued for. That is good news but Gove must make it clear to the Prime Minister that money is not enough. Chancellor Rishi Sunak has been singlehandedly propping up the Scottish economy and public opinion has actually shifted against the Tories.
The SNP is waging a war of attrition using culture, identity and captured institutions as its artillery, and Westminster is sending accountants into battle in response. Michael Gove must change this. It is no secret that he has ambitions for higher office but even if he achieves it, almost nothing he could do in Number 10 would be of comparable import to the duty that now rests on his shoulders. It is no stretch to say, though it may make him shudder to hear, that the future of the Union is in his hands.
He must articulate a Conservative approach that puts the unity of the UK at the heart of our constitution and reorients devolution back to its original, bread-and-butter functions.
The Scottish parliament exists to run public services in a way that is attuned to distinct Scottish needs and circumstances. It is not a rival seat of sovereign power. Gove should urge an end to the one-way ratchet towards secession by recommending a presumption against further power transfers to Holyrood, with any additional devolution subject to a test of its likely impact on the Union.
If he succeeds in standing athwart devolution and yelling ‘Stop’, Gove will have a creditable achievement to his name. However, this would still leave many mistakes uncorrected and it might be necessary to consider more radical steps.
A principle of our constitution is that Parliament cannot bind future incarnations of itself. The Scotland Acts are therefore not holy writs and are subject to revision as Parliament deems fitting. A future Scotland Act that redraws the devolution settlement to preserve the sovereignty of the Crown-in-Parliament and the political integrity of the UK should not be ruled out.
Whatever he chooses to do, Gove will be vilified by not only the SNP but the commentariat, the academics, the ‘creatives’, the third-sector core-funding-seekers, and the weak-kneed among the proUnion ranks. He should treat the intensity of their hatred as a barometer of his effectiveness. The Union is the defining issue of our times. I wish it wasn’t. I wish it was reducing poverty or improving education or marshalling technology to improve health outcomes. The Nationalists will not allow us to move on to these matters until they get what they want and will continue to use devolution to pursue their constitutional goal.
Those who oppose that goal have a choice: give in and give them what they want, or change devolution so it can no longer deliver what they want.