At last, the Union has a real champion

THERESA May’s speech to the Tories in Scotland yesterday was like a shaft of sunshine through the storm cloud’s gloom.

Since the very minute the September 2014 independence poll sounded the death knell for the SNP’s reckless separation plan, Scots have been berated over our No vote – How very dare we defy Alex Salmond! – and threatened with Indyref 2.

How refreshing, then, to hear the Prime Minister cut through all the intimidation, ultimatums and bluster.

‘We are four nations, but at heart one people,’ said Mrs May. ‘The fundamental strengths of our Union, and the benefits it brings to all of its constituent parts, are clear.’

She touched on the intangibles of the Union – ‘the world’s greatest family of nations... our collective achievements’ – but also on the practical benefits of the UK, with a special mention for shipbuilding.

Mrs May is not one to pull punches. She has been consistent in her warnings that Brexit will happen, but that it is no simple matter. It has risks, yes, and it has opportunities. She singled out whisky as an area where Scotland could benefit from shedding the shackles of the EU.

There was a broadside, too, over Nicola Sturgeon’s woeful record.

‘The SNP Government is interested only in stoking-up endless constitutional grievance and furthering their obsession with independence, at the expense of Scottish public services like the NHS and education.’

Make no mistake. This was an excoriating critique of a fumbling Government filled with weak operators from a top-tier politician.

Scots know only too well how so many aspects of day-to-day life have been damaged while the SNP desperately throws all its efforts into resurrecting its moribund independence bid. We have had long years of the SNP insisting another referendum – and, indeed, the break-up of the UK – is inevitable.

The rebuttal to that in Glasgow yesterday was unequivocal.

Mrs May insisted that the UK ‘we cherish’ is not a thing of the past. ‘The Union I am determined to strengthen and sustain is one that works for working people across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.’

That stands in stark contrast with an SNP Government bounced by the Greens into making Scots the most-taxed people in the UK, sending a negative message to investors and entrepreneurs.

Brexit has failed to lift the Nationalists. Polls show no more enthusiasm for independence now than before the EU vote – and no wonder.

More than a million Scots voted Leave. Very many of them were SNP supporters who grasped the incongruity of wresting power from Westminster only to hand it to Brussels.

So the ever-opportunistic Miss Sturgeon has shifted her narrative. Now we must seek independence because ‘the Tories have no mandate in Scotland’. What errant rubbish. There are 650 seats in the Commons of which the SNP holds 54, while the Tories have 330.

To ignore that, to pretend Scotland is not represented, is being ignored, is an attack on the very underpinnings of democracy.

What we witnessed yesterday was a Prime Minister who cares passionately about the Union and one who – unlike her predecessor – is prepared to roll up her sleeves to tackle the heavy lifting.

To make Brexit work for all of the UK and simultaneously see off the threat of the SNP is a daunting but crucial task.

Yesterday, Mrs May showed she is up to the challenge and, indeed, relishes the task.