Instead of flying to the US and pointing out their problems maybe Nicola could stay and fix her own
AMeRICANS are somewhat ambivalent about monarchy. You will recall that unfortunate business in Boston harbour a number of years ago. Then again, they seem quite keen on all the pageantry and regalia.
They are also well aware of the colourful array of characters the republican system of government brings into public life. Whatever else might be said about elizabeth II, she will never be seen in a red baseball cap leading chants about border infrastructure projects and who will be paying for them.
For the next two days, our Stateside cousins will be graced by the presence of another regal figurehead: Nicola Sturgeon. She has visited previously, of course, but that was back when she was plain old First Minister of Scotland and before her cult of personality went from something her fans believed in to something she believed in.
Today, she rolls into Washington DC to begin her royal tour as Nicola I of Scotland, empress of Glasgow Southside, Defender of the Woke and head of the Church of Perpetual Grievance. She’s kind of a big deal, don’t you know?
The centrepiece of the visit will be an address to the prestigious Washington think tank, the Brookings Institution.
Relationship
Ahead of her trip, Sturgeon said: ‘Our two nations share a strong relationship – one which we can strengthen further still by working together to tackle pressing global issues such as the climate emergency, gender inequality and the crisis resulting from Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine.
‘We share many priorities and face many of the same challenges and, by working together, we can better address these,’ she added.
Yes, it’s another of those totally apolitical international trips by the head of a devolved administration. All about trade and tourism. Definitely not trying to elbow the UK aside and foster direct diplomatic links with a foreign power. Devolution in action.
Then again, spare a thought for the poor policy wonks who will have to sit through a Nicola Sturgeon speech on ‘Scotland’s role in tackling the global climate crisis’ and a question and answer session afterwards. It sounds like the worst thing we’ve inflicted on Washington since 1812.
These sorts of junkets pre-date not only the SNP’s arrival in power but legislative devolution itself. So does the idea of the Scottish Government ‘hub’, various of which are now dotted around the world.
This fact is often thrown at anyone objecting to the SNP’s independence-bystealth strategy, as though it debunked all our criticisms. The intellectual dishonSupreme esty of this line of argument is patent but it does helpfully, if inadvertently, make our point for us.
Trade and investment jollies and pseudo-consulates worked just fine when Scotland’s parliament was in Westminster. Creating a rival legislature meant a rival political class and the political class has yet to be formed that didn’t prioritise enlarging its own power.
Come 2007 and the SNP’s victory, there was now a party in charge that was canny enough to marshal the pre-1999 bureaucracy and the institutions of devolution into an embryonic state.
After 70 years in the wilderness, toiling for a separate Scottish government, the SNP got into office and realised half the job had already been done for it.
It’s not the first time Sturgeon has used overseas visits to advance her cause of dismantling the United Kingdom, having done so previously in the United States and France.
The irony of doing this in the US will not be lost on those familiar with American constitutional law and what it says about the indissolubility of their Union.
Suffice to say, Nicola Sturgeon would not wish to swap Westminster for the US federal government as her foe of choice.
If the Governor of Louisiana used an official visit to London to promote the break-up of the United States, the United States government would take something of an interest in his activities. (Plus, as a former French colony, Louisiana probably has more chance of getting into the eU than Scotland.)
To her credit, Sturgeon doesn’t bother to pretend her visit is non-political – and not just in her framing of Scotland as an emerging independent country.
The First Minister has condemned reported plans by the US Supreme Court to strike down federal abortion laws. She says ‘a woman’s right to choose, in my view, is fundamental’ and that ‘I’ll make that clear in America’.
Americans are hotly divided over a leaked judicial opinion by Justice Samuel Alito (Princeton, Yale, federal prosecutor, adjunct law professor, federal judge, Court justice) and will no doubt be eager to hear the thoughts of Nicola Sturgeon (Glasgow Uni, couple of years as a solicitor, list MSP, head of permanent campaign for independence).
But while Sturgeon is more than entitled to jet off to the US and lecture its judiciary on her own time, there are rather a lot of problems she might be better attending to at home.
There is the small matter of those £250million contracts for the two ferries that still haven’t been delivered and which were commissioned despite warnings of legal risks. There is a sluggish economy and the hollowing out of town and city centres by lockdown, a fate due to be sealed by an SNP tax on parking at the office. There is a cost-of-living crisis which is seeing families struggling to meet their most basic needs.
There are some of the worst A&e waiting times since records began and backlogs in treatment for life-threatening illnesses. If only we could get the US Supreme Court to share its thoughts on cancer waiting times in Scotland, we might manage to stir the First Minister’s interest.
Platform
expecting Nicola Sturgeon to be in Scotland addressing the issues that matter most to Scotland might sound parochial to some but that is, after all, supposed to be the bread and butter of a devolved administration. It is meant to focus on schools and hospitals, the subjects that come up most at the parish pump. It is not a platform for grinding personal axes about the constitution – ours or America’s. Reserved matters are reserved for a reason: they are properly the purview of the UK Parliament.
Sturgeon and her government wish to usurp this settlement for their own political reasons and because, let’s face it, flying off to tell other countries what they’re getting wrong is a lot less demanding than staying in your own country and fixing what you’ve got wrong.
Strengthening trade and cultural links with the United States is a good thing. encouraging long-term investment in Scottish markets, and helping Scottish entrepreneurs nudge their way into US markets, is to be welcomed.
An informed Scottish perspective can contribute insights and secure outcomes that would not necessarily come to the mind of your average Whitehall minister or envoy. If devolution is good for anything in this area it is helping to fill in gaps when it comes to awareness of Scottish potential in sectors such as digital, medical technology, manufacturing and renewables.
That is not the purpose of Nicola I’s royal delegation to the old colonies.
The purpose is what it always is these days: promoting independence and promoting herself. Not necessarily in that order, either.