Rishi was swept into the Commons just as I was swept out of it by the SNP tsunami. So this is my advice to him for tackling the Nationalists
From giving ministers their marching orders (to visit all parts of the UK) to not treating Sturgeon like a foreign potentate – this former Scots minister hopes the new PM will listen to his counsel... and help maintain the United Kingdom
Congratulations on reaching number 10. You are no doubt coming to terms with the countless demands of your new job while seeking to calm the country, your party and the international money markets after the unique and chaotic circumstances that led to the resignation of your immediate predecessor.
I left the Commons at exactly the same time you entered it, a victim of the nationalist tsunami of 2015. as a scot, i believe that scotland, and the preservation and strengthening of our precious union, should be among your top priorities. However long you are Prime Minister, you do not want to be remembered by history as the leader whose misjudgments or complacency led to the final breakup of the world’s most successful political, social, economic and cultural relationship.
And even your bitterest critics can hardly accuse you of making a bad start. liz truss made a schoolgirl error by following through on her campaign promise to ignore nicola sturgeon; she may only have held office for less than 50 days but that was more than enough time to pick up the phone to the leader of scotland’s devolved parliament.
Yet she did not and as a result the First Minister was handed an undeserved propaganda tool, another weapon in her armoury of grievance, able to claim that Westminster was ignoring scotland.
In your ministerial roles so far, you may have been able to avoid too much engagement on the fraught constitutional issue that has hobbled scotland since before the independence referendum in 2014.
Lucky you! But now you can no longer avoid it and one of the things you need to get used to is Miss sturgeon’s tendency to equate herself with scotland as a whole.
Liz Truss was not, of course, ignoring scotland; she was ignoring one particular politician. But there are plenty of scots who will eagerly echo whatever complaint the First Minister wishes to make about the uK government. this is frustrating and tedious, but for now you would be as well to play the game and pay her the attention she demands as First Minister. that one of your first moves in office was to call her was an act of maturity and political tact that bodes well.
Not being privy to that conversation, i can only speculate, but i’m sure that i would not be far wrong in suggesting that after the initial pleasantries, Miss sturgeon waited less than a second before making the case for a second independence referendum.
You must get used to this: a referendum is not only the nationalists’ top priority; it is their only priority and you will no doubt get used to dealing with this request, however often it is repeated.
You must continue to say no. as a Yorkshire MP and an experienced minister, you will be aware of scotland’s interminable debate about independence, and it is worth recalling why another of your predecessors, David Cameron, allowed that 2014 referendum in the first place. it was because he believed that a decisive win for the no campaign would draw a line under the whole debate.
To that end he drew up the Edinburgh agreement, which committed both sides to respecting the outcome. a free and fair referendum would end the debate for at least a generation.
But Mr Cameron was foolish to believe that. the only thing that could truly have ended SNP demands for another referendum would have been if scots had voted Yes in 2014. But instead we gave the ‘wrong’ response and so demands for a second referendum have been with us since the day after the last one.
this is where ordinary scots look to you and to our government at Westminster for support. our political masters here in scotland have no love or respect for democracy or for the democratic decision we delivered in 2014; they want to unravel it as soon as possible. We need you to stay true to the Edinburgh agreement and to scots’ democratic will. We expect you to. We demand it.
So begin your time in office by remembering that you are not just England’s Prime Minister: you are as much the Prime Minister of scotland, Wales and northern ireland as any of your predecessors, pre- or post-devolution.
More importantly, you are Britain’s Prime Minister, with a remit that stretches from orkney to land’s End and from uist to Dover.
When you visit scotland – as you must do, and often – don’t regard it as a trip to foreign parts to meet with unfamiliar people. You don’t need the ‘permission’ or the approval of the scottish government to come here, any more than Miss sturgeon requires your permission to visit Fife.
Of course, every visit by a UK Prime Minister is always accompanied by the usual rent-a-crowd of nationalists who will perform for the TV cameras and try to give the impression that a particular london-based politician is not wanted here. But these can be safely ignored by you, just as they’re mostly ignored by the vast majority of ordinary scots.
And don’t come alone. You have nearly 100 ministers at various levels in your government: give them their marching orders! send them northwards to Edinburgh, glasgow, Kirkcaldy and aberdeen just as often as you send them to the red Wall seats of newcastle, Birmingham and Manchester. remind them that they are ministers in a UK government and that part of the privilege of that job is to
defend the territorial integrity of our entire country.
You would also be doing the Union a great service if you could instruct your colleagues to stop using the term ‘the four nations of the United Kingdom’. This is a phrase much beloved by the civil service as well as the industry that has sprung up in the past two decades to make political capital (and the more traditional forms of capital) out of the devolution settlement.
It’s time the UK Government stopped focusing on four separate nations – as the nationalists love us to do – and focus instead on the challenges that we, as a single, united nation, must face.
No doubt you will have been briefed by now on the case before the Supreme Court, which is expected to give a ruling in a few weeks’ time on whether Holyrood can legislate on its own for a second referendum, without the involvement or say-so of the UK Parliament. Even the First Minister doesn’t seem confident about her chances of success; the most she expects is to be allowed to hold an expensive ‘indicative’ vote that has no consequences for the constitution. If even that option is ruled out, she will have to resort to her reserve position of pretending that the next UK General Election is a ‘de facto’ referendum.
You need do nothing about any of this for the time being; the court can be trusted to interpret existing law accurately and Miss Sturgeon’s ploy to gain a ‘mandate’ for independence negotiations at a General Election is taken seriously by few people.
HOWEVER, the above should inform your discussions when you talk to Miss Sturgeon about other, more substantive issues, issues on which the Scottish parliament actually has some responsibility.
When she demands more money than Holyrood has already been given – and she will – it might be useful to invite her to explain why spending tens of millions of pounds on a referendum for which she has no authority is a good spending priority right now.
She will also ‘demand’ (Miss Sturgeon indulges in a great deal of ‘demanding’) more powers for Holyrood. You should also resist this. Unionism has suffered, since devolution’s very inception, from the twin beliefs that devolving more powers forces devolved politicians to deliver, and that by making Holyrood stronger, the Unionist parties at Holyrood would somehow benefit politically. Both theories have been utterly destroyed by the evidence in the past 20 years.
The original devolution framework was carefully thought through, initially by a cross-party convention involving the churches, the trade unions and civic society. But in 2007 the SNP won power at Holyrood for the first time and Labour, which had never even considered the prospect of an SNP-led Scottish Executive (even though it was all but obvious to everyone else) panicked.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown set up the Calman Commission to draw up plans for more devolution. The SNP trumpeted this as a great victory and duly advanced their electoral position, while the Unionist parties flailed about in impotence.
Then, after the 2014 referendum, another large chunk of powers was devolved, including income tax and social security powers. Again, this did wonders for the SNP and nothing for the Unionist parties. After all, Scots had learned that so long as they voted nationalist, the UK Government would continue to strengthen Holyrood.
Even today, there are many in Labour who simply refuse to understand this lesson.
Instead of feeding an appetite than can never be sated, you should challenge the Scottish Government to deliver on the vital services for which it is actually responsible.
Scottish ministers have not covered themselves in glory in recent years, chalking up massive failures across the board, in education, health and transport. The SNP have managed to defy political gravity and have maintained their popularity among Scottish voters by constantly pivoting to independence whenever one of their many policy failings is raised.
We must hope that if the Supreme Court rules as expected, and the option of yet another divisive referendum is shelved for the long term, voters will at last start demanding progress on the issues that affect them directly: school standards, hospital waiting lists and the building of new ferries to serve our island communities – a dreadful saga of ministerial incompetence that has come to epitomise this SNP administration.
From a party political perspective, your arrival at the head of your party will be welcomed by most Scottish Conservatives. Boris Johnson had his supporters north of the Border, but there can be no denying that he remained an unpopular and divisive character throughout his tenure as Prime Minister. Most Tory MPs and MSPs will see you as an easier sell and you can expect to get a fairer hearing from Scots than either of your immediate two predecessors.
Lastly and most importantly, don’t ignore us. After devolution happened in 1999, the civil service was guilty of placing Scotland in a silo marked ‘taken care of’; we were ignored and left out of the narrative of government in the rest of the country.
Civil servants – and ministers, of both parties – figured that everything that happened in the devolved nations could be handled by the respective administrations. The opposite was the case.
DEVOLUTION should have led to a renewed focus by Westminster on Scotland and Wales (northern Ireland is in its own category). When nationalists tried to prise my nation away from the UK, it was the UK Government’s responsibility to hold it ever closer, to ensure that Scots’ deliberate choice to remain in the UK was honoured and acted upon.
That didn’t happen. Instead we got the usual mealy-mouthed devocrat argument about how the Union could only be strengthened by handing more and more powers to the very people who wanted to destroy it.
Even now there are those who believe that full federalism across the UK, with every service other than defence and international affairs devolved to the nations and regions of England, is the best way forward.
Such constitutional vandals are incapable of understanding the lessons of recent history, let alone of understanding Einstein’s maxim that insanity is defined as repeating the same action over and over again while expecting a different outcome.
But it is not too late to change direction.
Ignore the baseless arguments about ‘mandates’ for a second independence referendum – no such mandate exists. Force nicola Sturgeon to deliver on those policy areas she’s responsible for, and when she doesn’t, don’t allow her to blame the UK Government for her own failures.
Your own government will, rightly, be judged on the successful delivery of its commitments. Don’t allow the SNP to be judged by anything other than exactly the same standard.
Enjoy your time at number 10, and as Scotland’s Prime Minister.