Churlish Nicola and a petty game of ‘power poker’
THERE was one person at the Ineos ceremony at Grangemouth last week who seemed pleased with the absence of any SNP ministers: David Mundell. The SNP snub not only gave the Scottish Secretary the chance for a one-to-one meeting with Jim Ratcliffe, the Ineos owner but gave him an uninterrupted platform from which to talk up the ‘broad shoulders of the UK’ once again – without anyone contradicting, or even upstaging, him.
IT was clear from the moment an Ineos dinner was hurriedly moved to a different venue the night before the arrival of the ‘dragon ship’ that the company was nervous about security. Then, when the ship arrived, there were guards in speed boats and drones in the sky shepherding it in. But they needn’t have bothered. The entire anti-fracking effort consisted of a dozen woolly protesters half-heartedly chanting slogans outside the Ineos base, a paltry turn-out which might indicate that opposition to fracking isn’t quite as widespread as the demonstrators claim it is.
THIS is a tale of two powerful people, each one in total command of their world. One is Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister of Scotland and leader of the SNP while the other is Jim Ratcliffe, who, in less than 20 years, has taken his company Ineos from a standing start to a turnover of £40 billion a year.
To put this in perspective, Miss Sturgeon’s Scottish Government has a turnover of about £30 billion a year.
But perhaps more significantly, Mr Ratcliffe has done this while keeping Ineos in private hands – his own hands. As a result he has almost total control over the direction his company takes.
Mr Ratcliffe is not only one of the wealthiest people in the world, he has also proved himself to be an astute businessman and a committed industrialist.
When Mr Ratcliffe decided that he needed shale gas for his underused processing plant in Grangemouth, he devised a plan to get it from the United States, even though that involving building eight completely new ships to bring the freezing gas across the Atlantic – something no one had ever attempted before.
He injected up to £1.6 billion in the scheme, which came to fruition last week.
That is more than the Scottish Government is spending on the Queensferry Crossing across the Forth – about £1.4 billion.
So has does Miss Sturgeon fit into this? Well, when Mr Ratcliffe came to Grangemouth last week to welcome the first of the ships bringing shale gas, he invited dignitaries and politicians to celebrate with him.
They came to toast the saving of 10,000 jobs and to cheer the revival of an industrial complex which will keep the area thriving for another two decades.
But not Miss Sturgeon. She decided to pass up the invitation. Not only that, but Ineos invited every other relevant minister in Scotland and they all passed up their invitations too.
They all said they were too busy even though Derek Mackay, the finance secretary, and Keith Brown, the economy secretary, were seen in the parliament canteen as the ceremony was taking place a few miles away.
It was a staggering and calculated snub. As one UK government source said: ‘SNP ministers will go to the opening of an envelope if they think it will make them look good. But here we had the biggest industrial investment ever made in Scotland, saving 10,000 jobs and securing the biggest manufacturing plant in Scotland and not a single one bothered to turn up. It stinks.’
Stink it did. Indeed, the stench of petty SNP churlishness could be detected all over the central belt that day.
But why stick two first ministerial fingers up at the one man who has done more for Scottish industry than any other?
Well, it seems, as far as the SNP is concerned, there is good industry and there is bad industry.
Miss Sturgeon made sure she was at the re-opening of the Dalzell steelworks in Motherwell the following day, even though the investment and the jobs being saved there were a tiny fraction of the Ineos effort. That is because the SNP sees steel as good and Ineos as bad – purely because Ineos wants to frack for shale gas in Scotland.
The Scottish Government hasn’t actually come out against fracking: yet. But the message Miss Sturgeon sent out to Ineos last week was unmistakeable.
BY making sure that not a single member of the Scottish Government attended the arrival of the ship, Miss Sturgeon was giving the clear impression that she is starting to slip off the fence towards the anti-fracking camp. Leaving aside the fact that fracking offers perhaps the only realistic chance for Scotland to survive as an economically buoyant nation state on its own right, Miss Sturgeon’s decision was an extraordinarily poor one. This was an event about manufacturing, not fracking. It was about importing a raw material and then converting it, in Scotland, into the material for plastic used in tens of thousands of products.
Yet, by her petulant and childish actions, Miss Sturgeon made it about fracking.
There was nothing to stop her going to the event, while, at the same time, pointing out that the Scottish Government is still deciding what to do on fracking.
When Mr Ratcliffe was asked about the Scottish Government no-show, he said he was ‘disappointed’ and he suggested that perhaps Miss Sturgeon might want to go to the United States to see how fracking has transformed run-down towns into thriving industrial centres.
That’s not a bad idea. Miss Sturgeon should go or, if she is ‘too busy’ yet again, she could send a minister to report back on what fracking has done over there.
Not to do so would smack of political cowardice and would show that Miss Sturgeon doesn’t even want to consider the facts about fracking.
But, having seen how the First Minister’s office reacted to Ineos last week, a negative, closeminded approach is probably all we can expect from the Scottish Government on this one issue which, above all others, is crying out for real leadership.