SNP’s ‘power grab’ row is a synthetic crisis created to push Indyref 2 agenda

TO understand the inner workings of Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP, it’s useful to bear in mind the following: whatever the issue at hand, it is always about independence. Only by remembering this can we seek to understand the actions of our treasured First Minister.

And only by bearing this in mind can we hope to decipher the increasingly bizarre behaviour she is exhibiting in the latest souped-up fight which the SNP is trying to engineer. I speak, of course, of the great Brexit ‘power grab’ – the most synthetic constitutional crisis to hit Scotland in recent living memory.

For those Scottish Mail on Sunday readers who lead normal, fulfilling lives – and so don’t have the time or inclination to keep track of our First Minister’s latest machinations – let me explain.

Next year, when Britain leaves the European Union, a swathe of powers which lie with Brussels will be repatriated. On agriculture, fisheries, the environment, and law and order, 40 years’ worth of accumulated EU power comes back on to the UK statute book.

Forty years ago, of course, Britain was a different nation. Nowadays, with many powers now devolved to the UK’s four nations, the question arises: when these powers come home, exactly where should they go?

It’s to this question which, over the past few months, the UK Government and our devolved administrations have been trying to find an answer.

The good news is that there has been plenty of agreement. In the long-term, even the SNP agrees that there should be pan-UK rules which ensure the UK internal market is maintained as it is. For example, everyone is clear that food labelling regulations should continue to apply uniformly across the UK, rather than being set up along regional lines.

The trouble is how we get there. Setting up these ‘frameworks’ will take time. We leave the EU in less than a year. The so-called ‘power grab’ dispute centres on temporary arrangements which will be required in the short-term.

Initially, the UK Government said it would solve this by temporarily taking back all the returning powers.

The Scottish Conservatives – and every other party at Holyrood – did not agree this was right. So, last month, the UK Government unveiled a compromise. All the powers that are for Holyrood to administer now go straight to Holyrood. But, before the long-term frameworks are agreed, the Government will give Westminster a time-limited power in certain areas to ensure UK-wide rules apply. It’s to make sure that the UK Parliament can provide UK-wide certainty and stability for firms and people – including in Scotland.

BUT the Labour Government in Wales – which for months had been standing with the SNP in protest against the Government’s plans – said fine. Welsh Finance Secretary Mark Drakeford concluded: ‘Our aim throughout these talks has been to protect devolution and make sure laws and policy areas which are devolved remain devolved, and this we have achieved.’

If Westminster needed temporarily to hold these powers, it would be in areas ‘where we agree common UKwide rules are needed for a functioning UK internal market’ he added.

As I mentioned earlier, that functioning UK market is something the SNP has said it wants.

Yet, bizarrely, Ms Sturgeon said no to a deal. Then, in a hysterical rant last week, she claimed that the UK Government was trying to ‘demolish devolution’.

It is hard to keep up with the SNP paranoia, but it goes something like this: the UK Government (that’s the same UK Government which has recently devolved tax and welfare to Holyrood) is secretly trying to use Brexit to roll back devolution and grab power from Scotland.

SNP claims of a Westminster power grab were firmly put in their place at the Scottish Parliament’s Finance and Constitution Committee last week.

MS Sturgeon’s Brexit Minister Mike Russell told the committee the EU Withdrawal Bill would mean powers over the likes of GM crops and fracking would now be held by UK Ministers, rather than in Scotland. But, as Secretary of State David Mundell stated very clearly, this is nonsense.

The EU Withdrawal Bill deals only with EU Retained Law. It has no impact on powers held by the Scottish parliament or Scottish Ministers. So it is at best inaccurate, and at worst irresponsible scaremongering, for the SNP to claim that the Scottish parliament will lose its responsibilities in these areas.

So if the Welsh are able to sign up to this deal, then why is the Scottish Government holding out? Why did Ms Sturgeon overrule Mike Russell, if indeed that is what happened? We arrive back where I started.

Because, like everything else, all this has to be seen through the prism of the SNP’s single-minded focus on trying to engineer circumstances that would justify holding a second independence referendum.

While all this is going on, we have a deputy leadership battle in the SNP – a battle that increasingly is about the timing of a second referendum. Ms Sturgeon is under pressure from her grass roots to deliver on this, fearing that if it runs past 2021 there will no longer be a Scottish parliamentary majority to take it forward. So, unlike the Welsh Government, which has genuinely acted in the best interests of the people it serves, the SNP has no interest in finding a solution. All it wants to do is whip up its fanatical supporters by making outrageous claims about a constitutional crisis, and hope that public opinion will shift its way.

Sadly for the SNP, but fortunately for the rest of us, there is no evidence that the public are buying this.

Last year – when the SNP was trying to appear reasonable – Mr Russell said: ‘We are working very closely with Wales and we cannot envisage a situation in which Scotland would be content and Wales would not be, or vice versa.’

It was baloney then, it’s nonsense now. The Welsh want a deal. The UK Government wants a deal.

Everyone wants a deal – apart from Nicola Sturgeon. Why? Because it’s always about independence.

It’s hard to keep up with the SNP’s paranoia