Playing to your own gallery is way off key, Nicola
THE Prime Minister was in Stirling last week to announce a review of the way the UK and Scottish Governments work with each other. This is entirely sensible and reflects calls from across the political spectrum for a rethink.
In the 20 years since the establishment of the Welsh and Stormont assemblies, along with the Scottish parliament, there has been much institutional memory lost from within the Whitehall Civil Service. Added to that, a Nationalist Government in Holyrood, seeking to create division at every turn, makes for a fairly bumpy relationship.
Officials try to – and in most cases do – work well together behind the scenes on individual issues, but it’s clear Brexit will change and complicate the work of government. That’s why calls to assess and improve the ways the governments work together have been cross-party and have included people in the SNP.
After chairing a Scottish Affairs Committee inquiry into crossBorder relations, the SNP’s Pete Wishart said: ‘My committee’s inquiry has found that, although the relationship is far from ideal, it is not beyond repair.
‘We’re calling on the Scottish and UK Governments to make fundamental changes in their approach to devolution to restore trust.’
You’d think, therefore, that the Prime Minister announcing just such a review, in one of her final acts of office, would be welcomed by the SNP, wouldn’t you? Wrong.
Nicola Sturgeon broke off from her summer holidays to spend two days attacking the very thing she’d been calling for. The PM was ‘highhanded and arrogant’ for daring to
suggest reforms to the way in which the UK and Scottish Governments operate.
Forget for a moment the nasty taste Miss Sturgeon’s Nationalist rhetoric leaves behind – or that she took to the internet to decry a speech she had not read, two days ahead of it being delivered. It’s another example of her increasingly poor political judgment.
A smarter SNP leader would have claimed the PM’s review as a win, sought to establish better relations and then used that as an example of how a grown-up Scottish Government can work with the rest of the UK.
That might placate the fears of those who hold back from voting for independence as they worry splitting from the rest of the UK will cause immense division and instability.
Instead, Miss Sturgeon went for the easy option – playing to the gallery in order to win the approval of those who are already signed up to her separatist obsession.
The sabre-rattling and red meat-throwing to the independence faithful has been switched up a gear in the past few weeks. Westminster leader Ian Blackford, his predecessor Angus Robertson, SNP deputy leader Keith Brown and many of their outriders have joined her in taking to the airwaves to say support is ‘stronger than ever’ and the push towards independence ‘inexorable’.
IT is a mantra Miss Sturgeon has repeated for the best part of a decade. Last year, she said separation was ‘inevitable’ – the year before it was ‘undoubtedly closer’. It all seems a bit desperate. Perhaps she thinks she has a limited window of opportunity.
For the rest of the country, ramping up the rhetoric comes a poor second behind actually doing the job of First Minister and addressing urgent issues – such as low economic growth rates, narrowing subject choice for pupils and NHS treatment time guarantees.