Boris Johnson's arrogance and lack of concern for devolved nations may end Union – Joyce McMillan

Boris Johnson lacks the humility to even try to understand the appeal of the SNP and support for independence (Picture: Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire)

By any normal measure, these should not be happy times for the Scottish National Party.

After 13 years in power, and nine months of intense Covid crisis, the party’s leadership often looks exhausted, and is certainly hardly a powerhouse of new thinking about Scotland’s future. The party is riven by divisions, principally over how aggressive it should be in pursuing Scottish independence at a time when the cause is more popular than ever, but when most voters have other priorities, notably the impact of the pandemic on their daily lives.

In dealing with the pandemic itself, the Scottish government has to walk an exhausting tightrope between deploying its own powers, and waiting for the UK government to provide the resources needed to fund lockdowns and furlough schemes. And rumbling along in the background is the painfully corrosive Alex Salmond affair, a cause celebre for a noisy minority in the SNP that has led the Scottish government into the elementary error of trying to cover up information that is bound to become public sooner rather than later – never a good look, for any party in power.

Yet have all of these difficulties sent the Scottish government’s popularity into free-fall? They have not; on the contrary, the SNP is still attracting remarkable levels of support for a party that has been in power for 13 years. Nor is the reason for their success hard to discern.

As even London-based commentators and politicians were quick to observe this week, following the Prime Minister’s unfortunate remarks to the 1922 Committee about the “disaster” of devolution, Boris Johnson and his government are now recruiting support for the cause of Scottish independence faster than the SNP can lose it; so much so that the UK government has now loudly proclaimed its intention of throwing large amounts of public money at a PR campaign trumpeting the “emotional and cultural” case for the Union.

All of which only emphasises the depth of the trouble they are in, when it comes to defending a Union which this generation of Conservatives, or the vast majority of them, seem not to understand in the slightest. That they understand nothing about Northern Ireland is evident from their complete failure to anticipate its likely key role in Brexit negotiations. That they understand little about Wales is increasingly evident, and is leading to a surge in support for greater powers for the Cardiff Senedd.

And as for Scotland, the truth is that even those who dislike the idea of “losing Scotland” still seem unwilling to put in the hard yards involved in actually learning anything about the place. They do not understand that support for the 21st century SNP is not primarily “emotional and cultural”, but is largely about a rational difference of opinion on what kind of future Scotland wants. They do not know Scotland’s geography, or only very sketchily. They often cannot even pronounce its place-names.