Boris Johnson could try reverse-psychology on nationalists – John McLellan

If the UK Government dropped its opposition to an independence referendum and switched to showing Scotland the door, people in Scotland might think twice, writes John McLellan.

Boris Johnson has made clear he's a strong supporter of the Union (Picture: Pippa Fowles/10 Downing Street/Crown Copyright/PA)

Not so long ago, well-connected Conservative commentators were speaking of former Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson as by far the best bet to take over from an increasingly desperate Theresa May, hardly surprising given her success in the 2016 Scottish elections and the following year’s General Election.

Out on the doorsteps, we foot-soldiers heard time and again from people who had never voted Conservative that they liked Ruth and were prepared to give us, or rather her, a go. The details of the messaging didn’t matter that much because Ruth was the message. Last December the tune had changed; she had gone and conversations were regularly about Boris Johnson, his character and Brexit. Maybe leaving the EU hadn’t felt real to those Scottish voters who switched to Conservative in 2017 but Brexit certainly didn’t affect the result in the way it is claimed to have impacted in 2019.

Now realisation is beginning to dawn that the Union is under greater threat now than at any point since the Panelbase poll a fortnight before the 2014 referendum put Yes marginally ahead. London has just learnt that the latter-day Jacobites are in Derby and, in something of a panic, some senior Conservatives in Westminster have been sharing their thoughts about the party’s fortunes in Scotland with The Spectator magazine this week.

“It’s over. The horse has bolted,” said one doom-ridden fatalist, described by the magazine as “one of the most impressive figures from 2014”, which narrows it down considerably. But as the party gears up for the 2021 Holyrood election against a backdrop of overwhelmingly positive polls for the SNP, perhaps more incredibly another figure, apparently a Boris Johnson ally close to discussions with the Scottish party, said that “not enough is made of their failures in domestic policy”.

Really? Whoever said that obviously hasn’t been paying much attention to what goes on up here day after day, and the advice from the South appears to be that the Conservative position going into the 2021 election can’t be about rejection of a second independence referendum and the vote should be a judgement on the SNP’s record. This ignores the fact that the top line in recent campaigns has indeed been to rule out a second independence referendum but precisely because the SNP’s domestic record is so poor. Getting on with the day job has been as essential to the message as No to Indyref2.

Even more odd was an observation that there is a “great opportunity to shine a light on the fact that they’ve failed on education”, as if that hasn’t been happening for years. Nor is it the case that very clear failures in education and health haven’t been highlighted in the media – as mainstream-media-hating nationalists will attest. Maybe the Scottish media isn’t as hard-hitting as some unionists would like, but the same goes for poorer economic performance, lower employment and public spending analysis which shows that Scottish people benefit to the tune of £2,000 a head per year from fiscal transfers from the UK Government.

The issue right now is the polls indicate that more voters are prepared to set these aside and the first job is not to look for blame but to understand why. Claims that the Scottish Government has handled the Covid-19 pandemic better than the UK Government don’t stand up to much scrutiny and at the moment Nicola Sturgeon is the message as much as Ruth Davidson was in 2017. But Scots aren’t going to embrace independence just because Nicola is better than Boris at telling people to stay at home and wear a mask in the shops.

As likely is that the huge sums of money being borrowed by Governments around the world to deal with Covid-19, and the fact that interest rates and inflation have remained rock bottom, is creating the notion that money can indeed be conjured out of nothing when the chips are down. Some 900,000 Scottish jobs saved by the UK furlough scheme? Ach, we’d have done that too. £15bn fiscal deficit? No bother. Scots would be £2,000-a-year worse off under independence? Our new Central Bank of Scotland’s quantative-easing machine will pump out the dosh just like the Bank of England. And we wouldn’t have to ask for permission, just forgiveness from our pals in Brussels? That worked well for the Greeks.

This week the Scottish Conservatives advertised for a new director of communications, a post I once held, and the successful candidate will not only be expected to work closely with the leader Jackson Carlaw, but the London team too. Number 10’s political strategist Isaac Levido, who worked on both the 2015 and 2019 General Election campaigns, is said to be turning his attention to Scotland but he has been aware of the issues here for some time so is not coming to it cold and with chief adviser Dominic Cummings also likely to be drawn into the campaign it will not be a role for the faint-hearted. Cummings and Levido will both know independence is not going to go away just because some anonymous figures in London say it should. They will also understand that countering the undeniable shift in the polls towards the SNP and independence will need a much more sophisticated strategy than just a social media whizz with new slogans to splash on leaflets and buzz-phrases for candidates to parrot.

For perhaps obvious reasons, there has never been a detailed analysis of what England’s response would be to a Yes vote and the 25 per cent of Scottish don’t knows have not been able to envisage what a divided Great Britain will be like. Scenario planning might be interpreted as capitulation and risks adding to the 49 per cent of English voters now apparently happy to see the back of Scotland, but the time for absolute clarity about what an independent Scotland will face is fast approaching.

Scottish Nationalists obviously believe independence presents a great opportunity, what if it actually presents an even greater one for England? The approach from some prominent SNP figures like Mhairi Black MP is that the UK Government must have something to hide or it wouldn’t be so vehemently opposed to independence, but what if that changed to showing Scotland the door? Maybe the new SNP slogan would be “Now haud on a minute”?

A message from the Editor:

Thank you for reading this article on our website. While I have your attention, I also have an important request to make of you.

With the coronavirus lockdown having a major impact on many of our advertisers - and consequently the revenue we receive - we are more reliant than ever on you taking out a digital subscription.

Subscribe to scotsman.com and enjoy unlimited access to Scottish news and information online and on our app. With a digital subscription, you can read more than 5 articles, see fewer ads, enjoy faster load times, and get access to exclusive newsletters and content. Visit www.scotsman.com/subscriptions now to sign up.

Our journalism costs money and we rely on advertising, print and digital revenues to help to support them. By supporting us, we are able to support you in providing trusted, fact-checked content for this website.

Joy Yates

Editorial Director