At least Boris Johnson has gone to Scotland. Thatcher would never have dared at the height of her unpopularity. But nothing speaks louder of the state of the UK union than the coronavirus crisis. While its level of excess deaths has been slightly lower than England’s, Scotland has one of the highest death rates among comparable European countries, and made serious failings in protecting care homes. Yet Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, wins +82% approval in polls. Johnson in England is -6%. Support for Scottish independence has risen to 54%.
Johnson must be acutely aware that he is about to take an even bigger hit in 2021. It is bad enough to have forced the Scottish people out of the EU against their will. His cavalier attitude to a no-deal Brexit will deliver a body-blow to its farming and fishing industries, a further gift to the independence cause. It is significant that Johnson’s visit was not to healthcare workers but fishermen, while his praise was lavished on his “magnificent armed forces”, representing “the might of our union”.
For all Sturgeon’s popularity, Scottish separatism remains equivocal. It does not suit the bipolarity of identity politics. It elides devolution into confederacy and “independence-lite”. Union with England, ever since the Reformation, has been a glass half full or half empty depending on political wind. Far stronger is aversion to Brexit, opposed by 62% of Scots at the referendum. It is this that should be worrying Johnson just now. If he wants to keep Scotland, he should be negotiating in Brussels not Orkney.
Even so, the separatist trend across Europe is clear. On the evidence of Basques, Catalans, Slovaks and Montenegrins – indeed of the EU itself – national unions and federations are crumbling. Centralisation in all its forms has become politically toxic, fuelling populist sentiment. Everyone can see this, everyone but those in the bureaucratic citadels of European capitals. Yes, people may crave centralism’s supposed economic benefits, but they detest its relentless accretion of power. That detestation is finding a voice.
In going to Scotland, Johnson played his trump card: money. He pointed out that, during furlough, London’s Treasury has, in effect, employed a third of Scotland’s workforce and saved “tens of thousands of businesses”. Various estimates of Scotland’s budget deficit shows it running massively ahead of that of the UK as a whole.
In which case, there is no better time for Scottish nationalism to address the fiscal question head on. The so-called Barnett formula – which allows for public spending per head to be higher in Scotland than England – has long been the political Achilles heel of separatism. The deficit may be the outcome of decades, even centuries, of economic distortion to the needs of British industrial and trade policy. But dependency is a fact, and one that independence must find a path to resolve.
Scotland must ask itself, how have other equally small but independent economies – Denmark, Norway, Portugal, Switzerland – established self-reliance, whether inside or outside the EU? Ireland before 1922, when it won independence, was even more dependent on London than is Scotland or Wales. Its richest province was Ulster. By last year, Dublin had grown robust and confident enough to force Johnson to capitulate to it and leave Northern Ireland within the single market. It seems the Celtic tiger can roar only when released from the British cage.
I regard political confederacy as pointless when a member no longer wants to belong. Johnson’s denial last year of Sturgeon’s request for a referendum was foolish, especially as then she might well have lost it. It would surely be better for moderates on all sides to sit down and discuss what most binds England and Scotland together – mostly commerce – and lean over backwards to respect autonomy in other ways, to give substance to the ideal of independence-lite.
A financially and fiscally independent Scotland, shorn of its Barnett subsidy, would face a painful period of transition. It must generate its own enterprise, its own professional and financial elite. It would have to adopt the tax antics initially deployed by Dublin, and perhaps even adopt its own currency, as advocated by Gus O’Donnell. But an identically sized country, Denmark, has contrived a vigorous autonomy within a wider Scandinavia. Scotland’s problem blatantly lies in its long-term political and fiscal dependency on London.
That a nationalist party has managed to govern Scotland with consent since 2007 is significant. As in Northern Ireland – and Catalonia – separatism outguns ideology where confederacies lose cohesion. But the SNP’s dominance is not overwhelming. It holds 48 out of 59 Scottish seats at Westminster, but wise psephologists count votes not seats. The SNP has just a 45% poll share, similar to that for independence in the 2014 referendum. Nationalism still needs to win heads as well as hearts. I am sure it will do it best by confronting dependency head on.
Scotland seems condemned to the same longevity in the departure lounge as did Ireland before 1922. But departure will come one day. Union will mutate into commonwealth. The United Kingdom, presented today by Johnson as a Celtic bonanza will be seen as it truly is – a Celtic shackle.
• Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist
