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THE Peter Mandelson saga has highlighted the “disadvantage” Scotland has by not having its own network of ambassadors.
On Thursday, the now former UK ambassador to the US was sacked by Keir Starmer after further details of his relationship with the late convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein were exposed.
While there are plenty of questions still to be answered – such as what the Prime Minister knew and when – and a cushy job in Washington to fill, it has highlighted the impact of Scotland being tied to Westminster’s decision-making when it comes to diplomacy.
While the Mandelson row was escalating, First Minister John Swinney embarked on his own diplomatic efforts across the pond – in a bid to remove Donald Trump’s 10% tariff hammering the Scotch whisky industry.
While negotiations are ultimately in the hands of UK ministers – it showed that Scotland could play a role on the world stage, and can get into rooms many Unionist commentators branded impossible.
“Scotland has a massive disadvantage by not having its own direct diplomatic relationship with the rest of the world. That is about influence on policy areas, but it's also about being able to make the case for jobs, investment, for your own soft power,” SNP MP Stephen Gethins said.
“Scotland does not have a foreign ministry,” he added. “I don't like that, others don't like that, but it's remarkable that even given that limited amount of resource, that John Swinney has been able to utilise the soft power, plus his own office’s, to do everything he can to protect jobs in Scotland, which is one of his number one jobs.”
The SNP’s Scotland spokesperson insisted that Swinney handled the situation with Trump “deftly”.
He said: “It's fair to say, in what is not an easy set of circumstances, because the First Minister will have his political disagreements with the US administration, but he's managed to find a way through that and also to be only the second first minister in the history of devolution to be invited into the Oval Office.
“He can make the case direct for Scottish jobs. It's one of the cases for independence is that you have that foreign ministry in a way that the Irish Taoiseach has a meeting with the President every year.
“We don't have that in Scotland. I think that's one of the drawbacks of being in the Union.”
“If I was working in a whisky distillery or other businesses that rely on trade with the United States, I think we can be grateful for the way in which the First Minister has handled the situation this week,” Gethins added.
Whether or not Swinney’s efforts to scrap the tariff have been impacted by the Mandelson saga, as Trump has his own links to Epstein that have been dogging the President for months, remain to be seen.
But one thing this entire sordid saga has shown is that Scotland is limited by its place in the Union.
As Gethins points out, Ireland, which has a similar population size to Scotland, is considered a “diplomatic superpower”.
“It navigated the treacherous waters of Brexit and had more clout in places like Washington DC and every single EU capital than the UK Government did despite that, again, it's so heavily outnumbered by people in the UK,” he said.
“So you see benefits and the reasons why countries the same size of Scotland invest in their foreign office and get a good return on their investment as well.”
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