Lesley Riddoch: London is looking at Scotland with envy

Nah. So there will be a good attendance at Bute House, dutiful coverage of the First Minister’s speech and much scathing, scornful analysis from political opponents later on. Don’t expect her words to dominate the news bulletins or headlines for long. Not in Scotland anyway.

Meanwhile, later today, Holyrood will also be busy with the final reading of the Referendum Bill – a significant milestone which creates the constitutional furniture to support a second vote and which puts Scottish Labour on the spot days after an election in which the party won its lowest share of the vote in Scotland since 1910.

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Will they make a bold shift or stick to their old unpopular policy of opposing Scotland’s right to choose? It looks certain to be the latter. And even though that really is curtains for the People’s Party north of the Border, the absence of any immediate, dramatic change will doubtless convince an o’er cynical press that nothing much has changed, despite the SNP’s extraordinary victory last week.

Happily, readers of this paper don’t rely on mainstream news outfits to tell us what’s really important. But even the most avid Yessers may feel an uneasy sense of deja vu as we watch the Scottish Government dutifully cranking up the wheels of governance to get the indy ball rolling again, to the sound of mass yawning from the press corps.

It’s like a modern Scottish version of the task facing Sisyphus, doomed to spend eternity rolling an immense boulder uphill only for it to tumble back down as he approached the top.

Yes, our inner doom-laden Private Frazer is hard to repress.

In the face of good news, Scots worry inordinately about how to hold the advantage, how to prevent slippage, how to maintain momentum – how to go on and win.

But here’s the astonishing new thing.

The London-based media generally don’t see our present situation as hopeless, boring or doom-laden at all. What’s old, familiar and repetitive to us, seems brand-new, significant and newsworthy to them.

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Witness the “Tale of Two Mandates” headline that ran across almost every London title bar the Daily Mail the morning after the election. Witness BBC current affairs programmes like Newsnight, that have featured split presentation from Edinburgh and London – something that will apparently be repeated regularly. Witness the astonishing fact that The National was included in the newspaper review on Radio 4’s flagship Today programme.

Aye, the southern interest in all things Scottish could end as suddenly as it’s begun. But this time around, things feel a little different.

Maybe it’s the fact Nicola Sturgeon articulated the case for social democracy in a way no other leader could during the General Election campaign – including Jeremy Corbyn. Progressive English voters somehow feel a connection and an admiration for her and the nation that was smart enough to elect her. That’s us folks.

Maybe it’s the hope that an independent Scotland could soon offer a safe haven for them. Hundreds of thousands of English people – many in the metropolitan chattering classes – can’t stand the idea of a lost decade under Boris Johnson. The search term “how to move to Scotland” spiked the day after the Tory victory. Scotland is popular because many English folk (without the escape route offered by an Irish granny) are now absolutely at the end of their tether.

But maybe the biggest thing aiding Scotland’s increased visibility is Brexit. That issue matters massively to English voters and opinion-formers. Same here. We are right at the other end of the political spectrum to England over Brexit, but we throw six by caring deeply about it. English voters have registered the fact that Scotland’s voting patterns are diametrically opposed to England. At last, they’ve noticed. 

This might be putting it too strongly, but Londoners might even be feeling a little envy mixed with admiration for Scots who’ve voted Remain as a fairly united nation, while England has fallen apart. Indeed, Scotland is on the verge of acting out London’s dream – if we just vote for independence we can stay connected with Europe, stay outward-facing, stay committed to tough European environmental standards and proper workers’ rights, stay out of damaging trade deals with Donald Trump, stay socially conscious and stay progressive. They can’t. We can divorce England – they can’t. We can stay involved with the whole European project. They can’t.

No matter London’s size, clout, world city status, economic prosperity and cultural dominance within a subservient UK, its population cannot get the kind of government it wants and must even host a Prime Minister many despise. There is some wish fulfilment going on. If London could borrow a Scottish phrase, it might produce a thought bubble containing the words, “gaun yersels”. It is ironic.

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FOR Scots, we are stuck in a repeat cycle – voting for political outcomes we never quite get. This doomsday scenario has been playing out for decades. For half a century, Scots have voted first Labour and then SNP but got Tory governments at Westminster instead. Who cared then? Who really noticed when Scots voted out every single Conservative MP in 1997 – an astonishing act that was unfortunately overshadowed by the larger story of New Labour’s success. Who even paid attention to the landslide SNP victory in the 2015 General Election? It was dismissed as puzzling, against trend, and contradictory in the wake of the earlier referendum result. The general conclusion amongst the London commentariat – who understands the Scots? What do they actually want?

But now London understands us, because the majority of Londoners have just voted for precisely the same things – progressive government, membership of the European Union, rational 21st century policy debates and political leaders who are not the entitled products of public schools.

Just like Scots, London voters have been thwarted by the rest of England. The difference is, they’re stuck with it.

Londoners want hope – and we have bucketloads of the stuff. But they have something Scots still lack – confidence in their own abilities.

Folk used to life in the entitled south, in a city that never sleeps, in a capital awash with investment and cash (albeit squirreled in one particular square mile) – these voters would not have a moment’s hesitation about voting to take a new independent path. Scots are wary, slower to seize possibilities, more hesitant, less sure of ourselves. That’s OK – it is what we’re like. And we need to win over our ain folk with arguments that resonate here. But at long last, there’s a tangible wave of sympathy from a place we would least expect it. Of course there will be tough interviews, scepticism about our economic future, scaremongering about our projected deficit. But there may not be astonishment from Londoners that many Scots want to grab independence with both hands.

It is, after all, what they would do.