Lesley Riddoch: Tories are trying to fool Scots about their supposed big spending

Well they are all English and Welsh Tory MPs. And this week, they used up half the time allocated for Scottish Questions.

This regular contrivance of letting non-Scots MPs “hold Scottish ministers to account” is a cringe-fest at the best of times.

But Wednesday’s session was spectacularly off-beam as facile Tory “questions” highlighting “Union spending” in Scotland drowned out serious concerns from SNP MPs about UK funding for Scottish Renewables, help for Edinburgh’s financial services sector in EU trade talks and the Scottish Government’s role in COP26.

Each sensible question raised by a Scot was swiftly batted aside so that Messrs Jack, Duguid and Stewart could wax lyrical about the Union-Jack-spending projects being praised to the high heavens by their own backbench colleagues.

Proof, if proof was needed, that the Tories are on a mission – to win Scottish voters by dangling tantalising expensive-looking goodies. Yet since no-one’s offering the hoped-for applause and fanfare, they’re having to big up the spending deals themselves.

Why the lack of media interest?

Because their offers are characteristically half-hearted and hollow.

Take the £20 million attached to Sir Peter Hendy’s Union Connectivity Review which promises to pump-prime big capital projects like a railway between Carlisle and Tweedbank, an upgrade to the A75 between Gretna, Dumfries and Stranraer, faster rail links between England to Scotland and, of course, the Bridge to Northern Ireland.

Wow. But hang on.

£20m sounds like a lot of money but only buys you three miles of dual carriageway – or perhaps 800 yards of the Union Bridge to Nowhere. Split between five big projects – it’s next to nothing.

So, let’s be clear.

Sir Peter’s review is not a story about wadges of cash being dangled before Scots and rejected by a soor-faced Scottish Government. It’s a familiar tale about a small amount of cash being promised (aye right) for five projects which won’t help them come to fruition, won’t be supplemented by EU-matching cash (thanks Brexit) and won’t be a down payment with more cash from the Union Spending War Chest guaranteed to be coming along later.

The £20m is a phoney spending claim – but it’s enough to attract the attention of local communities and the media, enough to upend the Scottish Government’s own spending plans for transport and maybe enough to fool Scots into thinking the British Government is somehow Scotland’s very own Santa Claus.

At least that’s what the cocky Tories barging into Scottish Question Time clearly hoped.

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One young pup Ben Everitt MP predicted that the “awesome foursome” of UK nations would wow the world at COP26 (even though his ministerial colleague had just declined to say whether Holyrood will be involved at all).

Another – Rob Roberts MP – suggested that electrifying railways in Wales would help boost Scottish tourism. A blatantly irrelevant point that provoked much laughter from Tory colleagues. For them, this is just a cynical, time-wasting game.

How our MPs sit through this charade, I dinnae ken.

But there was a point in it all for the Tories.

After the great pretendy list of investments had been thoroughly ventilated by his acolytes, the Scottish Secretary was able to shake his head with theatrically feigned sorrow and pronounce: “It is pathetic for the Scottish nationalist [yip] government not to engage with this process just because it is a Union review.”

Whit?

Hang on Alister.

The Union Connectivity Review isn’t being left in the cold because of its red, white and blue label – but because of its truly underwhelming and deliberately disruptive contents.

The much-vaunted Hendy review is a ragtag of proposals that might happen but probably won’t; might work as stand-alone projects but probably won’t be priorities in the Scottish Government’s own 20-year investment strategy, to be announced this autumn; might be glitzy but not utterly vital; might please local business leaders but not the whole country and might have a million pounds attached to them now but will need a thousand times that heady sum to reach fruition.

It also goes without saying that the UK exercise had no input from devolved governments – and little from local Scots. The Hendy review attracted 100 responses compared to 2500 responses to Transport Scotland’s latest survey on Scottish Government plans for upgrading the A75 – which are already under way (someone should tell Sir Peter).

Meanwhile, the Union Bridge/Tunnel has become the Nosferatu of Scottish politics – an unworkable idea that still cannot die – or maybe the reincarnation of Monty Python’s famous Polly Parrot who stands to attention only because she has been nailed to the perch.

Why is anyone giving this idea house room? Why are broadcasters even taking it seriously?

Politicians in Northern Ireland don’t see it as a transport priority – ditto Scotland.

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Engineers have recited the arguments against it for years. A bridge to Northern Ireland would cost around £30 billion, whether it straddles Beaufort’s Dyke – a deep submarine trench littered with one million tonnes of wartime weapons – or connects remote Torr Head in Country Antrim to the equally remote Mull of Kintyre.

Actually, the business case has been worsened by Brexit and the lost possibility of EU co-funding. Now the only folk guaranteed to benefit are Johnson’s Tory chums who could win contracts and earn a couple of million quid before the Holyrood elections are over, the SNP win a clear mandate for indyref2 and the Union Bridge project is shelved. Again.

But meantime, the Tories hope their exercise might achieve a different outcome – making the Scottish Government look negative, mean and unadventurous by appearing to knock back help and cash, just because it comes from London.

WILL it work?

Of course, some people and communities will be tempted by the promise of immediate cash for much-needed capital spending. The south-west rightly feels like Scotland’s forgotten region and constant delays to Argyll and the southern Hebrides by Rest and Be Thankful landslips are indeed outrageous. There are transport problems aplenty in Scotland after a century of under-spending – and there’s no point denying it.

That’s why it’s important for the Scottish Government to play the argument not the flag.

Good governance should produce systems that work smoothly. Tory governance produces sheer randomness – a bung to a marginal constituency here, a bidding war there – and the Union Connectivity Review is a prime example of all that’s wrong with the devolution settlement. Bizarrely, other parts of the UK have fallen for this shallow spending trick.

But where has it got them?

Does the DUP still think the £1bn bung from Theresa May was value for money now Brexit has left Northern Ireland stranded? Do England’s northern cities think more mayors is the answer after watching as Andy Burnham was blanked for “over-reaching” himself? What about another competitive “levelling-up” fund, where neighbours are forced to fight for government cash like ferrets in a sack – will that do the trick?

Of course, bungs and subs, badges and plaques, speeches and strictly controlled visits to Scotland by ministers sporting rictus grins will attract attention.

But will they rally support for the Union?

History is littered with promised spending sprees by governments who’ve lost popular support. After all, those parts of England most dependent on EU funding still voted to leave – proof that it’s very easy to take the money and run when there’s no trust in the bona fides of the political hand that feeds.

To paraphrase British Gas, occasional, conditional bungs of cash may feel good – but being in control feels better.

It’s called independence.

Opinion polls suggest that savvy Scots concur.