The real issue Scots have with the Union runs far deeper than PM’s ‘jokes’

It exasperated Tony Blair, who saw it propel the SNP to power, even though he believed it was going to, in George Robertson’s words, “kill the nationalists stone dead”. Blair still gives interviews about it, all of which are as tone deaf as his pre-devolution remark comparing the importance of constitutional change to the weather in the Himalayas. Gordon Brown thought he controlled Scottish politics and never got over discovering that he no longer did nor the inescapable fact that even former prime ministers have sell by dates.

David Cameron once described by Alex Salmond as “a hard face behind a nice smile” came within a whisker of, in the Unionist term, “losing” Scotland and could not forgive us for it. Theresa May was always oblivious to any point of view but her own and believed that if she said things slowly enough, and often enough, even the resentful but not very bright Scots would eventually agree.

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Boris Johnson hates devolution, believes it was put in place and is run by upstarts who have no right to make decisions and sees it as an obstacle to the imposition across the UK of his brand of arrogant, xenophobic, class-ridden, corrupt, little Englander politics. In addition, scarred by his first visit to Bute House in July 2019 when he was booed on arrival, treated to some polite but firm talk from the FM and then smuggled out the back door by his security detail, Johnson has sworn to marginalise and delegitimise the devolved administrations once and for all. To do so, his advisers have devised a policy based on bare-faced lying. UK Ministers say one thing while doing the exact opposite, using the language of conciliation and consultation in and to Scotland (and Wales), but turning the Westminster legislative and administrative thumbscrews all the time.

Michael Gove is a master of that dark art and Rishi Sunak is learning fast but their problem is that they are constantly undermined by the crass insensitivity, patrician bluster and desire to play everything for laughs that are Johnson’s hallmarks.

No wonder then that on his first visit to Scotland for eight months, Johnson’s handlers should have chosen to put him on a boat in the North Sea. Surely he could do no great damage there, they must have thought. They were wrong. Even in a long-distance interview, he could not resist a joke about Thatcher closing coal mines, which inevitably caused massive offence and set at nought the restoration of any goodwill towards him in Scotland.

The root cause of this problem is not just Johnson, however. It is the issue of equality. Britain was never an equal society but the illusion of equal treatment in political life and equal access to the fruits of Britannia’s global reach (no matter how unevenly prosperity was spread, nor how shamefully it was gained on the backs of others) did at one time make many Scots, long taught about the supposed beneficial terms and outcome of the Treaty of Union, accept they were not disadvantaged, let alone despised, by the state they still lived in.

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But as the empire faded away and as English nationalism emerged as a force in both the Tory and Labour parties (no matter how often the term British was used to cloak it) it became more and more clear that Scots could no longer fool themselves about this so-called partnership of equals. The political signs and consequences are now very clear. For example, post the 2014 referendum the possibility of a Scottish MP holding any of the great UK offices of state is now very remote indeed, not least because there aren’t many Unionist MPs left in Scotland.

The massive non-Scottish majority in the House of Commons, the packing of the Lords and the dominance in England of a party that Scotland has not voted for in the majority since 1955 compound the increasing democratic inequality whilst the existence of a Scottish Parliament and Government gives this lack highly visible daily presence. The economic indicators are clear, too, but most obvious of all are the actions and words of Johnson himself who contemptuously rejects the notion of an equal partnership along with Scottish initiatives on any and all subjects (both a referendum and drug consumption rooms were subject to such disdain this week) and that view is echoed and trumpeted by his party at every level.

Scotland is and always must be, for them, subservient and the way to ensure that continues is to pursue both the evasion and the lie.

The evasion means ignoring conventions such as the supposed annual meetings of the Joint Ministerial Council Plenary which brings together the Prime Minister and First Ministers but which under Johnson has never met.

Nor has he attended any meeting of the British Irish Council, at which Gove’s presence emphasises, subtly of course, this downgrading while he spreads the treacle of pretend consultation and co-operation, aided and abetted by others such as the Chancellor who last week was insisting that “the people of Scotland” want their governments to work together, while his boss was refusing even to speak to Scotland’s First Minister.

That is the final insult, of course – claiming that the widening breach is all the Scottish Government’s fault. By lying like that Johnson and his cronies think they can deflect criticism and, in that current phrase, “put a smell on” the SNP while boosting their false claim to be reasonable and constructive.

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Perhaps if devolution had never happened, Scotland’s entirely proper desire for a fair partnership would not have come to the boil. But it did happen and has been seen not to have been enough to secure what is the most basic of rights for an individual, a people and a country – the right to equality without which no nation can ever be at constitutional peace with itself or with its neighbours.