Ruth Wishart: Gordon Brown needs to lay off the polls on Union

You might have jaloused from the ­resulting reportage that at a significant tranche of Scots were champing at the bit for this long promised, never delivered, ­revised constitutional arrangement. So I had a keek at their figures.

The bit of the poll over which the ­Unionists got most excitable asserted that a plan for a changed Britain “could be ­better than independence for some”. And they concluded that twice as many Scots agreed versus disagreed it “could be more ­attractive than independence”. (This “could” is doing a wheen of heavy lifting here.) It goes on to state that the figures were 47% to 22% in favour of their entirely ­hypothetical proposition, when actually their own figures show that 48% either strongly disagree, disagree, or think it would make little difference. And a paltry 18% “strongly agree”. Och aye, it’s the way ye tell them.

What makes stunts like this nonsense on stilts, is that there is no such reformed UK on offer, or likely to be in any foreseeable future.

The current UK administration has set its face against it, whilst Mr Brown’s current party leader, Keir Starmer, isn’t even in the market for a referendum on the matter.

A few of my colleagues never fail to flag up the sainted Smith Commission, set up in the immediate wake of the No victory. The same morning after the vote that the then Prime Minister, David Cameron, said it was way past time to concentrate on what ­England needed.

Indeed it’s well worth reminding ­ourselves what this commission, whose membership straddled five Scottish parties, actually came up with.

It said that the permanence of the ­Scottish Parliament required to be formally established, as per the infamous Vow. It hasn’t been.

Then there was the not so small ­matter of the Sewel Convention. That was the ­convention that a legislative consent ­motion needed to be passed by the Scottish ­Parliament before the UK variety could ­legislate on any devolved ­matter. This should become a legally binding ­requirement said Smith: “The Sewel ­Convention will be put on a statutory footing”. It hasn’t been.

Since then the UK Government has ­regularly and deliberately ridden roughshod over Sewel from everything from ignoring the Scottish parliament’s ­opposition to the EU Withdrawal Act, to ruling its decision to embed the UN ­charter on Children’s Rights in Scots law was outwith its competence.

More recently it has bodyswerved ­Holyrood completely, spreading ­pockets of largesse/bribery around without ­consultation and, unsurprisingly, where it thinks it can shore up the Tory vote.

The pandemic threw us many curve balls, one of which was the persistent lack of consultation of the devolved administrations by the Westminster government. This was even more apparent during the Brexit negotiations from which we were totally excluded.

But even back in 2014, when Brexit was but a gleam in the eye of the right-wing zealots who latterly captured the Tory ­Party, it was clear to the Smith ­Commission that many fences were in ­urgent need of being mended: “the ­current ­inter-governmental machinery ­between the Scottish and UK ­Government, ­including the Joint ­Ministerial ­Committee (JMC) structures, must be reformed as a matter of urgency and scaled up ­significantly to reflect the scope of the agreement arrived at by the parties”.

In the event they’ve been scaled down so determinedly that nobody from the UK cabinet with any particular seniority shows up to what has become little more than inconsequential window dressing.

And who remembers the ­Commission’s advice that “Scotland should have ­guaranteed rights to engage directly with EU institutions and EU decision-making processes in areas of devolved ­competence”?

Or its recommendation to increase Scottish borrowing powers? In fact those who still laud the Commission at any and every opportunity, seem to suffer from a very severe form of selective amnesia.

Elsewhere, Michael Gove’s Union Unit, ostensibly set up to shore up “this precious Union”, is actually engaged in disemboweling devolution organ by ­organ.

Happily, the cast list for this Westminster enterprise has changed with such bewildering speed that it’s been down to Gove, the minister for everything with which the PM can’t be bothered, to pop up periodically assuring Scots that all is for the best in all possible worlds.

Of course the best of all possible worlds is open to several differing interpretations.

The revolving door Union Unit is aided and abetted by all manner of other think tanks, some of them masquerading as ­independent bodies and others more than happy to wear their Unionist heart on their sleeve.

Step forward These Islands, a tank whose founding thinkers include arch Unionist Kevin Hague who also serves on bodies like Scottish Business UK, the latter of which features, inter alia, our old friends Brian Monteith (former chief whip of the Brexit lot in the EU ­parliament) and Iain MacMillan, former boss of the CBI in Scotland.

These Islands tirelessly posts reasons why Scotland is just too much of a basket case to contemplate statehood. Their site currently declares “Scottish Renewables, A UK Success Story”. Eh? Apparently the greatest risk to our renewables is not the UK Government being lukewarm about net zero, but the Scottish Government wanting to break up the Union.

Even so, you have to admire the ­chutzpah of an organisation which declares that Mr Hague has “forensically” examined its own press coverage. AKA searched zealously for the bits which agreed with him. Its website is nothing if not tireless in running articles about how useless Scotland is in just about every ­regard, and how it would be in a parlous state were it not for the wrap-round care of the UK.

Wraparound care, or stranglehold on progress? Whatever.

Those of us committed to an independent Scotland are not blind to the shortcomings of our parliament; the recent critique from Professor James Mitchell provides food for thought in a number of areas.

Yet sometimes people forget what a long and bloodstained battle it was to ­create a Scottish parliament at all. To have a ­forum where our own voice and our own perspective could be heard.

Often the people who fought against this important first step to lasting ­constitutional change are the same cast list who still look at their own country through a half-empty glass.

For people like Gordon Brown, a man of no little intellectual heft, the ties to Labour, and to finding a UK solution to a Scottish problem, are probably now ­unbreakable.

They will tell you that it’s ­important, not least at a time of a malign Tory ­administration, to champion the ­notion of cross border solidarity with ­other ­dissenters and sufferers from the ­Conservative cause.

The thing is, it’s actually possible to have fellow feeling and solidarity with people all over England, and still believe passionately in self-determination for Scotland.

It is a very long time since Scottish ­voters delivered a UK Labour government. It is an even longer time since Scottish voters delivered a Conservative government, yet are still required to thole one which stymies its own at every turn.

So never mind the cod polls festooned with hypothetical fantasies. Time for a real one.

It will be eight years this September since a Cameron government, pre-Brexit, pre-May, pre-Johnson, tabled a proposition on Scottish independence. The political world has turned in very many unpredictable ways.

Stop this world; we need to get off.