Alex Massie Alex Massie

Blundering Boris will regret insulting Scotland

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Every so often I make the mistake of thinking Boris Johnson must have exhausted his capacity for indolent carelessness and each time I do he pops up to remind me not to count him out. There are always fresh depths to which he may sink. For he is a Prime Minister who knows little and cares less that he knows so little. In happy times of placid prosperity this might be inconvenient but tolerable; these are not such times.

Speaking to his northern English MPs last night, Johnson declared that devolution has been ‘a disaster north of the border’ and was the biggest mistake Tony Blair ever made. The implication, quite obviously, is that in a better ordered world the Scottish parliament should be abolished. It is difficult to think how Johnson could more usefully have done Nicola Sturgeon’s work for her. For this is how this talk will be understood: Pipe down Scotland.

This morning, sundry senior figures in the government doubled down on this nonsense. Maybe devolution is not the problem; it’s just that it is being ‘misused’ by the SNP. The wrong people keep winning elections. Enthusiasts for irony will note this is the same argument promulgated by the SNP: Britain is a disaster, in part because the wrong people keep winning elections. Arguing that devolution has failed because Nicola Sturgeon is first minister is the same as arguing that Britain has failed because Boris Johnson is Prime Minister. Sometimes you wonder if these people deserve each other. A rotten government in Edinburgh no more makes devolution a disaster than Johnson proves the Union’s bankruptcy. (The answer, in each case, is to elect a better government.)

Be that as it may, people like to keep their politicians close. You might think a Brexiteer could understand this. According to the latest edition of the Scottish Social Attitudes Survey – a gold-standard piece of research – 61 per cent of people said they trust the Scottish government to work in the national interest; just 15 per cent trust the UK government to do likewise.

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