When it comes to dealings with their political opponents, Scottish nationalists have only one setting: furious outrage. No matter the subject, Scotland’s ruling parties – the SNP and the Greens – may be depended upon to move swiftly to apoplexy. Everything the Conservatives and Labour say, no matter how benign, must be twisted and reshaped into an attack on Scotland. Good faith is an alien concept.
Nat attacks on evil Unionists and their dastardly plans and plots grow ever weaker because they’re so damned predictable.
But the problem with being permanently angry is that, well, it gets rather exhausting for everyone, doesn’t it? Nat attacks on evil Unionists and their dastardly plans and plots grow ever weaker because they’re so damned predictable. The latest affront fuelling the nationalist grievance machine is the UK government’s suggestion that ministers at Holyrood should work with their Westminster counterparts on the introduction of a deposit return scheme (DRS) for drinks containers.
Perhaps, because life’s too short, you may not have been following the ins and outs of this particular story so here’s how we got to where we are. Green minister Lorna Slater was put in charge of a scheme to encourage the recycling of drinks cans and bottles. She then proceeded to make a mess of things at every step.
She failed to bring manufacturers onboard. She delayed asking the UK government for an exemption from the Internal Market Act according to Westminster (necessary because a Scotland-only scheme would mean different responsibilities for producers, depending on which side of the border they sold their drinks), though she has labelled this ‘categorically not true’. And she has lost the faith of a number of senior government figures.
During the recent SNP leadership contest, won by Humza Yousaf, all candidates conceded the DRS was a mess. With Yousaf in office, Slater announced the government would postpone the launch of the scheme – which had been due to launch in August – until March 2024.
Then, on Friday night, the UK government wrote to Slater offering that exemption from the Internal Market Act. The proposal was that Scotland could run a pilot for a UK-wide scheme — but without the inclusion of glass bottles.
The reaction was tediously predictable. The ‘sabotage’ of the DRS was a ‘democratic outrage’, declared Yousaf. The UK government wasn’t just trying to scupper the scheme; it was trying to undermine devolution.
This was the laughable theme that Slater attempted to develop as she addressed MSPs on the matter yesterday afternoon. What we were seeing was yet more evidence that devolution is under ‘sustained attack’. Scottish Secretary Alister Jack seemed, Slater added, ‘more interested in torpedoing Scotland’s parliament than he is in protecting Scotland’s environment’. Instead of agreeing to the UK government’s proposal, Slater said this ‘deliberate sabotage’ left the Scottish government wondering whether this was something it could work with. She would update MSPs in due course.
It really was most exhausting stuff which, I think, will have limited appeal to voters. Those whom the DRS will affect – drinks producers, those in the hospitality industry – are already hugely unimpressed by it. Will Lorna Slater and Humza Yousaf really win new supporters to this independence cause with this latest piece of calculated outrage? Ah hae, as they say, ma doots. It’s hardly Braveheart stuff, after all, is it?
Even among the nationalists’ most excitable supporters, damned few would argue that a benefit of independence would be the ability to introduce a complicated scheme that’d let us get 20p back on an empty Irn Bru bottle. There is, I think, limited mileage in the slogan ‘rise now and put your empties in the appropriate container’.
The nationalists’ furious reaction to the UK government’s proposal doesn’t boost the independence argument. Instead, it simply makes Humza Yousaf and Lorna Slater sound deranged.
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