The silence of the Scottish unionists

We citizens of the small Sussex village of Etchingham are proud of our clan chief, Julie, who chaired Tuesday night’s encounter between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn. So ancient is her surname that it is a chicken-and-egg question about which came first, the family or the village. The headless 14th-century effigy of her forebear, Sir William, lies in the parish church. But local patriotism must not blind us to the fact that even our Julie could not rescue the debate from its dreary game-show format, sometimes witless questions and the lack of actual discussion. It cannot be repeated too often that these shows are symptoms of TV triumphalism and not of a healthy democracy.

Much indignation on the BBC the next morning that the Conservatives had tweeted partisan comment on the debate, passing itself off as a ‘fact-check’. Compare this with the corporation’s ‘Reality Check’, which has consistently trashed Brexit for the past three years.

Visiting Scotland last week, I was struck by the vehemence of many Scots against being ruled by the SNP. Devolution in Britain has given more scope to local tyranny. The fact that Scotland has only one police force, for example, makes it much more likely that it will be the arm of one-party rule. Scottish Unionists therefore tend to stay silent lest their careers or businesses suffer. But as we know from the first independence referendum, they are in fact a majority. This leads me to suspect that the Tories will not do as badly as predicted in Scotland in the coming general election. Nowadays Scottish Labour is so weakened that it could hardly be described as a Unionist force. Jeremy Corbyn seems ready to concede ‘indyref2’ as his price for a deal with the SNP.