Michael Fry: Voting Tory in the General Election will consign Scotland to the sticks

I did so mainly because the sort of conservative party that had developed in Scotland seemed to me a contradiction in terms. No other conservative party in the world is hostile to its own nation’s patriotism. But Scots Tories are, not only in political and constitutional terms but also in the economic terms that remain the other main pillar of conservative ideology and the other main motivation for conservative voters right round the globe.

Now we learn from an opinion poll that 33 per cent of Scots may vote for this anti-patriotic party which is not even very interested in capitalism.

I suppose it must be talking to people like me. We form, as is clear from the merest glance at the electoral map, one bedrock of the SNP’s present strength. It may be true that industrial (or now post-industrial) Scotland, which forms another such bedrock, does more to determine the Scottish Government’s outlook and policy. In this Scotland people have been converted from Labour, but beyond the Central Belt Labour had never won more than a small fraction of the vote. Across the whole north and south of Scotland, people must instead have been converted from the Conservatives, often via the Liberal Democrats, because that was how these regions voted before the collapse of the old two-party system.

How have all those converts to the SNP been able to accept the party’s general leftist stance? Probably because they recognise it needs to hang on to the former Labour heartlands it has conquered, since without continuing support from there the nation will never become independent. It does not mean the converts are themselves socialists. You do not just have to take my word for it. Look at the letters to the The National from the redoubtable Peter Craigie or William Ross, which I warmly commend to readers.

Like me, they oppose the depressing collectivist consensus of Scottish politics, from which even Ruth Davidson’s policy-lite party does not dissent with any vigour. The consensus is all the more depressing for having been so unsuccessful in relaunching the economy. Neither Tories nor Labour nor LibDems offer a way out. Only an independent Scotland does. Once that as yet foreign and imaginary country appears on the map, it will need to face the realities of making its own way in the world. The poll-driven, populist slogans which had previously egged it on will no longer be enough. New truths will present themselves – most of them inspiring, but one or two a little daunting.

We don’t yet know the exact circumstances of all this, but perhaps some of the runes can already be read. And incidentally they go to show how false is the claim from Theresa May that her party and government represent the interests of Scotland better than Scotland’s own party and government can, if only we would all shut up and back a hard Brexit. This claim is false because the interests of Scotland and England have already diverged so much as to be unbridgeable by her or by any politician only capable of looking at the UK from the viewing platform of London.

I specify politician because there are in the English capital people who do take a wider view, especially in the City of London which long ago left behind anything that might be called Little England. That’s a reason why its concerns have been ignored by May and her merry men too.

For instance, I noticed last week some remarks from Michael Saunders, a member of the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee. He gave a broad hint that, at its next meeting, he will vote for a rise in the basic interest rate of 0.25 per cent, which has been on hold since last August (before that, it had been at 0.5 per cent since 2009). He notes that the economic effect of Brexit has been less severe than expected, but that now inflation is rising and likely to hit three per cent by the end of this year. Unemployment has been coming down without any sign of an improvement in the UK’s poor level of productivity. In other words the UK economy is getting stimulated, if in a lop-sided and risky way, but enough to make higher interest rates a move that ticks more boxes, in terms of stable recovery, than some others.

Unfortunately this policy that looks so good from London would be dreadful for Scotland. We don’t have so much inflation because we don’t have housing bubbles. Or at least we don’t have anything like the gigantic housing bubbles of the south-east of England, where for 20 years they have been deliberately blown up by governments of every hue in a so far vain attempt to make the punters feel richer and ready for a fresh boom in consumption, just like in the old days. In Scotland, lacking any experience of this primrose path, we don’t need a rise in interest rates to control our inflation. On the contrary, the most likely effect of it would be to depress still further an economy that is already drifting into recession, with heaven knows what grislier consequences down the line. I wonder how this squares with Theresa May’s call to the last Tory conference that "our economy should work for everyone".

As with inflation, so with employment. In Scotland the active indigenous workforce is stagnant or shrinking. There are some people too old to bother, others too young to have gained the right skills or experience, who have just given up the search for a job as hopeless. Indeed there are families in some sink estates already in the third or fourth generation without any knowledge of the world of work. Even if they could be lured back into it, native-born Scots have ceased to reproduce themselves enough to match the available opportunities. That is why we have immigration, often of people who are younger, better educated and more motivated than our average. It is also the reason why the previous decline in the Scottish population has been reversed. Immigration has become vital to Scotland.

Here is a second area where the UK Government, while pretending to us and perhaps even to itself that it is working for the benefit of all four nations, in reality favours just one of them (and not ours). The English have decided they dislike immigrants: that’s their business, though they will soon find they have made some parts of their economy inoperable, the NHS for a start. But the Scots do not dislike immigrants – as a migratory people themselves, they can sympathise with people who seek their fortunes far away from their native land. Any country wishing to embark on a policy of growth needs extra resources of labour – and this describes Scotland too. The immigrants want to come here and we need them. Theresa May is anti-immigrant, as she showed while Home Secretary often in a cruel and heartless way (like her successor in that office). Again, she is bad for Scotland.

With the economic interest of two nations in the UK diametrically opposed, the government in London cannot find a policy to fit all and it must choose. In two of the most important areas of policy, inflation and employment, it chooses England’s interest over Scotland’s. These choices will tend to keep Scotland in the condition of a backward regional economy, starved of the capital and labour to be anything else. The trouble is, I suspect, that the UK Government rather prefers things that way, since it will stop the natives getting too uppity. I don’t see how anybody even of the most conservative disposition could endorse such a view and such a course, let alone vote for it. Don’t do so on June 8.