LEGISLATION providing Scots with free personal care and teachers with pay rises was a “scandal and a disgrace”, Boris Johnson wrote in a 2001 Telegraph column on devolution.
Months before becoming an MP, the journalist penned the column which described devolution as “unjust” because the English were "paying yet again so that the Scots can have a benefit we are not able to afford for the United Kingdom as a whole”.
The Prime Minister is due to visit Scotland in efforts to make the case for the Union amid rising support for Scottish independence. Ministers are said to be in “panic mode” as polls show support for Yes sitting at around 54%.
The unearthed column will not make easy reading for Scottish Tories keen to stress what they see as the value of the Union as their leader spends time north of the Border this week.
READ MORE: Nicola Sturgeon not told about Boris Johnson's planned visit
Johnson berates the 2001 Labour administration at Holyrood in his column, writing: “In the teeth of opposition from the Treasury of what is still laughably called the United Kingdom, the Scots have decided to pay for free personal care for the elderly.”
He claims that if free personal care was rolled out in England “the spending limits of both Labour and Tories would be blown to oblivion”. He does not make it clear what he means by “spending limits” or provide evidence for the statement.
Johnson also writes in mock Scots in the piece as he ridicules efforts to improve the lives of students and elderly people.
“Och aye, it's the New Jerusalem!” he writes. “It's a land of milk and honey they're building up there in Scotland, laddie. They'll nae be doing with your horrid Anglo-Saxon devil-take-the-hindmost approach. No, they're just more socialist than us sour-mouthed Sassenachs.
“They want to spend on the puir wee students, provided, of course, that they are poor wee Scottish students, not English ones. They want to shame the tightwads in the Treasury by spending on the puir wee Scottish teachers - in fact, they've given them a pay rise of 21.5% over the next three years, far more than the English teachers are getting.
“And now, just to show how much generally nicer they are than the English, they have decided to spend, spend, spend on the puir wee old folks who need someone to help them open a can of beans.”
Johnson goes on to say that Scottish people are “grossly over-represented at Westminster”, while the Cabinet at the time was “rigid with Scots”.
The Tory leader, who has often been referred to as the “last Prime Minister of the UK”, concludes his article by saying: “Devolution is causing all the strains that its opponents predicted, and in allowing the Scots to make their own laws, while free-riding on English taxpayers, it is simply unjust.
“The time will come when the Scots will discover that their personal care for the elderly is too expensive, and they will come, cap in hand to Uncle Sugar in London. And when they do, I propose that we tell them to hop it.”
Johnson proclaimed himself the “Minister for the Union” when he became PM a year ago, but was warned in a recent report that this title would not be enough to improve relations between Westminster and the devolved nations.
Former FM Henry McLeish, the subject of much criticism in Johnson’s Telegraph piece, this week called the Prime Minister’s failure to notify the Scottish Government of his intention to visit Scotland an “act of gross discourtesy”.
Nicola Sturgeon first learned of the Tory leader’s intention to visit in the press on her 50th birthday.
McLeish told The National: “Even by Boris Johnson’s standards this is an act of gross discourtesy. Any Prime Minister or senior official of the government coming to Scotland automatically informs the First Minister’s office or the appropriate minister.
“But let’s not be surprised at Johnson’s behaviour. He is beginning to take on some of Trump’s characteristics. He does want he wants, when he wants, regardless of what people want him to do.
“To me he is now a maverick, he will continue to be a populist and is starting to be an authoritarian. We have to keep calm heads, this is a deliberate act of provocation.”
SNP MSP George Adam said: “The Tories fought tooth and nail to prevent devolution and would scrap the Scottish Parliament tomorrow if they had the chance.
“Boris Johnson may have written this guff nearly 20 years ago but while his job has changed his views have not – as shown by the repeated stealth attacks on the powers of the Scottish Parliament under his leadership.
“He is still in denial that the people best placed to make decisions for Scotland are the people who live here.
"No wonder support for the Tories is collapsing in Scotland, and no wonder support for independence continues to rise."
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