Kevin McKenna: Scots don't claim superiority but the Union has run its course

Some of them, though, were very entertaining. Who knew that Alistair Darling had such a sharp sense of humour? The Laird of Glenbuckie and his fellow Labour dignitary Lord Robertson of Auchenstoatin have always vied for the title of Britain’s most over-promoted politician.

In the run-up to 2014 each of them sought to outdo the other with Armageddon fantasies about what life would look like in an independent Scotland. Robertson took an early lead with an incoherent rant in Washington in April of that year. He claimed that Britain’s enemies would all be breaking out the jelly and ice cream if Scotland gained its independence from the UK. Not only that, but there would be joy unconfined in Hell itself. “The forces of darkness would simply love it,” His Lordship insisted.

I derived some pride in the thought that Lucifer, after a tiring day roaming about the world seeking whom he may devour, finally makes it home on September 18 and gets a hold of Ivan the Terrible and Dracula.

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“Any news on that Scottish referendum, boys?”

“Aye, your Grace, the Nats have won it.”

“Ya beauty: large Bacardis all round and turn aff the heating.”

Now, no-one wants to be uncharitable here, but Lord Robertson’s appointment as secretary-general of Nato would have given far more succour to Britain’s enemies than the mere loss of Scotland. It would be like facing Barcelona and finding out they’d dropped Lionel Messi and replaced him with Crawford Baptie. Not to be out-done, Lord Darling, leader of the Better Together campaign, came up with some belters of his own. In a list of burning questions he wanted answered by the Yes side was this one: how will an independent Scotland cope with people not knowing our new international dialling code? “Hello, is that England? Can you put me through to Scotland?”

The Baron also gave us this one. If Scotland became independent, he said, “British music will no longer be our music”. Holy Mother of God. For years I’d derived great comfort meditating on the sensitive guitar-playing of Tony Iommi, Ritchie Blackmore and Jimmy Page. Now, according to Baron Darling, their chords would induce pain in the manner of Harry Palmer’s brain-washing in The Ipcress File. Darling’s sepulchral demeanour has always suggested a lost undertaker looking for a spare funeral. And here he was trying to suck the innocent pleasure out of listening to your favourite songs. What a joyless trumpet he is.

It seems, though, that the spirit of their Lordships lives on. Spooked by the recent rosy numbers in favour of independence, the Unionist fantasia is evident once more.

The UK Government’s catastrophic handling of Brexit and coronavirus (not least them using it as a means of lining the pockets of their friends and donors) has rather undermined any future claims to economic stability. So they’ve turned instead to an old classic: that merely to be in favour of Scottish independence is to be hostile to England and the English.

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The Conservatives even blamed the nasty SNP for forcing Boris Johnson to cut short his holiday in Scotland, thus choosing to overlook the Daily Mail publishing exclusive photographs of the PM and his family on Wester Ross. This led Britain’s favourite metal-detector Neil Oliver to accuse his fellow Scots of being hostile to the English. He’ll be telling us next that Highland crofters in the 18th century were in tears of gratitude as they swept joyfully on to the boats carrying them to New World riches. Oh wait …

My old and esteemed former colleague Alan Cochrane, writing in The Telegraph, declared that an uncharitable notice posted on a Blairgowrie shop front amounted to a vile, nationwide campaign of anti-English beastliness.

John Lloyd, a respected writer and political commentator, seems to detach from his moorings when writing about Scottish nationalism. In a scholarly article for the influential right-wing website CapX, Lloyd allows himself to fall prey to an intellectually lazy assumption: that many nationalists seem to believe Scots are more moral, virtuous people than the English. “Nationalists see Scotland as much more inclined to equality and social decency, less devoted to the market and money than England,” writes Lloyd.

There is a danger here that the desire to do things differently and to possess different priorities is peddled as a declaration of moral superiority. Indeed if the SNP were ever foolishly to insist that Scottish values (even if such a thing exists) were superior to English values then they’d lose a large chunk of their support overnight.

Scots are all too painfully aware that some of our politicians, entrepreneurs and civil servants are just as grasping and self-serving as exist in England. We will be forever united with England in many parts of our culture, history, language and global outlook. Many of us believe that Scotland at its best is not unlike England at its best: fair, reasonable, moderate, welcoming and friendly. The desire to want to do things differently and to have the power to do so is no more a declaration of moral superiority than the varying manifestos of political parties at a general election.

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We don’t want “freedom” as we are not enslaved; nor are we “occupied” by the English: we simply want Scotland to regain the power of autonomy over all of the decisions affecting our destiny for better or for worse. Many of us who have come late to the cause of independence simply feel that the time is now right for Scotland to return to what had been its natural state for the best part of a millennium. The Union – sometimes good, sometimes not – has simply run its course. Nothing lasts forever.

Certainly, on several, recent big-ticket issues – Brexit, social responsibility and attitudes to migrants – there has been clear divergence reinforced by the results of eight elections encompassing every UK democratic jurisdiction. This, though, doesn’t signal any degree of moral superiority. We may fundamentally disagree with the prevailing currents of the UK Conservative party, but it’s our view that these are culturally and historically at odds with what we think is good about England too.

This current Westminster Conservative Party offers a distortion of England: a crude facsimile of what it could be. We are not judging the rest of England by it. The highest compliment I can pay our great southern neighbours is that an independent Scotland will look like England at its best. An independent Scotland isn’t a threat to England, but a promise. Why do some Unionist thinkers have difficulty grasping this concept?