BORIS Johnson’s "Sermon on the Zoom Account" delivered the usual platitudes, rather than beatitudes.
It was a Sunday service preaching to the choir of course, in which the Prime Minister summoned the holy trinity of arguments for the Union: the broad shoulders, the Blitz spirit and — that old faithful — a straightforward, anti-democratic "No" to Indyref2.
Mr Johnson can seek to own his government’s disastrous mistakes of the past year all he wants, as the UK death toll from Covid-19 nudges 130,000. He has consistently acted too slowly and learnt little from catastrophic mistakes made last year.
If there is one legacy of his premiership, it will be that he failed utterly in that ultimate test of governance: protecting the people.
Meanwhile, the broad shoulders argument is, and always has been, a nonsense. Any normal, self-governing country across the world can take decisions in its own interests to support business, to save jobs and to invest now to build for the future.
UK borrowing will be £355 billion this financial year, mainly to keep paying wages while people cannot go to work. There is little sign yet of the investment required to grow the economy out of the doldrums, and unless it happens soon the coming economic shocks will be considerable. We gleaned little today about Tory plans to rebuild.
READ MORE: Boris Johnson says only Tories can stop SNP majority and indyref2 amid Labour attack
Boris Johnson’s promises of transforming post-Brexit Britain into a global trading nation lack credibility in the week that the UK Government’s own statistics show exports to the EU fell by more than 40% in January while imports tumbled 30%.
Scottish students are already disadvantaged by the UK’s mindless decision to withdraw from the Erasmus scheme - another of the Prime Minister’s broken promises.
The "levelling up" agenda, which puts Tory constituencies front of the queue and rural Aberdeenshire and the Highlands last, ain’t something to boast about at a Scottish conference appearance. A shrewder speechmaker might have steered clear of these subjects altogether.
It is a tedious myth that an independent Scotland could not have provided financial support at scale to weather the economic storm of the past year. It is, however, a fact that under current constitutional restrictions the Scottish Government can only borrow £450 million a year for capital investment and £600m to manage revenue cash flow.
The ability to deliver economic stimulus is not constrained by the ambition of the SNP government, but entirely by which powers are still held by Westminster.
But, fear not. We’ll jolly on through the pandemic and its aftermath fortified by nothing more than plucky chutzpah, says the Prime Minister.
The evangelical power of the father, son and “British spirit” will be unifying and redemptive while, apparently, us Nats want the first post-lockdown reunion with our families to be a dinner table bust-up over the constitution.
More likely, perhaps, that the people of Scotland are finding it harder to keep the faith. The stiffness of one’s upper lip doesn’t prevent Scotland’s interests from continuing to be sidelined.
READ MORE: Tory conference: Alister Jack admits some Brexit failings as he calls indyref2 'reckless folly'
Weapons of mass destruction on the Clyde don’t offer a solution to deepening inequality. Hollowing out devolution doesn’t demonstrate a partnership of equals. Trying to Union jackify a vaccine programme doesn’t give you the right to blind fealty from the adoring masses.
Denying that it is for the people of Scotland to choose our own future, doesn’t cut the democratic mustard or hold firm for very much longer — indeed there was maybe some ground given on that dawning reality in Mr Johnson’s speech.
Scotland has had enough of the prophets of doom saying this is as good as it gets. That growing belief in our nation standing on its own two feet isn’t a result of zealous conversion, it is a gradual, considered, rational choice underpinned by increasing confidence in what Scotland has the capacity to become.
Tory speeches telling us we’ve never had it so good tend to belie a very different reality. Evoking spirited togetherness, masks a fear of the more engaging alternative.
If Boris Johnson keeps telling Scotland these are the most convincing grounds upon which we can’t, the more compelling the arguments become for why we should.
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