WITHIN another flying visit by the UK Prime Minister in pursuit of photo opportunities we saw Johnson meeting twice with Douglas Ross and heard accusations of Scottish Government failure to totally focus on the pandemic and economic recovery. Meanwhile, the UK Government continues to construct a wall of Unionism around the UK against Scottish independence.
With public attention taken up by Covid concerns, the Scottish Tory group is fully engaged in work with its Westminster masters to ignore the Scottish Government, undermine the Scottish Parliament, roll back devolution, and build a second government of Scotland.
This has involved the UK Parliament enacting the Internal Market Act and grabbing devolved powers over regulations and trade which should have come to Edinburgh from Brussels after Brexit. The foundations to hold Scotland within the UK wall are being laid.
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Scottish taxpayer contributions to European Regional Development and Social Funds, with £46 million previously managed by the Scottish Government accountable to Holyrood, have now been grabbed back to Westminster.
The UK Government paper on its future management of those funds says “the UK Internal Market Act … paves the way for a new relationship between the UK Government and local partners.” By “local partners” the UK Government means Scottish councils and “local businesses,” not the Scottish Government, which will only be consulted where “relevant” and “appropriate.”
Former EU contributions from Scotland have been transferred: into a £220 million UK Community Renewal Fund currently receiving bids from selected Scottish councils; into a UK Community Ownership Fund with more than £12 million available annually in Scotland for bids from local groups; and into a UK Government Shared Prosperity Fund providing £120 million every year of “levelling up” grants to persuade Scots to feel better together in the UK. Multiple bricks for the Union wall.
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Robert Jenrick, the Westminster Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, will make all funding decisions along with the Secretary of State for Scotland and “local partners". We can guess that the local partners will include Douglas Ross and local Conservative branches.
Unsurprisingly, Robert Jenrick believes the Union flag is “a symbol of liberty, unity and freedom” and that any politician who wants to hold a Scottish independence referendum at this point is “frankly mad.”
We can assume that it will be Scotland’s second government, via its Edinburgh and Glasgow hubs (under Baroness Davidson?) who will be monitoring, evaluating and carrying out “spot checks” to ensure that the UK Government logo and text branding appears on “all communications materials” and all projects have the logo on “a plaque of significant size at a location readily visible to the public.” The Union wall will be covered in plaques.
Any delay in holding a second independence referendum will simply provide the UK Government with opportunities to increasingly bribe Scottish communities and promote the British brand using Scotland’s tax contributions.
The Unionist wall is getting ever higher. We urgently need to assemble materials to build our own structure – the bridge to a new independent Scotland.
Andrew Reid
Comrie, Perthshire
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