Ruth Wishart: We must rid ourselves of shackles and end this farce

You might equally say ­something very similar about Boris Johnson’s ­government, now something of a byword for casual duplicity.

As we learned from Mike Russell’s ­National Roadshow remarks, team Johnson was busy insisting that post-Brexit ­Britain would absolutely, definitely be hanging on to the exceptional Erasmus student ­exchange programme, even as its emissary, David Frost, was busily negotiating its ­demise. (Just like we were going to stay in the single market until, oops, we weren’t.)

🎥 @Feorlean reveals what it was really like working with Tory ministers 👀 pic.twitter.com/r2ZOfHOi4h

— The National (@ScotNational) August 19, 2021

This small but important Erasmus ­tragedy is emblematic of a UK Government which has perfected the dark art of saying something in public which turns out to be the polar opposite of what they’re up to in private. I give you the endless po-faced pronouncements that the UK Government would like nothing better than to cosy up to the devolved administrations if only the latter would engage.

And their small and imperfectly formed wee Tory echo chamber in Scotland ­forever rabbiting on about the need to move in lockstep, take a four-nations approach et bloody cetera. You’d have to laugh if you could find a gap in your frustrated weeping.

The fact is that the C-in-C of the ­Unionist cause, the unlovely Michael Gove, has ucceeded in closing off just about every available avenue of possible communication. As Russell observed in the same Q&A, the journey from May to Johnson has been one from incompetence to intransigence.

Not that the pre existing channels were much to write home about, since the PM couldn’t bestir himself to attend any joint ministerial meetings, whilst every ­suggestion by the Scottish Government for a four nations meeting on the crisis of the moment is ignored from a very great height.

Peeps, they do not want to engage. They do not want to talk. They especially do not want to negotiate. They want to put us back in our box, preferably with a padlock ­attached.

Herein lies the ongoing paradox of the Scottish Government and the referendum debate. We have to accept that the status quo imposes many limitations on their ­freedom of movement. Not just in the well rehearsed areas of borrowing powers, ­inward migration policy and so much else.

But because the fiscal settlement means Scotland getting given a set amount of pocket money determined and adjusted by Westminster, it is forever the ­supplicant to successive chancellors whom it ­always has to ask nicely for essential policies changes, most recently in respect of ­furlough datelines and proposed cuts to the uprated universal credit.

And let’s not get started on this week’s GERS figures, which the Scottish ­Government continues to publish ­regardless of the dodgy nature of the data it gets ­handed, and despite the fact that the ­supposed deficit relates in no small part to expenditure which would be alien or utterly irrelevant in an independent Scotland.

These figures, eagerly seized annually by the forces of right wing darkness, are alleged to estimate the revenue we raise and “the goods and services provided for the benefit of Scotland”. There won’t be too many of us prepared to put Trident and all its works in the benefit column, whilst it would take a clever accountant to explain why cutting 10 minutes off the Birmingham London commuter route will improve the life and wellbeing of folks on Skye.

In any event the key word here is ­“estimate”. What a happy accident that this annual work of imagination ­always manages to produce an eye catching ­figure which purports to show that ­Scotland would be running a colossal deficit left to its own puny devices. Yet the fact is that none of these figures relate to what Scotland would actually raise and actually spend for its own independent benefit.

As we reported in the National’s Fact Check, when GERS first saw the light of day under John Major’s government, the then Secretary of State for Scotland, Ian – now, inevitably – Lord Lang wrote a memo saying these figures were “just what was needed at present to maintain the initiative and undermine the other parties”. Plus ca change, as they don’t say in Dumbarton.

I have no doubt that a post ­independence Scotland would face many very real ­fiscal challenges before it arrived at a formula which played directly to its own strengths. Yet who wouldn’t rather face these ­challenges as master and ­mistress of their own destiny?

Who could not wish their own government borrowed and invested for the ­benefit of those sectors on which ­Scotland’s future will depend as opposed to inheriting policy to suit the south east of England?

Similarly, we had have to sit back and absorb all manner of snash from parliamentary minnows who take it upon themselves to critique Scotland’s vaccination programme and figures without once acknowledging that the supplies are not determined by the Scottish Government.

We have had to wheedle and beg for the right to determine who comes to live and work here, and who we can welcome as asylum seekers from the world’s trouble spots.

It seems to me there are some clearcut choices here. We can continue along the current road of trying to appease the UK Government in the hope that it will ­finally look favourably on another test of the will for self determination.

Or we can use the new referendum bill when enacted to say, OK guys, here’s what we’d going to do. You don’t like it? See you in court.

Because what might have once been seen as self defeating bravado now looks like a somewhat overdue attempt at ­unshackling ourselves from a frankly ­dangerous outfit at Westminster.

Let’s be honest about this. They ­continually treat us with utter contempt. Periodically they dangle a little bit of bait like telling us they’ll graciously accede to referendum demands if it is our “settled will”. And guess who gets to decide when that will of ours is settled?

Yet when you look at who is “in charge” down there you have the best set of ­arguments for going it alone we’ve seen this century. A Prime Minister whom even, perhaps especially, his colleagues know is hopelessly ill suited for the top job. Lazy, duplicitous, shambolic – and that’s just the Tory verdict.

We have a Foreign Secretary who ­currently disgraces that office, and the bar was not high given that Boris Johnson was a predecessor. Not even to mention an English education secretary whom ­colleagues suspect remains in post to make the rest of the cabinet seem less dim.

All that would be bad enough; tragic enough. Yet on top of the sheer incompetence and indolence we have been witness to serial acts of corruption performed in plain sight. It is no accident that procrastination allied to contracts for chums led us to tens of thousands of premature deaths and inadequate protection for those who fought and strove to save them. Many of whom, in turn, lost their own lives.

Various minister have been found to have broken either the law or the ­ministerial code or both, yet such is the shameless nature of this ­administration that hardly a single resignation has ­resulted. And when one belatedly did it was because the cabinet secretary ­involved had been taking lessons in ­marital fidelity from his boss.

In other partnership news, there are now more contemporary grounds for ­divorce. Those wishing to break free from a damaging long term relationship can now cite coercive control.

So, Scotland, are we up for years more of coercive, controlling behaviour from people singularly without shame or clue as they drag the UK’s name through the mud, and ours with it?