Which of the Big Parties Really Wants a Scottish Exit from the UK?

Have you noticed that the entire Tory election campaign is based on a belief that the Conservative and Unionist Party (its increasingly ludicrous official name)  is automatically entitled to be the government, and indeed to choose its own opposition? This is particularly startling in a party that is shrinking in membership by the day, has in the past few decades lost the great majority of its members and the support of millions of its voters, and has not won a general election since 1992, which seems to me to be 23 years ago.

 

Like a vast, bawling spoiled toddler, the Tory Party howls and snivels about how the mere possibility that anyone else might be the government, or anyone else might win seats in Parliament and so be entitled to determine the direction of events,  is axiomatically unjust. The belief that it is in some way the only rightful government, despite not being able to get many votes, is implicit in everything it says.

 

In the same way, it cannot grasp that it has alienated many who once supported it, by its own deliberate actions.  It dismisses its own disgruntled supporters, who leave it for other loyalties, as ‘fruitcakes and closet racists’, before grasping that this may be unwise and then attempting to woo the self-same ‘fruitcakes and closet racists’, whose fruitcakey and closet racist votes it now finds it needs. If the Tory party were a character in a Roald Dahl children’s story, I think it would have an ugly name and come to a sticky end.

 

 Its entire campaign until last week was based on its opinion (not necessarily binding on all, nor shared by all, as it turned out) that the Labour Party had chosen the wrong leader. Well, leave aside the fact that the Labour Party is separate from the Tory Party partly because it represents different interests and different parts of the country, it is surely reasonable for that party to pick a leader the Tories don’t like. I have to admit that I have not heard any senior Labour person grouch about the undoubtedly strange Tory choice of an utterly-inexperienced and undistinguished PR man (whose bad decisions are one of the principal causes of the current refugee tragedy in the Mediterranean)  as their leader. Anyway, that one blew up in the Tory Party’s face when they pumped it up too hard.

 

So they are currently weeping and keening about the fact that large numbers of Scots voters support the SNP and wish to leave the UK. This, apparently is going to have some effect on Labour if they try to form a minority government after May 7th. Well, so it may. It will have an effect on whoever tries to form such a government, even if it is the Tories. It would even have an effect on the majority government which is, to put it mildly, the least likely outcome of the current campaign. Think about it. If the Scottish people overwhelmingly elect representatives who wish to leave the UK, in preference to representatives who wish to stay, then London is going to have to take that view increasingly seriously.

 

This isn’t a new problem.  It was Mr Cameron’s coalition which granted the referendum to the SNP,  when it was much weaker than it is now. It was Mr  Cameron who handled (mishandled?) the negotiations over the question that would be asked, and who was repeatedly (in the view of most dispassionate observers) outmanoeuvred by Alex Salmond.  It was Mr Cameron who panicked when the vote threatened to go in favour of secession. It was Mr Cameron who stimulated the SNP surge by playing party politics on ‘English votes for English laws’ rather than in keeping the ‘vow’ he and others had made to grant new powers to Scotland after the referendum.

 

I might add that the Tory party is itself unable to persuade most people in Scotland to elect its representatives to anything. As this was not always so, this presumably has something to do with the quality of its leadership and establishment, the very people who ensured Mr Cameron’s smooth accession to the leadership. (Readers here will be familiar with my argument that the United Kingdom cannot coexist in these islands with the European Union, which offers the UK’s constituent parts an alternative form of federation which is rather appealing to the political classes of Scotland and Wales).

 

And now? Say the Tories manage to win enough seats to form a minority government, a perfectly feasible outcome, or even a majority government. Will they be able to ignore the SNP surge, likely  to give the SNP another strong majority in the next Scottish elections, on top of its large new bloc of MPs at Westminster, giving them an almost clean sweep of the entire territory of Scotland?

 

Of course not, especially since it is absolutely in the Tory Party’s interest that Scotland leaves the UK, for crude electoral calculation ( as many times discussed on this weblog, notably in the recent reference to Michael Portillo) .

 

One of this weblog’s favourite rhymes is the one that goes ‘The more that he talked of his honour, the faster we counted the spoons’. Well, the more that Mr Cameron berates Labour for being the putative puppet of the SNP, the more I suspect that this is the role he intends and indeed hopes to play himself.

 

If he is genuinely as alarmed by the prospect of a Scottish defection as he claims, and if he thinks (as he appears to) that the expressed will of Scottish voters cannot be allowed to prevail, he has one option.

 

He must offer to all the UK parties the idea of a coalition to maintain the unity of the United Kingdom (difficult, given that the departure of Northern Ireland,  which we must concede under international treaty if a majority vote for it, is likely to awaken as an issue quite soon, but there).

 

 

Whether this would entail an actual coalition government may well depend on the scale of the ghastly economic crisis which is going to be officially acknowledged some time during the coming summer. The Greek problem is still very serious, and could trigger severe problems in Euroland.

 

The Tories might also simply offer an ad hoc alliance on this issue - a pact to vote with Labour against a further Scottish referendum, or any more moves towards Scottish independence.  They could also offer their votes to prevent any SNP blackmail over defence, or over economic measures designed to overcome our deficit, on which Labour and the Tories are close to agreement. If Labour had any sense, they would ask Mr Cameron to commit himself to something of the kind.

 

Because I do not think Mr Cameron would make any such commitment. He wishes to have a free hand to make some sort of deal with the SNP, if he hangs on to office. His supposed concern for the Union, and for the power of Parliament to make the laws for England without Scottish interference, are not principled but tactical, as he showed quite clearly in the days after the referendum last September.

 

I believe that, with a great show of reluctance, as crammed with fake mourning and as loaded down with insincerity as a gangster’s wreath-strewn funeral, the Tory Party secretly hopes for and will secretly celebrate a Scottish exit from the UK.

The SNP feels much the same way, hence its brazen co-operation with the Tory attempt to portray Labour as the SNP’s tool and patsy, encouraged by Nicola Sturgeon’s unwanted public wooing of Ed Miliband at last week’s TV debate.

 

Labour, for equally unprincipled reasons (namely, the permanent loss of any hope of ever again forming a majority government), genuinely hates the idea of a Scottish exit.  Its mourning at the funeral of the UK will be real, if selfish.

 

All this is surely obvious to anyone who pays attention.