Gerald Warner says that Scotland’s Conservatives, far from standing their ground on devolution, have jumped with relish on the gravy train of the Holyrood parliament
The Scottish Play has degenerated into a farce and the indigenous Tories have lost the plot. When the constitutional future of the United Kingdom moved centre-stage in late 2007, Unionists were heartened by the deftness of touch David Cameron brought to this issue. It contrasted with the directionless drift of his supposed allies in the Scottish Conservative and Unionist party, which is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Scottish separatist tendency.
The Scottish Tories have gone native. In the run-up to the devolution referendum on 11 September 1997, they proclaimed vociferously that the creation of a devolved parliament would end civilisation as we had known it. By 12 September, in the immediate wake of the success of the devolutionist campaign, Armageddon was magically transformed into the ‘settled will of the Scottish people’ and a welcome reform in which the Scottish Conservatives would enthusiastically participate.
Conversions do not come any more Damascene. A strong incentive was supplied by the voting system created for the Scottish parliament. Of the 129 places at Holyrood, 73 are directly elected constituency seats on the Westminster model, but 56 are so-called ‘regional’ seats, allocated to parties under the D’Hondt system of proportional representation, with Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs) appointed off closed lists by party leaders.
So, when the Tories failed to win any constituency seats at the first Scottish election in 1999 but were compensated with 18 list seats, these unelectables quickly recognised a system under which they could prosper. Soon they were enjoying the salaries and allowances (only a complete duffer could fail to earn at least £100,000 a year from Holyrood’s generous provision) and even queuing up to collect the medals that MSPs modestly awarded themselves at the inauguration of the parliament.
From that beginning, Tory MSPs have bedded in comfortably. It was a symptom of their successful acclimatisation to the political dependency culture that party leader David McLetchie had to resign when his travel expenses, largely consisting of taxi fares, were found to have exceeded £11,000. His successor, Annabel Goldie, has expanded collaboration with the enemy to Vichy proportions.
‘I think my vision of Conservatism is largely moulded by a desire to make it relevant to a devolved Scotland,’ she has said. Yet devolution has been disastrous for Scotland. Holyrood is a joke, its MSPs the butt of bitter humour in every pub and club. The Tories are in the unusual position for any political party of having been proved right in their predictions, but now they are ashamed of the fact. Whenever you hear anybody in Scotland say, ‘We must make devolution work,’ you know it is a Tory MSP speaking. Nobody else talks like that now.
The rot lies within the parliamentary party at Holyrood, which has created an increasingly fissiparous schism between itself and Conservative voters. Well-cushioned MSPs have found it convenient to subscribe to the myth of devolution as the settled popular will. Yet that is a Labour lie. At the first devolution referendum in 1979, only 33 per cent of the electorate supported a Scottish parliament. At the second referendum in 1997 it was still endorsed only by a minority of the electorate (1.7 million out of 4 million). At no time has devolution ever commanded the support of a majority of the Scottish electorate.
Nobody suggests it would be serious politics today for the Conservatives to crusade for the abolition of the Scottish parliament: such is human nature that Scots would probably cling jealously to a seriously flawed institution on the chauvinist instinct that, though imperfect, it is theirs. Yet there are innumerable other scenarios the Scottish Tories could have promoted, to the discomfiture of their opponents and the approval of the public.
Instead, they have flirted with the notion of ‘full fiscal autonomy’, a euphemism for handing all powers of taxation north of the border to the spendthrifts at Holyrood who have already raised business rates to a level more than 10 per cent above England. The claim is that this would increase ‘accountability’. Really? Like the accountability of local councils, do they mean? The fiscal reality is that in Scotland, out of an electorate of 4 million, only 2.3 million pay tax; 22 per cent of people of working age are claiming a key benefit or are in receipt of a tax credit; and 23 per cent of the workforce is in the public sector. Where is the constituency there for fiscal continence?
The Conservative party at Holyrood has long since abandoned its supporters. It seeks only the approval of its opponents. To be greeted by colleagues from other parties with smiles is the desperate reassurance the Tory members seek; they do not realise that only when they are received with scowls will that signal they are again a political force. And what has been the electoral reward for their Vichy collaboration? When the Scottish Conservatives fought a last-ditch battle against devolution at the general election in 1997, they secured almost half a million (493,069) votes; by last May’s Scottish election, that core support had dwindled to 334,743 votes.
Annabel Goldie recently reinforced that failure with her most atrocious sell-out yet. By supporting the creation of a ‘constitutional commission’ proposed by the beleaguered Scottish Labour leader Wendy Alexander, she saved her opponent from resignation over a scandal involving political donations and enabled her to rally her badly rattled MSPs. Beyond that, by preserving Alexander she allowed Harriet Harman to stay in office and prevented severe embarrassment for Gordon Brown. Simultaneously, by promoting increased powers for the Scottish parliament she bought into the ultimately separatist mantra that ‘devolution is a process, not an event’ and helped Alex Salmond further his agenda.
This was a remarkable double whammy, lending aid and comfort to such diverse opponents. An opportunist might have been tempted to exploit the opposition’s disarray; but Annabel doesn’t do politics. What she does is appeasement. At a conference in London in January she enjoyed her Munich moment to sell out the Union when, along with Labour and Liberal Democrat appeasers, she signed a statement that ‘the clear majority of people support devolution’. As the figures already cited demonstrate, that claim is untrue.
In February she was at it again, voting for the SNP budget after being offered cosmetic concessions: a promise of 500 more police officers (the SNP had already notoriously reneged on a similar pledge); a revamped drugs strategy (the Scottish Tories’ big idea at the last election was to throw a further £100 million of taxpayers’ money into the methadone lake); and a reduction in business rates a year earlier than originally proposed.
Labour at least abstained on the budget vote, but the Tories had to flaunt their tartan credentials by voting with those who aim to destroy the United Kingdom. By emasculating Unionism, La Goldie has disfranchised the 614,400 Scots who voted No in the devolution referendum — the people the Tories needed to cultivate to rebuild their electoral power base.
Even those who were sceptical of David Cameron have been impressed by his hand-ling of the issue of the Union. On a recent visit to Scotland, by welding condemnation of English nationalists waving the flag of St George indissolubly on to his even-handed denunciation of Saltire-flourishing Scottish separatists, he made it impossible for the SNP spinners to caricature his remarks as anti-Scottish.
While responding to legitimate English outrage at the unfairness of the Barnett formula funding of Scotland, he has made it clear that, though he intends to address the anomaly, he does not propose to strip Scotland of all subvention overnight. And he has rightly promised English votes for English laws, to answer the West Lothian Question — which the polls show an overwhelming majority of Scots are sufficiently fair-minded to endorse.
Cameron is boxing clever on Scotland; but all this will count for nothing as long as his supposed Scottish lieutenant Annabel Goldie is selling every pass north of Gretna. The Tory leader is well aware of this dilemma and is casting around for a solution. The eventual resolution may be gently to encourage those timid woodland creatures, the Scottish Tories, to mutate into an independent party and then wait for the political equivalent of grey squirrels to recolonise the centre-right terrain in Scotland.