Boris Johnson’s trip to Scotland won’t save the union, but at least he’s trying

The prime minister’s visit may have worked in Nicola Sturgeon’s favour, but he has to continue making arguments in person, writes John Rentoul

Are Nicola Sturgeon’s trips to the Scottish parliament ‘genuinely essential’?  (Reuters TV)

You can imagine what Nicola Sturgeon would say if the prime minister hadn’t visited Scotland. He spends all his time in London ignoring the democratically expressed wishes of the Scottish people; he’s not interested in us. 

I admit it hadn’t occurred to me what she would say when Boris Johnson did visit. I assumed it would be the usual sarcastic welcome for an English politician who is so unpopular in Scotland that his very presence there drives up support for independence. 

I underestimated her again. Her response was brilliant: to criticise the prime minister for making an inessential trip during lockdown. The high moral ground was effortlessly taken, and the subtext is to stoke the plague-inspired desire to hunker down and close borders that has driven support for independence to new levels over the past year. 

Never mind that she appears in person in the Scottish parliament and at her daily coronavirus briefings, instead of by video from her house, or that various Scottish National Party MSPs have been accused of breaking lockdown rules by travelling. She was merely asking the question about whether the prime minister’s visit was “genuinely essential”. 

Not only that, but she forced Keir Starmer to defend the prime minister on the radio this morning. “Of course it’s legitimate: he’s the prime minister of the UK and he needs to see what is happening on the ground,” said Starmer. That’s at least three birds with one stone for Sturgeon. 

Once again, I fear she will get away with it. She can do no wrong in the eyes of Scottish public opinion. Her record in managing coronavirus is not significantly different from that of any other part of the UK. The 14-year record of the SNP executive on devolved matters such as school standards and drugs deaths has been appalling. And yet she has such political skill that she is about to win an election by a landslide. 

Last week she got away with a remarkable bit of misdirection. She published her plan to obtain a second independence referendum, which was widely reported (although less so in Scotland than by UK media) as the SNP backing an illegal or wildcat referendum if the UK government refused to agree to one. 

The document itself did no such thing, saying: “The SNP Scottish government continues to maintain that a referendum must be beyond legal challenge to ensure legitimacy and acceptance at home and abroad.” The plan amounted to seeking a “mandate” for a second referendum at the Scottish parliament elections in May, and then, if a majority is secured in the Scottish parliament, passing a law to hold such a referendum, and daring the UK government to go to court to strike it down. 

You can see how this might be a festival of propaganda for the SNP, but it is most unlikely to result in a referendum. Sturgeon knows this full well, but her activists are growing impatient, and headlines about illegal referendums are what many of them long to see. It is not clear what their reaction will be when the UK Supreme Court rules that the Scottish parliament has no power to hold a referendum, and Sturgeon tells them that they must accept the decision, but no doubt she will have thought of another clever ploy by then. 

Meanwhile, she has Johnson in Scotland, acting as a socially distanced canvasser for the SNP. His – and his party’s – unpopularity in Scotland is one of the biggest problems for those of us who want to keep our country together. But it would be worse for the unionist cause if Johnson didn’t care. He has to go on being the prime minister of the UK, in person, in all parts of the UK, making the arguments for the union. The Scottish people may not like the messenger, but they may hear the message.