Rishi Sunak reveals a new strategy for dealing with the SNP

The prime minister was terribly polite to Scottish nationalists, but didn’t answer any of their questions, writes John Rentoul

Today, it became clear that this strategy includes not even pretending to answer the question (EPA)

I would say that the Scottish National Party came to Prime Minister’s Questions spoiling for a fight, if I weren’t reluctant to use the language of fisticuffs to describe the testing of rival ideas in the nation’s highest democratic forum.

What was striking, though, was that Rishi Sunak was determined to avoid engaging in anything as interesting as an argument. He decided from the start of his four-week-old premiership that he would “kill his enemies with cream” in a phrase Peter Mandelson once described as a maxim of Tony Blair’s.

Sunak learned from the Conservative leadership campaign in the summer – mostly from the mistakes made by his opponent. Liz Truss got into trouble for a jokey aside aimed at the partisan instincts of Tory members when she said she would “ignore” Nicola Sturgeon. Sunak has pursued the opposite strategy of paying respectful attention to the first minister and saying, as he did at Prime Minister’s Questions: “Now is the time for politicians to work together, and that is what this government will do.”

Today, it became clear that this strategy includes not even pretending to answer the question when seven SNP MPs asked it. It was the single transferable question, asked with minor variations of sloganising by every nationalist MP called, starting with Ian Blackford, the leader of the Westminster delegation. The question was: “If the UK is a voluntary union, how can the people of Scotland obtain a referendum on whether they want to continue with it?”

The answer, every time, was that the UK is a collaborative and constructive union and that the government is working night and day to ensure that the benefits of the union are felt by the honourable member’s constituents.

The answer infuriated the SNP contingent. They think their question is a good one, and in a way it is, because it is a way of distracting from the failures of their government in Edinburgh and from Sturgeon’s defeat in the Supreme Court this morning. There is a good answer to the question, too, which is that there should be another referendum when it is clear that a settled and decisive majority of Scottish residents want independence, but in the meantime the SNP should abide by the democratic instruction delivered in 2014.

Sunak could even quote Sturgeon in her response to the Supreme Court’s verdict, when she said: “Fundamentally, our job in the independence movement today is the same as it was yesterday: to persuade the people of Scotland that independence is the way forward.” But Sunak judges that it would only help the SNP to enter an exchange of views about when such a test might be met.

Boris Johnson made a similar calculation, deciding that his answer to the question was just: “Now is not the time.” Sunak won’t go even that far, because he doesn’t want to invite the next question, which is: “When will the time be?” Hence today’s stonewall.

The prime minister’s defences could not be broken. In a statistical freak, six SNP MPs had secured questions to him on the order paper. This involved some learned discussion in the press gallery about the chances of a party with 9 per cent of eligible MPs securing 40 per cent of the listed questions in the “shuffle”, a supposedly random selection by computer. My view is that the SNP is more disciplined than other parties in requiring every single MP to table a question, so its chances of them getting on the order paper is higher, but even so chance was on their side today.

Sunak met each of the eight questions (including two from Blackford, the Commons leader) with the same uninteresting response, saying he believed in cooperation between our governments.

To keep up to speed with all the latest opinions and comment, sign up to our free weekly Voices Dispatches newsletter by clicking here

Even Theresa May found this frustrating. She asked a “question”, which included the ringing plea to the SNP “for once to put the people of Scotland first and end its obsession with breaking up the country”. Tory backbenchers loved it, but Sunak was embarrassed. Taking the fight to the SNP is not the strategy, so he got up, said he agreed with his predecessor and sat down again.

Not even a question from Sara Britcliffe, a Tory MP who asked him about Lancashire Day, could tempt Sunak, a Yorkshire MP, to make a joke about how, if their two counties could work together, so could Scotland and the rest of the UK.

Sunak has worked out that a Conservative government in London is the best promoter of the independence cause. The only way round that would be for him to lose the next election – a Labour government of the UK is the last thing Sturgeon wants. But if there must be a Conservative prime minister, the best way to avoid boosting the SNP is to refuse to argue with it.

It produced a strangely flat PMQs, not much livened by a ritual exchange of slogans with Keir Starmer at the start, but it is probably effective politics.