Meet Mr SNP and his fantastical snide-show
I’ve long had this one, pleasant fantasy: which is that, somehow, people get what they say they want, but it all happens in some kind of parallel existence and I don’t have to suffer from their preferences. Examples might be Osama bin Laden is left in Afghanistan, speed cameras are removed, there’s a Lib Dem government or Ken Livingstone becomes mayor of London.
On Sunday I was thinking about Scotland. A series of weekend polls seemed to be suggesting that the Scottish National Party could come out top in the elections in May, and that right now a majority of Scots would favour a move to complete independence from the United Kingdom. An ICM poll put support for Scottish independence at 52 per cent in Scotland and — a backhanded compliment this — at 59 per cent in England. The Welsh, apparently, were not consulted.
I am not completely confident about this last figure. Polls that ask respondents to choose between real alternatives (independence and, say, devolution) register much lower support for separation. As you can imagine I find myself in a lot of discussions with a lot of people, and never once have I had somebody set their drink on the table, lean forward with furrowed brow and say: “You know, the one of the things that I would most like is for the Scots to have independence.” In fact, never once has anyone of any kind in any situation ever mentioned it to me.
Anyway — in this other dimension Scotland does indeed elect an SNP government with Alex Salmond as its First Minister, and subsequently votes at a referendum for independence. And yes, for this scenario to be sufficiently entertaining Mr Salmond must actually be elected to run something, and thus be shorn of his habitual role as super-snide sideline critic, his nasal sneer now turned to plaintive defence of his own inevitable disasters.
You think I don’t like him? He’s clever, is Alex. He is the debater par excellence, the sixth former with the answer for everything. His party is in the high moral business of squaring circles, giving the business of making impossible promises an almost religious dimension. Under the SNP there would be cuts in local taxes, more money on health, local hospitals kept open, no student debt, a reduction of burdens on small business, while — apparently — being able to replicate the economic success that Ireland has enjoyed by making life easier for big business.
As for independence, well Scotland would be better off because, as I understand Mr Salmond’s complex argument, Scotland is a small country and some small independent countries are doing well economically, therefore independent Scotland will do well economically. Some small countries are, of course, doing badly, but Scotland won’t be like those, because it is full of geniuses, entrepreneurs and Scottish nationalists.
Naturally, though “London” has apparently acted like some kind of sheet anchor on Scotland’s ability to grow as fast as, say, Iceland, the SNP presumption is that, when independence is negotiated, and as plans are advancing for border checks (yes, of course there will have to be border checks, ask the Norwegians) and Scottish embassies (or maybe they could rent out rooms from the British embassies), what is left of the United Kingdom will say, sure — let’ s do it on your terms. Of course it’s all your oil, we had nothing to do with it. And by the way, please don’t imagine that we will act in any way to reassume control of any of our natural “English” or “Welsh” assets currently held by Scots.
What I most dislike about the SNP, however, is its necessary chauvinism. “For Scotland to flourish,” says Mr Salmond, “our economy must be free from London control”; “Labour’s policy of sending up the heavies from London . . .”; “Mr McConnell is like a little boy lost and hardly gets a look-in while his London bosses take centre stage”; “we were lucky enough to discover oil and gas as well, but we gave all of ours away to the London exchequer”; “those revenues either flow south to London or they can be invested for the people of Scotland”. London’s taken our money, London’s controlling our Parliament, everything would be great if we didn’t have London. And for London, of course, read England. For England read “the other”.
I am not going to argue with Mr Salmond about the extent to which English people or companies might have helped to discover “his” oil and gas, or the extent to which Scotland might have been subsidised by English enterprise or natural resources. I am not going to argue about it because it’s so obviously demeaning.
What interests me, however, is the magical thinking involved in the increasing tolerance of Mr Salmond’s scapegoating. These days you find some Scottish Tories arguing, as one did this month in Prospect magazine, that independence — by removing the English scapegoat and the London subsidies — would force the Scots to confront their own demons. The new independent government, they suggest, would have no choice but to make the self-same tough decisions on public expenditure and the role of the State that the SNP is so determined to avoid. There are some English constitutionalists who, despairing of our lack of interest in regional assemblies and the West Lothian question, also believe that Scottish independence would — as one put it — “concentrate minds in England about where we want to go”.
None of this will happen. The Scots chauvinists would not be one whit happier for being completely separate (just as they weren’t happy with substantial devolution), and would work even harder to discover why their failure was really the fault of England. The gap between their promises and the Scottish reality would always be found to have an external cause. The English, on the other hand (including the new Anglo-Poles, the English-Africans, the Telford Caribbeans) might moan about the passport man getting on the train near Berwick, but — with traditional complacency — would otherwise soon get over it.
But what a strange, backward-looking argument to be having as we contemplate massive population mobility, technological advances, Islamist terrorism and international environmental crises. Or perhaps that’s exactly why such an argument is happening now. The argument for Scottish independence is essentially an argument for avoiding hard choices; which is why Alex Salmond is so well qualified to make it. If there were a parallel dimension it would be fun to watch him win. But there isn’t.
