Not to stereotype our northern compatriots, but it is rather fitting that the Scottish election campaign should culminate in a fight over whisky. Labour are hailing President Trump’s decision to lift tariffs on Glenfiddich as a victory for a) the King’s persuasive powers, b) the UK government’s patient diplomacy and c) the Union. Meanwhile John Swinney, the first minister, has insisted that actually it was all his idea, and the Donald called him personally to tell him so. So nerny nerny nerr.
If this kind of enlightened back and forth between Westminster and Holyrood makes you reach for a large dram, then I have some bad news: we’re in for an awful lot more of it.
The Scottish government is pretty damn unpopular. Just 27 per cent of voters approve of its record. Luckily for the SNP, there is something even less popular — the Labour government in London, whose record is viewed positively by just 9 per cent of Scots.
Stir in the rise of Reform, which has splintered the anti-SNP vote, and the contorted nature of the Scottish electoral system, and it is overwhelmingly likely that the SNP will stay in power. The main uncertainty is whether they will again need the support of the Greens for an outright majority.
But that’s only part of the story.
Over in Wales, a century of Labour dominance is coming to an end. The polls for the Senedd elections — which take place next week alongside the Scottish vote and local elections in England — show Reform and Plaid Cymru neck and neck. But under the new proportional voting system brought in by Labour, in a disastrous attempt to entrench its control, some kind of progressive government is all but a certainty, with Plaid in the box seat.
Meanwhile, in Northern Ireland, Sinn Fein remains the largest party in the assembly and in control of the first minister’s chair. Which means that as of next week three of the United Kingdom’s four nations will probably be led by people avowedly committed to destroying it. Indeed, Swinney has said that his day one priority will be to put through legislation demanding another independence referendum.
Set against this, of course, is the rise of Reform. A lot of people who wrote off Nigel Farage as a little Englander have been surprised by how well his new party is doing in the other parts of the UK. But it is also true that Farage, even more than Boris Johnson, could have been lab-designed to raise Celtic hackles. The other week he celebrated England’s national day by sporting a genuinely spectacular flag of St George waistcoat, while lambasting Sir Keir Starmer for not even mentioning the country’s name in his own videos.
Reform are, of course, a pro-Union party. But polling by Ipsos has shown that 16 per cent of Scottish unionists would be more likely to vote for independence with Farage in Downing Street, versus 4 per cent if the Tories somehow get back in. More alarmingly, more than half of those undecided on independence said a Farage premiership would tilt them towards leave.
Of course, as my colleague Alex Massie has pointed out, the dismemberment of the UK is not an imminent threat. Plaid Cymru barely mention the idea in their manifesto: their main priority is extracting more cash from English taxpayers for the Welsh NHS. And while Swinney will demand a referendum, no one in Westminster actually has to give him one, and no one is going to. Indeed, roughly a third of Reform’s new voters are pro-independence, a sign that issues such as cost of living — and immigration — may be beginning to rival the constitutional question.
But the scene is still set for a scritchy, scratchy relationship between the component parts of the UK. You do not spend years pounding the pavements for the SNP, Plaid Cymru or Sinn Fein unless you truly believe in the cause. So you will be constantly trying to find ways to further it.
The Sunday Times recently reported on how the SNP has used public funding to bring Scotland’s charities sector under its ideological control. But I could also cite the way Belfast’s Sinn Fein-controlled infrastructure ministry has slashed funding for sewage and water treatment while pumping cash into cross-border transport projects. And of course if England does get a right-wing government, especially one committed to spending restraint (as it will absolutely have to be), progressives in the rest of the UK will inevitably throw up their hands at the sheer ghastliness.
This isn’t only about nationalism, though. The whole dynamic of our system of devolution is that the devolved parliaments, and for that matter the elected mayors, take all of the credit but deflect all of the blame.
Accordingly, political success is ultimately defined by the amount of cash you can extract from London. And there is no mechanism to resolve the resulting disputes — not least, as Helen Thompson, the Cambridge academic, has pointed out, because the New Labour figures who set up the present system in the 1990s assumed that they would be running Westminster, Cardiff and Holyrood in perpetuity, so any disagreements could be addressed via fraternal discussions within the party.
Under Boris Johnson the Westminster government did recognise this tension, even if the solution was often to fight bribery with bribery. The team around Michael Gove brought in measures such as the UK Internal Market Act to create regulatory harmony, and reasserted Westminster’s right to deal directly with Scottish councils and quangos, not just to bypass their political enemies but to ensure that key projects such as defence investment were stamped with the Union Jack, in just the same way as the EU promoted its own in-country largesse.
Strikingly, Starmer recently circulated a memo reminding his ministers of the existence of these powers, and warning of the dangers of an “overly deferential” approach to the devolved governments.
But it is still almost certain that nationalism, separatism and internal tension will be back on the agenda after May 7. Indeed, for the SNP and Plaid Cymru the only thing more welcome than the implosion of Labour is that Reform is its most likely replacement. And as we have seen in Scotland, there is little sign that the nationalists’ own failures will lead voters to abandon the cause: they will simply blame the English instead.
Whatever happens to the Union over the next few years, the only way to secure it in the long run is via a competent, effective Westminster government that delivers renewed national prosperity and stability. Which suggests that my fellow unionists might need a large supply of that tariff-free whisky after all.