Sometimes, just sometimes, I wish I still lived in Scotland

Chris Riddell: Observer: 22nd August 2020

Since we lived near Edinburgh in the early 1970s, I've always taken an interest in Scottish politics. It's getting quite lively north of the border and it's a useful distraction from what's going on in England. Indeed, there are times when I wish I still lived in Scotland and could take part in what's going on.

Our part time Prime Minister and full time skiver has cut short his break in Scotland after his location was discovered. It was touted in advance that he was going to be spending his holiday amongst the restless Caledonian natives so that they’d feel a little bit better about being ignored down in Westminster. In the event, the best thing that he could think of in order to endear himself to the Scots was to hide away in a remote location where no one could see him. So, just like all his previous visits to Scotland then.

The press, even the normally cravenly partisan Conservative press, have been full of complaints that the Prime Minister was missing in action, again. Johnson decided that the perfect time for him to bugger off was when the UK is in crisis: the coronavirus hasn’t gone away, the economy is tanking, Scotland is increasingly turning to support for independence, and the clock is ticking on Brexit negotiations that aren’t going anywhere fast. For their part, Downing Street sources have retorted that it’s unfair to say that the Prime Minister has been avoiding doing his job. While he was away on holiday amidst the dramatic scenery on the wild and craggy shores of the Applecross Peninsula, he was doing exactly what he would have been doing in Downing Street, drinking wine and sitting twiddling his thumbs as he stared at a cliff edge.

The Tories are blaming the SNP for revealing the location of Johnson’s hideaway to the press. Revealing his location meant that his holiday cottage was at risk of being mobbed by Scottish nationalists, they say. But who knew that the SNP had such a close and friendly relation with that bastion of press support for Scottish independence, the Daily Mail. If the SNP really was going to leak the location of Johnson’s holiday cottage, they’d have leaked it to The National in Scotland.

Johnson is reportedly livid that his holiday has been interrupted. Revealing its location meant that he was vulnerable to a sniper, sniffed the Sun. Ah yes, that infamous Applecross Snipers’ Association, bagging Tories instead of Munroes as they stalk the Gove moors. Maybe Johnson would do a bit better if he realised that people really don’t care where he’s been. They care that he’s got as much interest in doing his job as he does in admitting how many children he’s got.
According to the Tories the real story here isn’t that we have a Prime Minister who isn’t doing his job, it’s that some people had the nerve to complain about it. Of course it had nothing to do with the SNP that Johnson’s location was discovered. It was entirely his own decision to go and spend his holidays in an area where there’s majority support for independence and expect that the locals would simply tug their forelocks and defer to him. Instead one of those locals was irked enough to tip off the press. That’s how we really bag Tories these days.

The Tories are very clearly at a loss about what to do in order to counter the rising support for Scottish independence. This week’s opinion poll which put support for independence at 55% has only deepened their sense of panic. There was a report in the press that Michael Gove had embarked upon some meetings with, ahem ‘senior politicians’ from other parties to cobble together a joint plan to prevent independence. He met with Jack McConnell, George Galloway, and Danny Alexander. Senior politicians? Really?  Gove, McConnell, Galloway, and Alexander, the four horsemen of the Crapocalypse. What an unholy alliance and a sure sign that Nicola really has the Tories rattled.

The independence movement in Scotland and its determination that Scotland has an absolute right to another independence referendum is driven by a simple belief. “Scotland’s inalienable right to self-determination includes the right to decide how to exercise that right… To deny it would be to say that of all the nations of the world today we had no national right to self-determination.” That was George Galloway writing in Radical Scotland magazine in 1983. Now he’s cosying up with the Tories, with the founder of UKIP Alan Sked, and with the British establishment. Always the rebel, eh, George? What a tosser. And I don't mean of the cable variety.

However it’s clear that the Conservatives realise that they cannot prevent Scottish independence simply by saying no to another referendum. That may work as a short term tactic, but ultimately it will prove self-defeating. If Michael Gove was so confident that all his government had to do in order to prevent independence was to keep saying no, then he wouldn’t be meeting with George Galloway. Gove has already implicitly accepted that there will have to be another referendum when he tweeted that gerrymandering (boundary manipulation) the franchise for that referendum was an “interesting idea”. If he really believed that there would never be another referendum, that Downing Street could say no forever, then gerrymandering the franchise for a referendum that was never going to happen wouldn’t be very interesting at all.

Meanwhile Scottish Tory MSP Rachel Hamilton has made a bit of an arse of herself on social media by tweeting that Scotland has been “overrun by SNP bigots and separatists”. Yep, that's the way to persuade all those Scottish people who support independence to fall back in love with the Tories. All they’ve got left are insults and the frustrated wails of those who are starting to realise that their Great British castle is built on sand, and the Scottish tide is rising.