Boris Johnson can hardly blame the Scottish people if they decide to ‘take back control’

Boris Johnson is playing for time on Scottish independence. The coronavirus crisis allows him to argue that now is not the right moment for a constitutional debate, and to promote the benefits to Scotland of the UK government’s response to the pandemic. 

But his flying visit to Scotland on Thursday showed that this is only a holding operation with a very limited shelf life. Support for independence averages 54 per cent in the opinion polls, boosted by Brexit and coronavirus. While Johnson had a good story to tell on the vaccine rollout, and back-up from the army and English ambulance service, his government has not reaped much benefit from its economic support. As one Scottish Tory told me: “The perception is that the furlough scheme is driven by events in London and the southeast.” 

Johnson’s default position of putting off difficult decisions is no longer an option on Scotland. The self-styled “minister for the union” knows he could end up as prime minister of England. But not for very long; if it happened, his party would boot him out before the voters could. His political epitaph would be not as the PM who won on Brexit but as the PM who lost the UK. 

On his trip, Johnson gave the impression he would “just say no” if the Scottish National Party secures a mandate for a second referendum in the Scottish parliament elections due in May. Everyone expects this to happen, including the Scottish Tories, the official opposition in Edinburgh.

It tells us how bad things are when Tory MPs north of the border would have preferred Johnson not to visit. If you put them on a lie detector machine, they would say: “Send Rishi.” No wonder. Some 74 per cent of Scots believe Johnson is performing badly as prime minister and 79 per cent say the same about his handling of the pandemic. Remarkably, 72 per cent and 79 per cent respectively think Nicola Sturgeon is doing well. 

UK ministers admit privately Johnson will not be able to “just say no”. There’s now an intense behind the scenes debate on whether to try to turn the SNP tide with an offer of more powers for Holyrood, possibly after a wider review of the UK constitution, also including England’s metro mayors. The vehicle could be the 2019 Tory manifesto pledge of a “constitution, democracy and rights commission” to “restore trust in our institutions and in how our democracy operates”. 

Although the devolved administrations were not in its proposed brief, they could easily be added to it, as Gordon Brown has proposed. The former prime minister wants the House of Lords to become a “senate of the nations and regions” based in the north – a good fit with Johnson’s “levelling up” agenda. Brown wants to repair the neglected, broken relationships between an over-mighty centre and the nations and regions.

Michael Gove, the Cabinet Office minister responsible for relations with them, has some sympathy with a bridge-building approach. But some Johnson allies favour a more aggressive defence of the union while attacking the SNP’s record in almost 14 years of power. I doubt bashing the SNP will work. The danger is that, like “just saying no”, it would merely build support for a referendum and breakaway. 

A commission would be seen by the SNP as just another delaying tactic, and so would have to be time-limited. Another route would be “devo max”, handing more powers to Holyrood on tax and welfare without waiting for a review. Putting that on a referendum ballot paper might split the pro-independence vote. But there is no guarantee it would halt the SNP juggernaut. 

Indeed, Sturgeon believes the Scottish people are on a journey. It might well be the one the late Labour MP Tam Dalyell predicted Scottish devolution would become – a motorway without exits. 

Some Tories hope the SNP will implode amid internal tensions on what to do if Johnson blocks a referendum, and the increasingly bitter feud between Sturgeon and her mentor-turned-enemy Alex Salmond. In the next few weeks, they will both appear at an inquiry into what Sturgeon knew, and when, about allegations of sexual harassment against Salmond, on which he was cleared in court. 

But the Tories would be mad to rely on the SNP self-destructing. In 39 years of reporting from Westminster, it is the most disciplined party I have come across, united in a single goal – which might now be in touching distance. 

UK ministers believe the economic arguments against independence are stronger than when Scotland rejected a breakaway in the 2014 referendum. But that smacks of complacency; Project Fear failed in the Brexit referendum. 

The irony is that Johnson must battle against the forces unleashed by Brexit, the very ones that enabled his side to win in 2016 – nationalism in an age of identity politics in which emotion trumps economics. He can hardly blame the Scottish people if they decide to take back control.