How Truss should handle Scotland

The new prime minister will need her wits about her to take on the SNP.

Image: Simon Dawson / No 10 Downing Street/ CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Despite recent efforts by the Conservative Party, the transition from one prime minister to another is a pretty organised business.

Today, we will learn the winner of the Tory leadership contest. Tomorrow, the Sovereign will invite that person to kiss hands and become her 15th UK prime minister. The new PM will then address the nation and appoint a Cabinet. 

All fairly straightforward. That is until we get to the day after tomorrow. There is nothing in the diary for that. That is the point at which the new prime minister will hit the ground running — or not — in confronting an almost unprecedented slate of hurdles.

The energy crisis. The cost-of-living crisis. The housing crisis. A labour shortage. A possible recession. The war in Ukraine. The Northern Ireland Protocol. Illegal immigration.

All this and only 872 days before the next election must be held. 

All this, and something else: Scotland. The Scottish Government’s efforts to gain another independence referendum via the Supreme Court are so much political theatrics. They’re really about party management and electoral strategy. As with most of what the Scottish Government does, the purpose is not the good government of Scotland but serving the interests of Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP. That is why this wheeze has been given little credence by the Holyrood opposition. 

However, the underlying principles are not so trivial. Whether it is serving up a bloody slab of red meat to the SNP faithful or sincerely attempting to usurp the devolution settlement, the Scottish Government has openly challenged Westminster’s authority. This is, or has the potential to become, a constitutional crisis. 

What should the new prime minister do? 

Take Scotland seriously.

Sturgeon’s Supreme Court gambit may be about internal SNP opinion but it nevertheless puts the UK Government on the spot with the most politically lethal question of all: who governs Britain? 

The prime minister must know that Westminster governs. Westminster is sovereign. Westminster sets constitutional policy. If the prime minister equivocates at all on the answer, the best thing all round would be to forget about referendums and enter into negotiations with Holyrood to bring about Scottish independence. A country where the government harbours even the slightest doubt about its authority over one-third of its sovereign territory is a country undergoing a constitutional nervous breakdown. 

These are the stakes. Recognise the gravity of the moment and invest political time, capital and will accordingly. 

Gather the right people.

Alister Jack has proved a safe pair of hands at the Scotland Office, bringing some much-needed private sector insight to a department that has historically prescribed more public sector for every ailment that afflicts Scotland. Jack is also blessedly unconcerned about what the devocrat establishment and the commentariat thinks about him, a rare and useful quality in a Scottish politician. 

In addition to Jack, the prime minister needs a reliable point man on constitutional policy. Someone to set the overall course and tone of the government’s agenda. Whoever gets the gig will need steel, stamina and the prime minister’s unwavering backing. One name being bandied about is former Brexit minister Lord Frost, a tough, canny operator. 

Respectful leadership.

The prime minister must also be mindful of Downing Street’s relationship with the Scottish Conservatives. The acrimony of recent years must be left in the past. Number 10 shouldn’t undermine the Holyrood Tories, some of whom are smart and insightful. Then again, it shouldn’t defer to them too much either. UK constitutional policy can’t be set by the 31 most squeamish people in Scotland. Lead respectfully, but lead.

Scotland’s other government.

According to the deathless Whitehall soundbite, ‘Scotland wants its two governments working together’, a formulation that implicitly concedes an equality between UK and Scottish ministers. That would be almost tolerable if Whitehall at least behaved as though it were co-equal to Holyrood. Instead, it acts like Scotland’s other government, devolving and forgetting then being shocked that the threat to the Union only grows. 

Westminster needs an enhanced operation in Scotland. Not just more resources and personnel, but more ministers from across government spending time in Scotland, making themselves available to the media, and thinking in whole-UK terms even about matters that are devolved. (Why, for example, is the Scottish Government allowed to adopt statistical methodologies that make it harder to measure pan-UK outcomes?)

Should Whitehall be wedded to its ‘two governments’ formulation, it could at least insist that Scottish broadcasters treat the UK Government on a par with the Sturgeon administration. On Scottish commercial radio, for example, it is possible to listen to entire news blocks without once hearing a soundbite from a UK minister, even when the stories involve disputes between the Scottish and UK governments. When you behave like Scotland’s other government, you get treated like it. 

Don’t trust, and verify.

Understand this: the Scottish Government does not operate like the UK Government. It is smaller, leaner, more disciplined. Leaks that reflect poorly on ministers are not common. Since the SNP took control in 2007, the objectives and priorities of the Scottish Government have become increasingly difficult to separate from those of the SNP and the independence cause. 

Tread carefully with the Scottish Government Civil Service. I know what you’re thinking: there is no ‘Scottish Government Civil Service’. Actually, there is. Public employees assigned to the devolved administration in Edinburgh are UK civil servants in name and pension entitlement only.

Consider, for example, the use of ministerial directions, the written instructions ministers must issue when civil servants formally express concerns about policy directives. They are part and parcel of governing at Whitehall. At Holyrood, the SNP had to issue a ministerial direction in August 2007, three months after coming to power. They have not had to issue one since. In 15 years of SNP ministers pursuing highly contentious policies, including some that have ended up in court, not one senior civil servant has raised an objection.

One leading academic has described the ‘concern’ that ‘the administrative culture inside the Scottish Government is pro-nationalist’, pointing to ‘increasing anecdotal evidence of civil servants stepping over the line in terms of their professional position and to some extent tub-thumping for nationalist ministers’. I have heard some of those anecdotes directly from UK ministers and special advisers and they suggest a culture of politicisation. 

You have learned already that there is no such thing as off-the-record with Nicola Sturgeon. The same applies down the chain. When dealing with Scottish Government civil servants, speak and act at all times as though in the company of political opponents. In some cases, you will be. 

Know what you want to do.

If your ambition is simply to kick independence into the long grass, that is easily enough achieved, provided the Supreme Court doesn’t spring a surprise in the referendum case. Keep saying No and hope whoever succeeds you in Number 10 does the same. 

However, if you are minded to put independence to bed for the foreseeable, that will require devolution reform. Given the other issues competing for the prime minister’s attention, and the two years left to this parliament, a complete overhaul will not be possible. 

A more limited diet of reforms could be pushed through. These might include amending the Scotland Act to reserve all referendums to Westminster. Or prohibiting the Scottish government and parliament from spending public resources on reserved matters. 

Westminster could take a leaf out of other countries’ constitutions and create a legal duty on devolved administrations to refrain from actions that could undermine national unity or the indivisibility of the state. The civil service code could be reworded to prohibit civil servants assigned to devolved institutions from engaging in any activities related to independence.

Anything, really, other than the reported proposals for a Referendum Act, which aim to erect hurdles to independence but erect the wrong ones.

Boris Johnson’s successor faces an in-tray few would envy. Scotland may not seem the most urgent concern but it is the most fundamental. What the next prime minister does will decide whether the immediate future will be one of more political inertia at Holyrood and constitutional drift at Westminster, or whether we can look forward to something other than one referendum row after another. 

A bold, determined leader would grasp the thistle, reform devolution, reassert Westminster’s authority and put beyond all doubt that the United Kingdom will be staying united. 

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Originally published in the Scottish Daily Mail on September 5, 2022.