The SNP's Eleventh Commandment

'Thou shalt always do the opposite of England.'

This is the text of my Scottish Daily Mail column for Monday, June 13, 2022.

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This week marks the last opportunity to apply for greenport status.

Last week saw a bid from the North East and there is interest from consortiums on both the Clyde and the Forth. Greenports are designed to ‘promote regeneration and job creation’ and ‘establish hubs for global trade and investment’ in a specific area, operating less burdensome tax and customs arrangements to provide a competitive edge.

If that sounds suspiciously similar to the UK Government’s freeports, it’s because it’s the same policy. The SNP just changed the name in line with Nicola Sturgeon’s latest rebranding as the Gen-X Greta Thunberg. The main difference is that greenports will use words like 'net zero' and 'sustainability' more often.

Actually, they are something of a turnabout for the Scottish Government. When Westminster first proposed them, Sturgeon called freeports ‘low-cost, low-wage, low-value opportunities’ while her trade minister Ivan McKee characterised them as ‘a shiny squirrel to draw attention away from all the other bad stuff that is going on in the trade arena’. McKee's rhetoric gave the game away: freeports are touted by the Prime Minister as a benefit of Brexit and the Scottish Government refuses to acknowledge that such things exist.

Scottish businesses were none too pleased that SNP ministers had rebuffed the chance to pull in major investors and create thousands of jobs just because they don't like Brexit or Boris Johnson. So the shiny squirrel became a reverse ferret and St Andrew's House was now in favour of trade hubs and always had been. The term 'greenports' was concocted to spare ministers' blushes and with a mind to their forthcoming coalition partners Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater, who don't ask for much in the way of outcomes and are just happy if you stick the word 'green' in the letterhead.

The cost of the Scottish Government's politically motivated heel-dragging was sketched out in comments made to the Mail on Sunday by Tees Valley mayor Ben Houchen, whose patch was granted the biggest freeport in the UK and is slated to benefit to the tune of 18,000 jobs and £3.2 billion for the local economy. Houchen, a Tory, put the lost benefit to Scotland at somewhere between £3 and £4.5 billion and gave the example of an investor who had wanted to set up north of the border but went to Teeside when Sturgeon's government rebuffed the policy.

UK ministers, policy-makers and advisers consistently fail to understand the SNP. They think it's a more social democratic version of the Labour Party when it's actually a more Scottish, more sophisticated version of Ukip. They are strategically canny and glom onto every fashionable cause that comes along, but the Scottish nationalists believe in only one thing and believe in it no matter the consequences. They say they want independence because it would make Scotland wealthier and fairer but they really want independence because they want independence. They would sooner Scotland was independent and poor than in the Union and prosperous.

This weekend's newspapers were a veritable treasure trove of cross-border contretemps. There was a story about the Scottish Government rejecting Westminster’s policy on gene-editing. Scientists are now able to amend crops’ genetic code to render them resistant to certain diseases, reduce reliance on pesticides and grow more food in traditionally unproductive climates.

Gene-editing has been proposed to protect potatoes from blight, a fungal pathogen that rots spud crops and which costs British farmers £50 million a year in pesticides alone. Genetically editing potato crops — essentially a speeded-up version of cross-breeding — would shield the vegetables and cut pesticide use but it could also bolster crops’ hardiness against harsh temperatures and lessen the need for nitrogen-heavy fertilisers.

Making it easier and cheaper to grow potatoes, including in new locations, should mean more food, lower prices and less climate-busting transportation. SNP ministers have gone green and continually scold Westminster for not doing enough on the cost of living. Why aren't they biting off Whitehall’s hand to get in on this scheme?

Well, aside from deference to the Eleventh Commandment of Scottish Nationalism — Thou shalt always do the opposite of England — there is the problem of the EU. Brussels is currently reviewing its position on gene-editing and Scottish Government ministers, mindful of their desire to see an independent Scotland in the EU, try to remain aligned with the bloc’s policies at every opportunity.

No matter the potential benefits to Scots. No matter that NFU Scotland backs gene-editing. No matter that Met Office research estimates rising temperatures could cause a 70 per cent increase in blight in the east of Scotland, where 65 per cent of our potatoes are grown, within the next 50 years. The science doesn’t matter. The economics doesn’t matter. It’s the politics that matters.

Holyrood and Westminster are also at odds on taxation. Alister Jack has called on the Scottish Government to pass on a planned tax cut to taxpayers in Scotland, where the SNP now controls much of the revenue system. The Secretary of State for Scotland said he was ‘very keen that any tax cuts announced by the Chancellor were replicated in Scotland in full’, arguing that it would help alleviate the spike in inflation. Jack is a practical man and thinks in terms of how policy affects households and businesses but he’s addressing a government that thinks purely in terms of positioning and manufacturing differences between Scotland and England. That Eleventh Commandment again.

The theme running through the Scottish Government’s approach to freeports, gene-editing and tax is the triumph of politics over pragmatism, economic growth and easing the squeeze on hard-pressed families. Ministers are addicted to oppositionism to the detriment of Scottish prosperity. If Rishi Sunak started handing out gold bars at Greta Green, the SNP would condemn him for holding up traffic.

The Scottish Government’s politicking is a constant headache for Whitehall — it’s the number one complaint I hear from insiders — but it does underscore a point I’ve been banging on about for long and weary. Why is the Scottish Government able to defy Westminster or delay on freeports, gene-editing and taxation? Because successive Westminster governments have surrendered powers over the economy, food regulation and tax.

The Internal Market Act reasserts Westminster’s primacy in some narrow regulatory areas but it does not address the central issue. Devolution has gone too far and its excesses hinder UK national interests and help the SNP undermine the Union. The UK needs a government with the vision and mettle to confront the problem and reform the devolution settlement accordingly.

For now, though, we will have to settle for the small crumb of comfort that Scotland will get a chance to benefit from freeports, albeit a belated chance and a begrudging and greenwashed knock-off of the UK Government policy. Freeports have generated opportunities, jobs and prosperity for Teeside, Liverpool and Humber, places hit hard by industrial decline and still battling to get back on their feet. Scotland can make a similar go of it with greenports and even if the set-up has some rough edges — all policies do in their early days — we can learn from them and improve accordingly.

Politics is teeming with scheming and skullduggery, with partisanship and territory-marking. There's no sense in complaining. It's always been this way and always will. But when political warfare starts hurting civilians, that's when a line is crossed.

Scottish ministers can tie themselves in knots trying to be seen as different from Westminster if that's their wish. But when doing so withholds chances from ordinary people, as it did initially on freeports and might still do on gene-editing and taxation, it becomes callous and mean-spirited. Particularly during a cost-of-living emergency in which struggling families need every lever of government pulling for them. You can't eat a tactic or pay the mortgage with a grievance.

Most people see this kind of politics for what it is — an elite indulgence — and they resent it. They want good jobs and more of them. They want opportunities to lift up their local communities. They want to give their children better circumstances than they had. They expect their government to want the same things.

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Originally published in the Scottish Daily Mail on June 13, 2022.