The Times - UK (2022-04-08)

Non-doms are an elite relic

of the colonial era

Emma Duncan

Page 28

long as the national question

remains unsettled, the SNP enjoys a

built-in advantage.

This is exacerbated by the conflation

of party, country and state, a

merging which starts in the first

minister’s own home: Sturgeon’s

husband, Peter Murrell, is chief

executive of the SNP, and it is

considered poor form to note how very

odd or unusual this arrangement is.

If the SNP is “Scotland’s party” it

follows that other parties are

cravenly unpatriotic. The SNP is the

people and the people are SNP.

Voting SNP is less an endorsement

of specific policies than it is the

political articulation of a certain

sensibility; a mood, not a manifesto.

In this sense the SNP is also the

answer to, and Scotland’s version of,

One Nation Conservatism. For

Toryism should be something more

easily felt than described; a sense of

something permanent that may still

shift as and when change is required.

And just as the Conservative Party

has dominated English politics for

decades, so there is no reason to

suppose the SNP’s hegemony will

end at any point in the foreseeable

future. This may be disagreeable but

then reality so often is.

James Forsyth is away

Sturgeon never has to pay a price for failure

It’s a myth that Scotland has fared better during Covid, and such claims are typical of the easy ride voters give the SNP
GETTY IMAGES

nationalists enjoy a definite

structural advantage. They are in

power in Edinburgh but in

opposition at Westminster. Every

success is homemade but failure may

be apportioned elsewhere.

Independence is the answer to every

sub-optimal situation; a Neverland

all the more enticing for being a

wholly imaginary place where

everyone enjoys a prize and all

outcomes are above average. In the

here-and-now, “we would succeed, if

only we were permitted to” is the

mother of all get-out clauses.

Unionists may moan that SNP

voters are disinclined to punish

governmental failure but, viewed on

their own terms, nationalist

supporters are not acting irrationally.

If independence is a top priority, the

election of pro-independence

representatives is necessary. For as

Even supporters might struggle to

highlight Sturgeon’s achievements

government must always be

measured. Half a step ahead of

England? Joy unconfined. Half a step

behind? Misery and shame for all. If

this requires indulging the narcissism

of small differences then so be it.

Sturgeon, the leader of a

movement not just a party, is judged

more generously in Scotland than

Johnson is in England. In this

respect, Scotland really is a kinder,

gentler, place. While Tories languish

in the polls, the SNP remains

buoyant. The SNP would, once again,

win at least 45 per cent of the vote if

an election were held next week.

Yet even SNP supporters might

struggle to pinpoint Sturgeon’s

defining achievements in her seven

years as first minister. A pledge to

make education her “top priority”

was quietly dropped, then lost amid

the pandemic. The NHS remains

overstretched and underperforming,

despite record spending. Drug deaths

in Scotland are the highest in Europe

and even Sturgeon admits that her

party “took its eye off the ball” on

this disgrace. All the while, Sturgeon

has asked “judge me on my record”,

secure in the knowledge she won’t be.

The link between governmental

performance and election results, the

relationship which underpins any

democratic system, has been broken.

It no longer applies in Scotland, and

the result is a government freed from

the normal rules of political

accountability. When no price is paid

for failure, governments grow fat and

complacent and arrogant. Something

of this sort is evident in Scotland.

It must be allowed that voters, or

half the electorate at any rate, are

unperturbed by this. At the next

Holyrood election, due in 2026, the

SNP will be asking for a third decade

in power. As matters stand, there is

no reason to suppose voters will

reject that request. But then, the

T

hese are the dog days of the
pandemic. Vladimir Putin
and the cost of living have
supplanted Covid-19 as the
leading crises of the
moment but Covid is still much with
us. When the final reckoning is made,
few of our political leaders are likely to
emerge from the pandemic in credit.
All shall be blamed, save one. For the
ordinary rules of accountability do
not apply to Nicola Sturgeon.
Some English voters, or at least
some English commentators, have
looked over the border and concluded
that just as England is cursed with
Boris Johnson, so Scotland is blessed
with Sturgeon. And it is true that, for
much of the pandemic, she has
proven a more assured communicator
than the prime minister. She has
seemed on top of her brief. She has
made reassuring noises about
“following the science”. Where he has
been considered reckless, she has
been cautious. She has not obviously
disdained the rules she set for
everyone else. There have been no
parties in Bute House, and not only
because there are never any parties in
Bute House.
So, this soft thinking goes, if only
England could have a little bit of
what Scotland has, think how many
lives might have been saved. The
only problem with this analysis is
that Sturgeon’s supposedly assured
handling of the pandemic made no
difference whatsoever. Outcomes in
Scotland have been broadly the same

as outcomes in England. According

to a study published by The Lancet

last month, while England has

endured a slightly greater rate of

Covid deaths than Scotland, when

measured in terms of excess

mortality, England has marginally

outperformed Scotland.

Excess deaths have occurred at a

rate of 126 people per 100,000 in

England and 131 in Scotland (the

numbers for Wales and Northern

Ireland are 136 and 132 respectively).

This may be explained in part by

England’s younger population but

the overall picture is clear: no part of

the UK has been very much better

than any other and, overall, excess

deaths in the UK are not hugely

different from those in many other

western European countries (French

excess mortality has run at 124

deaths per 100,000, Germany’s at 121

while Italy’s is 227).

Sturgeon’s decisions, her insistence

on organising matters differently

from England, had no measurable

effect. The need to be different was

in the end a political and perhaps a

psychological requirement, not a

public health necessity. Policy may

have diverged, this being the point of

devolution, but outcomes have been

the same. According to the most

recent ONS report, one in 13 people

in mask-free England had Covid last

month as did one in 12 people in

masked-up Scotland.

This is not the kind of reality

Scottish voters are prepared to

countenance. England is the Great

Other, against which the

performance of the Scottish

England is the Great

Other, against which

Scotland is measured

Voting SNP is less

about policies and more

a certain sensibility

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the times | Friday April 8 2022 27