The Economist March 26th 2022 Britain 27Thisdeadlylove
T
alk to aScottish Conservative for five minutes, and you will
hear that he or she lives in a oneparty state, gripped by what
their leader, Douglas Ross, terms the “dead hand of nationalism”.
Nicola Sturgeon, the first minister, has been in office for seven
years; her Scottish National Party (snp) has been in power contin
uously for nearly 15. On the sidelines of the Scottish Conservative
Party’s annual conference in Aberdeen on March 18th and 19th, To
ries warned darkly that universities, charities and businesses are
either run by nationalists or too cowed to dissent. They lament ex
pansive new laws inhibiting free speech and meddling in family
life. It is a vision of East Germany without the naturists.
There is a crumb of truth in these complaints. Yet if national
ists dominate Scotland, nowhere is that more obvious than in the
Scottish Conservative Party. Just as securing independence has
been the snp’s purpose since its founding in the 1930s, so stopping
it has become the raison d’êtreof the Scottish Conservative and
Unionist Party, to give its full name.
Scottish unionism has a long history: before 1965 the country’s
Tories had a separate Unionist Party, with the union flag as its
symbol. Yet a decade ago Scottish Conservatives were a marginal
force, mocked and loathed. Their recovery is thanks to the 2014
referendum in which Scots voted to stay in the United Kingdom,
and the polarisation that followed as the snp pursued a second
vote. Scots vote according to their constitutional preference: 96%
of Scottish Tory voters say they would vote against independence,
while 90% of snp voters would back it. The Conservatives have
scooped up unionist voters with a simple slogan: “No to Indyref2”.
Publicly, senior figures decry the constitutional stalemate. Pri
vately, they admit they must prolong it. In his speech in Aberdeen
Mr Ross declared that Scotland needed to junk the “referendum
obsession” and “move on from this toxic debate”. Afterwards he
declared he would continue to speak out for the union. Any deci
sion to hold a second referendum lies with the prime minister—
and the incumbent, Boris Johnson, has found nationalism a use
ful bogeyman, warning that voting Labour in England will result
in a repeat vote. Just as spy agencies can sometimes inflate threats
to sustain their budgets, the party of the union has an interest in
warning of breakup. The snp could not ask for better propaganda.
ScottishTories used to deride the monomania of nationalists,
for whom no issue was too grave or too trivial to serve as a proxy
for independence. Now they imitate it. Nationalists saw covid19
as evidence that Scotland is better governed alone; Tories cite it as
proof of the union’s might. Ludicrously, the snp’s president drew
parallels between Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Scotland’s
quest for selfdetermination; Tories exult that the war showcases
the importance of Britain’s nuclear weapons, nato membership
and oil reserves, all of which would be thrown into flux by separa
tion. If Russian missiles obliterated Edinburgh, the survivors
would crawl from the rubble to explain why it proved them right.
The snp and Tories have feasted on the Scottish Labour Party,
which has seen its voters split on the constitution. That has trans
formed both. snp members, once known as the Tartan Tories for
their stuffy smallstatism, have embraced leftwing economics
and social liberalism. Scottish Tories, once a genteel bunch in
tweeds and red corduroys, court workingclass unionists in for
mer mining and steel towns battered by Thatcherism. Like Brexit,
the constitutional question has become a gateway for unlikely
new voters: less Range Rovers, more Rangers Football Club.
In his recent book “Standing up for Scotland”, David Torrance,
an academic, argues that for more than a century the Scottish To
ries have practised “nationalist unionism”, according to which the
union can be defended only by those who are proudly Scottish and
stick up for the country. Under the snp’s dominance the Tories’
Scottishness has become more ostentatious, but the strategy
harder to execute. They must demonstrate that they are no mere
branch office of the national party and can be relied upon to stand
up to Mr Johnson’s unpopular government. But that inevitably
lends credence to the notion that Scotland is a land apart in which
London has no legitimate role. Either way, the snp wins.
The result is endless, fruitless debate about rebranding and re
structuring—and, on occasion, farce. The Scottish Tories disliked
Brexit, but now must defend it. Mr Ross called for Mr Johnson to
resign over parties in Downing Street, then declared he should
stay during the war in Ukraine, but now refuses to say whether he
should fight the next election. It is hard to defend your country’s
territorial settlement when your party is a mess.
In elections, competition for voters is supposed to force parties
to produce better candidates and policies. But when communities
vote as blocks, that process fails. If nationalists can continue to
hold half the electorate, no matter what, there is no punishment
for Scotland’s failing schools or hospitals. And because nothing
can be allowed to undermine the cause of independence, risky re
forms are avoided.Market failure
At his party’s conference, Mr Ross lamented how the promise of an
independence referendum was enough to sustain a “hollowed
out shell of a government”, bereft of ideas and lacking ambition.
He hopes to widen the Tories’ appeal with socialcare reforms and
tough measures against sex offenders. But privately his colleagues
admit that the permanent campaign against independence has
squeezed out any distinctive policy agenda. Nationalist policies—
free university tuition and “shooting galleries” for heroin ad
dicts—have been embraced. The result is a party that is wholly
unionist, but with precious little conservatism. If Ms Sturgeon
were suddenly to announce that the snphad abandoned the idea
of a referendum, saysa senior Scottish Tory, “we’d say, my God,
what do we do now?”nBagehot
To appreciate the snp’s dominance, look at what it has done to the Tories