WELL, that's it then. Let's all just give up on this Scottish independence malarky and watch hagiographic royal family documentaries on the BBC while we wrap ourselves in British flags and consider ourselves lucky that we have been saved from nationalism. For Liz Truss has put us right.
The frontrunner in the Great Conservative Who Will Be The Next Worst Ever Prime Minister Contest has announced that the United Kingdom is not in fact a union of four nations, it is actually "one great nation" and Truss is determined that her government's policies will apply in all corners of it – no matter that the Scottish, sorry “North British” part of it has not voted Conservative since the 1950s.
Truss said: "We are not four separate nations in an agreement of convenience, as some would have us believe. We are one great country which shares a history and institutions, but also family and friends, memories and values."
In one arrogant stroke, Truss denied the existence of Scotland and Wales as distinct nations. She recognises only one single British nation into which Scotland has been incorporated, never mind the Better Together promise that no Westminster government would ever alter the devolution settlement without the express consent of the Scottish Parliament. That promise has long since bitten the dust.
Now we are at a point where the likely next Conservative prime minister unilaterally abolishes the existence of the Scottish nation itself and without even pretending to seek any mandate from Scotland to do so proclaims that Scotland is not in fact a member nation in a voluntary union that consists of a partnership of nations, because it would seem that there is no longer any union at all and there is no partnership. There is only one single British nation. Get back in your box, Scotland.
We have come a long way from the protestations of love for Scotland in 2014 and the declarations that the UK was a partnership of equals. We don't hear much about that these days. Now, what the leadership of the Conservative Party is telling us is that when Scotland voted No in 2014, it was actually voting to extinguish itself as a nation and as a country in its own right. I don't recall that being a part of the Vow.
Truss combined her airy dismissal of generations of Scottish political thought about the nature of the United Kingdom with the promise – or rather, threat – that as prime minister she would become the Minister for the Union that she had just said didn't exist, but then Liz Truss is capable of contradicting herself before she has even uttered the end of her sentence.
She made clear her view on the "devolved administrations" – she certainly can't bring herself to call them governments because in her eyes the Scottish Parliament is merely a regional authority with ideas above its station.
She signalled that she will not hesitate to overrule the devolved governments, accusing them – in a breathtaking example of pot calling the kettle black – of "playing political games”. What the people of Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland want is of no interest to Truss. She will be the judge and jury of what their interests ought to be.
What we are witnessing is the death of the devolution settlement. Devolution was introduced in the first place because of Scottish unhappiness about being subjected to Conservative governments that it didn't vote for. It was fatally undermined from the beginning because the Westminster system could not countenance any mechanisms to guarantee the integrity of the devolution settlement in the face of a hostile Westminster government. Truss's remarks prove that devolution cannot protect Scotland from a Conservative government which refuses to respect the democratic will of the people of Scotland.
Devolution has failed, the only options for Scotland are independence or the suppression of Scottish nationhood in any meaningful political sense and incorporation into the single British nation of the Conservatives.
This piece is an extract from today’s REAL Scottish Politics newsletter, which is emailed out at 7pm every weekday with a round-up of the day's top stories and exclusive analysis from the Wee Ginger Dug.
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