Does the government have a policy on the union? Following Nicola Sturgeon’s resignation as first minister of Scotland, this is an important question which doesn’t have an obvious answer. On paper, responsibility for the union rests on the political side with Michael Gove, part of his expansive remit at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. His counterpart in Whitehall is Sue Gray, who leads on the union and the constitution at the Cabinet Office.
Rishi Sunak presumably endorses this arrangement, at least on paper; when he recently reorganised several departments to better focus on his priorities, he left that sprawling department untouched. But when it comes to actually taking on the Scottish National party, it seems to be a very different story.
When Alister Jack, secretary of state for Scotland, broke the seal on never-before-used powers in the Scotland Act 1998 to veto a bill passed by the Scottish parliament, he broke with a quarter of a century of conventional wisdom about the politics of devolution. Irrespective of the issue, Scots were not supposed to like seeing the Scottish government pushed around by London. The SNP would frame it as a constitutional row and such a confrontation between the first minister and a Westminster Tory could only have one winner, and it wasn’t Jack.
One person who thought that was Gray; according to media reports, she was “hyperactive behind the scenes” trying to block Jack’s attempt to wield section 35 but to no avail. For his part, Gove has kept a remarkably low profile on the subject; one might have expected the minister for intergovernmental relations (a title created for him) would have more to say about the most significant development in intergovernmental relations within the United Kingdom in years.
But on the bigger picture, he and Gray agree. From their fastnesses and the Cabinet Office, both have for several years fought a series of running battles with others in government who want to take a more proactive – some would say “muscular” – approach to constitutional issues.
Last January, for example, ConservativeHome reported on a clash between Gove and the Territorial Offices (the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish departments) over whether the government should proceed with legislation that affected devolved areas without getting legislative consent motions from the Welsh parliament or the Scottish parliament. There is also deep resentment in parts of government at the perception that Gove and Gray have hamstrung efforts to use new powers, granted to the UK government under section 50 of the Internal Market Act, to spend additional money in devolved areas.
The architects of the act intended this to be a platform for an energetic programme of new interventions, aimed at raising the profile of the British state in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland after 25 years of “devolve and forget”. But after the collapse of the Downing Street union unit in 2021, and the attendant departure from government of Oliver Lewis, the Vote Leave veteran who was one of the driving forces behind it, that hope never materialised. Such chaos, and the inability or refusal to impose a coherent policy on a fractious policy, were par for the course under Boris Johnson. But it is telling that Sunak has still not resolved it.
It could also have far-reaching consequences for the Conservative party. Whatever Downing Street’s motivations for backing Jack – sincere concern for the impact on the Equality Act, private polling showing it was a winning issue, or some mixture of the two – the gamble paid off. The doomsayers who insisted the intervention would end in disaster – and there were many – have been proved wrong, at least in the eyes of many Conservative MPs and activists.
Whether or not this was Sunak’s intention, this cannot help but undermine the authority of those who continue to push for a strategy based on the doomsayers’ orthodox assumptions about how the politics of devolution work. Foremost of those are the secretary of state and the senior civil servant who, in theory, lead within government on constitutional issues. Meanwhile, those who advocate for a more aggressive strategy, which includes figures inside government and backbench groups such as the 70-strong Conservative Union Research Unit, will be emboldened to push their agenda more firmly.
Such tensions won’t fundamentally destabilise the government; as a question of day-to-day survival, the prime minister can continue to let them simmer away as they have for years. But preserving the United Kingdom is supposed to be one of the highest priorities of the Conservative and Unionist party, and one battle well-fought is not a war won. It should not be difficult to come up with a better way of formulating a strategy for taking on the SNP than giving responsibility for the issue to someone and then intermittently ignoring them.
Henry Hill is deputy editor of ConservativeHome
