Putting Alister Jack’s gaslighting at a peep

Ever since the EU referendum and particularly since the Scottish elections in May, the Conservatives have been trying to gaslight Scotland into believing that certain truths which are deeply uncomfortable for the Tories are not in fact true. There problem is that despite the best efforts of a right wing press and a BBC which is desperate not to upset its Conservative masters who hold the key to the BBC’s continuing receipt of cash from the licence fee, the people of Scotland do not have memories as short as a goldfish.

The Conservatives want Scotland to believe that this country did not in fact vote to reject Brexit. You will regularly find frothing apologists for the Tories in the comments sections of the Herald and the, in this context ironically named, Scotsman, angrily assert that “we” didn’t vote to reject Brexit, as it was a UK-wide vote – so they claim that Scotland doesn’t matter. This stance is in itself an instance of another broken Tory promise, their claim prior to the 2014 referendum that Scotland is an equal partner in a family of nations. It was former Prime Minister Theresa May who claimed this, in her speech to the Conservative party conference in 2012 when the Conservatives were trying to marshal their arguments for the Scottish independence referendum which was coming down the line. May told the Conservative delegates: “I’m pleased to have this opportunity to talk to you about a future in which Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England continue to flourish side-by-side as equal partners. Different and proud to be so.”

That future of the so-called United Kingdom turned out to be as much of a fantasy as Narnia. Although we do have an evil queen in the shape of Priti Patel.

Not only is it evident that the British government does not view Scotland as an equal partner in a family of nations, the current Scotland Secretary Alister Jack does not even like to acknowledge that Scotland is a nation at all, preferring instead to talk about “regional” and “dialect” differences within what he regards as the single British nation of the United Kingdom. We’ve come a long way from May’s claims of the nations of the UK as equal partners to : “Scotland, you have no more significance than Lincolnshire.”

Ever since the May elections in Scotland the Conservatives, shamefully aided and abetted by the Labour party, have been trying to establish as an “alternative fact” the blatant lie that the people of Scotland did not elect a Scottish Parliament with a clear and unequivocal mandate for another independence referendum. You do not have to have a long memory to recall that the issue of another independence referendum dominated that election campaign and the voters of Scotland chose to elect a Scottish Parliament with the largest pro-independence majority ever. The Conservatives and Labour are now trying to pretend that the SNP does not have a mandate for another referendum because it narrowly failed to win an absolute majority in a broadly proportional voting system designed to make it exceptionally difficult for any single party to win an absolute majority. In effect they are trying to assert that Scottish Green MSPs don’t count, and had Alba succeeded in returning any MSPs, they’d be trying to discount those too.

Since it cannot be denied that pro-independence parties asking the electorate for a mandate for another independence referendum won the Holyrood election convincingly, and the combined forces of all the anti-independence MSPs together do not come close to blocking steps taken by Holyrood to facilitate another referendum, Alister Jack has now switched to a different stalling tactic, an appeal to opinion polling. In an interview on BBC Scotland’s Sunday Show, Jack repeated his claim that there needs to be consistent 60% support for another referendum before one is justified. Jack does not get to cherry pick which political issues are decided by opinion polls. We have elections for deciding important political issues, and the question of whether Scotland should have another independence referendum was definitively decided at the Holyrood election in May.

Jack should in any case be careful what he wishes for, if indeed we are to appeal to opinion polling in order to decide whether a government has a mandate, there have been large and consistent majorities against Brexit in Scottish opinion polls which have confirmed that the 60% plus of Scottish voters who voted against Brexit in 2016 was no flash in the pan. Perhaps the Scottish Government should tell Jack that it will agree to his 60% proviso for another independence referendum if the Conservatives return Scotland to the EU single market, the customs union, and restore the rights to work and settle throughout the EU that Scots lost due to the Conservatives’ hard Brexit.

In his latest pathetically transparent attempt at gaslighting, Jack is trying to claim that there have been no changes to the devolution settlement, arguing unconvincingly that the UK Government unilaterally giving itself powers to intervene directly in Scotland on devolved matters was “real devolution”.

He further tried to claim that the British Government had not taken any powers away from Holyrood, and therefore devolution was not being undermined. This is a specious and intellectually insulting argument, the sort of assertion that could only be made by an upper middle class patrician idiot who is used not to being challenged or contradicted by the peasants.

Prior to the Tories’ UK internal Market Act, Holyrood had the exclusive power to decide spending priorities on devolved matters within Scotland. Westminster has not stripped Holyrood of its powers to decide spending priorities on devolved issues, but it has given itself equivalent powers. That means Holyrood no longer has the exclusive power – which is a loss of power. Decisions made by Holyrood can now be by-passed by Westminster, that is an important loss of power for the Scottish Parliament. The decision of Holyrood to say – spend on improving the rail network instead of building a new road – can now be neutered by Westminster deciding that it’s going to build the road anyway.

Westminster doesn’t need to formally strip Holyrood of a power when it can simply neuter and by-pass the Scottish Parliament. There’s no need to strip Holyrood of a power that the Tories have subverted, and then Alister Jack and his gaslighting colleagues can continue to undermine, weaken, and subvert the devolution settlement and then pitch up for a cosy interview on the BBC and claim that they’ve not taken any powers away from Holyrood.

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