JENNY HJUL ON THURSDAY
Sturgeon needs to focus on job of running Scotland
WITH so much happening at Westminster this week, we almost missed a historic occasion. Mhairi Black, the SNP MP for Paisley and Renfrewshire South, made her maiden speech in the House of Commons, becoming the youngest member to do so in more than 300 years.
Just 20, Ms Black, who was recently awarded a first-class politics degree from Glasgow University, began graciously, as is the convention. She paid tribute to her predecessor, Douglas Alexander, for the way he handled his defeat, saying he did himself and his party proud.
She then moved predictably to her point, attacking George Osborne’s Budget and Tory welfare cuts. In doing so, she brought a level of gravity to her party that had been sorely lacking in recent days. Whether you agree with Ms Black’s economic analysis or not, she at least raised the issues of chronic unemployment in her constituency, the growth in the number of people dependent on food banks and the shortage of housing. This was on Tuesday, when her colleagues decided to immerse themselves in the minutiae of English fox-hunting legislation.
We all now know where that led, at least in the short term. The details of the Conservative amendment, aimed at bringing the English and Welsh hunting ban in line with the laxer Scottish law, hardly matter.
Nicola Sturgeon is more likely, by virtue of her Scottish urban upbringing, to be against than for a traditional countryside pursuit like fox hunting, but I can’t recall her expressing an opinion on the subject recently. Nevertheless, on Monday night she had become so preoccupied with how many English hounds are allowed to flush out a fox (it’s currently just two but David Cameron wants to make it more) that she called a meeting with her MPs in London.
Back home, Scotland’s most senior police officer was facing calls for his resignation over a bungled response to an accident scene. A children’s hospital ward was still closed amid a drastic shortage of paediatricians and a dearth of GPs has forced patients in Perth to go to Dundee for out-of-hours services.
None of this was important enough to detain the First Minister, who had only foxes on her mind. She decided her 56 Nationalists in Westminster would vote with Labour against the Government and Angus Robertson, SNP parliamentary group leader, was sent out to offer an explanation. Fox hunting was cruel, he said, though that did not justify his party breaking its commitment not to vote on Englishonly affairs, such as this one, that had no impact in Scotland. When Mr Cameron retaliated by postponing the vote, Mr Robertson branded him a coward and Ms Sturgeon claimed a victory for the SNP. But it is only a victory if driving a greater wedge between England and Scotland is your intention, which, of course, is the SNP’s plan. The upshot of the fox fiasco is that proposals for English Votes for English laws (Evel), will probably have to be strengthened to avoid a repeat of the SNP stunt.
If they cannot be trusted to keep their word, voters in England and Wales will need assurances that Nationalist MPs, motivated by partisan prejudices, cannot veto important reforms outside their remit.
Ms Sturgeon complains that this will make Scottish MPs second-class citizens yet it is exactly what she wants, as her actions this week have demonstrated. Her opportunism, she readily admitted, was to “remind the Government of how slender their majority is” but if she thinks she is a power in the land she is mistaken. A point scored here and there by backing a moribund opposition is not the “progressive alliance” she loftily spouts and it is not going to change the character of the country or bring down a democratically elected government going about its business.
It must be galling for the Scottish MPs, intent on stirring up resentment against the Tories, to observe the mostly unfettered pace of their progress since May. They can make a lot of noise but they can’t halt the reforming zeal of Mr Cameron’s ministers. The hunting ban has been kicked into the long grass but welfare has been overhauled (with cross-party support from Labour’s Harriet Harman) and the EU will be next.
The Prime Minister has even found time to devote to Scotland, with a raft of new powers coming Holyrood’s way that will make it one of the most autonomous devolved bodies in the world. Far from emerging as the real Commons opposition, the SNP are confronted daily by their impotence. It’s no wonder they seized on fox hunting as a means, however desperate, of making their mark before Parliament goes into recess and they are sent home to their constituencies.
But nothing the First Minister or Mr Roberston achieved in terms of political process this week has advanced Scotland or come any closer to finding solutions to the nation’s many problems, eloquently highlighted by Ms Black. This is disappointing, not merely for devoted separatists. There have been times since Ms Sturgeon took over when the party seemed to come to its senses. She has often represented a no-nonsense antidote to Alex Salmond’s dafter provocations, dampening loose talk of second referendums and unilateral declarations of independence, promising to tackle the cybernats, and even, very briefly, displaying courtesy towards Westminster.
In February she said: “The SNP have a longstanding position of not voting on matters that purely affect England – such as fox hunting south of the border, for example – and we stand by that.” But that was then. The watershed of the General Election appears to have gone to her head and her “mandate” instilled fanciful notions based more on vanity than reality.
She said while in London that Scotland was the real northern powerhouse, which must be news to those Scottish chief executives relocating their headquarters south of the Border, and to firms struggling to pay uncompetitive business rates here.
What kind of powerhouse would base its economy on collapsing oil revenues, work out its currency arrangements on the back of an envelope, and leave a £7.6 billion hole in its budget? Ms Sturgeon proved this week that her greatest political skill, like Mr Salmond’s, is creating antiEnglish grievances, for which she will be warmly embraced by the separatists.
This talent may further the Nationalists’ goal in the immediate future but it won’t address the harderto-fix crises in our hospitals and schools. The SNP should take a leaf out of Mr Cameron’s book and get on with the day job, which in their case is running Scotland. It may be less fun than London, but it’s time for the First Minister to roll up her sleeves and attend to domestic matters, taking decisions that sometimes will make her unpopular and fulfilling her manifesto promise to stand up for Scotland’s, and not just the SNP’s, interests.
‘‘ The upshot of the fox fiasco is that proposals for Evel will probably have to be strengthened to avoid a repeat of the SNP stunt