Boris Johnson’s Scotland problem

A few months ago, Tory aides spotted a suspicious pattern. If they agreed on a new Covid policy to be announced in a week, Keir Starmer would get wind of it and demand it was implemented immediately. In No. 10, two conclusions were drawn: that they had a mole (perhaps on Sage) and that the Labour party’s policy was to try to look prescient. The conclusion? Ignore it. In such times, they reasoned, no one cares about Westminster games. But it’s a different matter when it comes to being upstaged by Nicola Sturgeon.

To many Tories, she is the real opposition leader these days. If Boris Johnson’s premiership collapses — despite delivering Brexit and even if he sees off Covid — it will likely be due to her. Until the pandemic, opinion polls showed little change in appetite for Scottish independence. But since then, support for separation has surged. It’s not that the Scottish government has managed the crisis well — an Imperial College study found that Scotland along with England had among the highest rates of death from all causes in the first wave of the pandemic — but politically, Sturgeon’s handling has been deft.