Boris Johnson is far from being the first prime minister to holiday in Scotland. David Cameron used to slip off the radar at his father-in-law’s estate on the Isle of Jura, and plenty of other Conservative premiers have enjoyed a Scottish August on the grouse moor. But Johnson may be the first to holiday north of the Tweed as a matter of political calculation and convenience. He comes to Scotland to show his commitment to what he calls the ‘magic’ of the Union.
About time too. At last — at long last, Scottish Unionists might say — the cabinet has recognised it has a problem in North Britain. Indeed, the problem is that fewer and fewer Scots believe they should be inhabitants of Britain at all; opinion polls suggest that if an independence referendum were held next month, Scotland would vote ‘yes’. The saving grace for Johnson is that there will be no such referendum this year or next.
In normal circumstances, next year’s Scottish parliament elections would be very challenging for Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP. The party has been in power for 13 years; long enough to exhaust voters’ patience. This week, Sturgeon’s government performed perhaps the greatest U-turn in the history of the Holyrood parliament, reversing course on the allocation of exam-substitute grades that saw thousands of pupils receive poorer results than predicted. Results that were last week deemed ‘credible’ if unfair are now, by Sturgeon’s own logic, fair but incredible.
Education, not independence, is notionally Sturgeon’s no. 1 priority. She has asked to be judged on her record, knowing full well that she will not be. Scotland has a five-party political system but one of these parties, the SNP, commands the loyalty of nearly 50 per cent of voters. Sturgeon could shed a fifth of her support and still dominate the political landscape.
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