Alex Massie

For as long as it has been rumoured, and even more so since it was confirmed, Nicola Sturgeon’s appearance on Wednesday before the Holyrood committee investigating her government’s unlawful handling of complaints made against Alex Salmond promised to be a challenging, perhaps even chastening, moment for the First Minister. Twin revelations tonight appear to reinforce that supposition. In spades. If Sturgeon’s administration was not facing crisis before, it undoubtedly is now. At the outset of this process — which followed Salmond’s acquittal on all charges made against him in the criminal trial — Sturgeon promised that she and her government would co-operate fully with the inquiry. Such words are cheap, of course, and require the backing of actions.

For some months now it has been apparent that the greatest threat to Nicola Sturgeon’s position as the uncontested queen of Scottish politics lay within her own movement. Opposition parties could — and did — criticise the Scottish government’s record in government but their efforts were as useful as attempting to sack Edinburgh Castle armed with nothing more threatening than a pea-shooter. Meanwhile, in London, Boris Johnson and his ministers appeared determined to do all they could to inadvertently bolster Sturgeon’s position. As Douglas Ross, the leader of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist party complained, 'the case for separation is now being made more effectively in London than it ever could be in Edinburgh'.

It is now two years since Nicola Sturgeon accepted the need for a parliamentary inquiry into how, and why, her government’s investigation into Alex Salmond was so thoroughly tainted by apparent bias it was unlawful.   Ever since then, she has repeatedly promised that both she and her government will fully co-operate with the Holyrood committee — set up to investigate the Scottish government’s response to claims of sexual misconduct against her predecessor. Many hollow promises have been made in the still-short history of the Scottish parliament but few have been emptier than this.   It is necessary to insist upon what the committee is not investigating: it takes no view on the complaints made against Alex Salmond.

Boris Johnson is in Scotland today and once again this counts as news. This is intolerable to everyone. Intolerable to Unionists because a prime ministerial appearance in Scotland should be as routine as a prime ministerial appearance in the Cotswolds. It should not count as a newsworthy moment. And it is intolerable to Scottish nationalists because, well, because everything is intolerable to Scottish nationalists. The Prime Minister’s visit can hardly be deemed 'essential travel' in the current circumstances even if it is also essential that Scotland never becomes a no-go area for Johnson or, indeed, other cabinet ministers. Making it seem such, chipping away at Johnson’s legitimacy, is one small front on the SNP’s long, attritional, struggle against the British state.

We're closing 2020 by republishing our ten most-read articles of the year. Here's No. 1: Alex Massie's article from May, in which he makes the case against Boris. Danny Kruger, formerly Johnson’s political secretary and now the MP for Devizes, has – perhaps inadvertently – done the country some small service. In a note sent to newly-elected Tory MPs, Mr Kruger has reportedly advised his colleagues that ‘calling for Dominic Cummings to go is basically declaring no confidence in [the] prime minister.’ Well, yes, indeed. That is the point. Because, in the end, this is not a story about Dominic Cummings but, rather, one about the Prime Minister.

We're closing 2020 by republishing our ten most-read articles of the year. Here's No. 3: Alex Massie's article from May on the Cummings' imbroglio Most aspects of this present emergency are complex and resist easy solutions. Only a handful are elementary but one of these, and quite obviously so, is the Dominic Cummings affair. He must go and he must go now. There is no alternative, no other way out, no means by which this ship can be saved. The only question is the number of casualties Cummings will take with him. Judged by the cabinet’s performance on social media this weekend, the answer to that question is also simple: all of them. It cannot be stressed too often that the government’s authority during this crisis is moral much more than it is legal.

In March this year, as the country went into Covid-prompted lockdown, the SNP and the Scottish government put their campaigns for independence on hold. 2020 has been a year of few consolations and it is typical that even its better things must come to an end. Then again, there was no need for the SNP to put their demands for independence into cold storage, for a temporary cessation of outrage requires nobody to forget the party’s sole reason for existence.

Every so often I make the mistake of thinking Boris Johnson must have exhausted his capacity for indolent carelessness and each time I do he pops up to remind me not to count him out. There are always fresh depths to which he may sink. For he is a Prime Minister who knows little and cares less that he knows so little. In happy times of placid prosperity this might be inconvenient but tolerable; these are not such times. Speaking to his northern English MPs last night, Johnson declared that devolution has been 'a disaster north of the border' and was the biggest mistake Tony Blair ever made. The implication, quite obviously, is that in a better ordered world the Scottish parliament should be abolished.

Boris Johnson spoke to Joe Biden yesterday! Did you feel the thrill of it all? These Romans may be uncouth but they still know their Greeks. Or were you, instead, secretly annoyed that the new American president did not make good on all those breathless intimations that, summoning the ghosts of ancient persecutions and more recent insults, he would ‘snub’ the Prime Minister? Much of the Westminster village appears consumed by this absurdity on a quadrennial basis. Hence the manner in which the presence – or absence – of a bust of Winston Churchill in the Oval Office is deemed a reflection of the specialness of the special relationship. If Winston is there, all is fine; if he is not, irrelevance awaits.