On the question of whether the Scottish Government should diverge from any UK decisions about the lockdown, my own attitude is similar to the one Boris Johnson used to pretend to take in relation to consumer protection after Brexit – ie. the standards that applied in the EU would be the minimum that the UK would adopt, and that any divergence would be to enhance those standards. On the same principle, I’d suggest that any measures put in place by the UK to protect citizens from the virus is the minimum that should apply in Scotland, and we should only go our own way if we feel that people need to be protected even more. In other words, for as long as a lockdown is in force south of the border, it’s hard to think of any circumstances in which it wouldn’t be appropriate for a lockdown to also be in force north of the border. And if that was the point Jackson Carlaw and Richard Leonard were making, I’d be in wholehearted agreement with them. But unfortunately they have something rather different in mind.
Suppose the right-wing headbangers in the Tory party get their way, and Westminster eases the lockdown before it is safe to do so. Suppose Nicola Sturgeon, after consulting with her advisers, reaches the honest conclusion that the only way to avoid a totally unacceptable loss of life is for Scotland to maintain its own lockdown, and thus protect the public to a greater extent than is happening elsewhere in the UK. Would Jackson Carlaw really suggest that she should not do that? Remarkably, his answer is “yes”. He’s made abundantly clear that he thinks Scotland should just blindly follow whatever decision is made in London, in order to avoid “confusion” and to ensure that the UK is moving “together” – although of course we all know that only the latter reason really matters to him. It’s no secret that the Scottish Tories always put British uniformity ahead of virtually every other consideration, but it’s still quite startling to discover that they even put it ahead of the preservation of life.
The Scottish Labour position is even more incomprehensible. They are, after all, the self-styled “party of devolution”, and must surely accept that there was little point in the Blair government devolving health to the Scottish Parliament if every single decision made in London was to be simply copied-and-pasted and implemented here. Labour are also supposed to be opponents of the Tory party and to have severe misgivings about the way the Tory government has handled this crisis. Every piece of logic therefore suggests they should want the Scottish Government to use the powers of devolution to do better than the London Tories. Instead, for some reason, they demand that Scotland must lower itself to the Tory level at all times. Well, I say “for some reason”, but the reason is clear enough – dogmatic British nationalism.
And after last night’s appalling revelations about Dominic Cummings’ involvement in the SAGE scientific advisory group, let’s not hear any more of the pretty fiction about a joint decision-making process in which the “Four Nations” all have parity of esteem. The fabled “science” that originally led to the catastrophic herd immunity policy was hopelessly tainted by political interference from the UK government’s Prince of Darkness, and there was no equivalent input from Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. According to the Guardian report, the Scottish and Welsh Chief Medical Officers were not even permitted to ask questions in SAGE meetings, while the non-scientist Cummings had free rein.
