Scotland will not stand for this

It’s obviously bad enough that Scotland is being hit with a UK-wide tax rise to pay for an England-only policy change, but that’s a structural problem with the way that devolution was set up in 1999, and won’t be resolved without either full fiscal autonomy or independence. Much more remarkable was a story (I think it was in the Independent, but I can’t actually find it now) claiming that Boris Johnson was changing the rules to ensure that the money Scotland received from the National Insurance rise would be passed direct to NHS Scotland, and that the Scottish Government would have no discretion on how to spend it. That of course would drive a coach and horses through the entire principle of devolution, which is that Scotland receives a block grant (and other revenues from its own taxes) and then spends the money however it sees fit without interference from Westminster. Astonishingly, the article then claimed that the SNP would quietly go along with the end of devolution as we know it, without even a booming “SCOTLAND WILL NOT STAND FOR THIS!” from Ian Blackford, because it would conveniently solve their own problem of how to pay for social care in Scotland.

Thankfully, it appears none of this is true. The Scottish administration will decide for itself how to spend the money in the normal way. Boris Johnson was bending the truth about the money going direct to the Scottish NHS to make Our Precious Union look like Santa Claus. I’m not sure what the lesson of all this is – maybe it’s about the incuriosity of the mainstream media towards devolution, to such an extent that they don’t even bother doublechecking unlikely claims. But I’m also troubled by the fact that, just for a little while, I found those claims semi-plausible – and there are good reasons for that too.

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Scot Goes Popcast: You can watch the full videos of my recent interviews with Yvonne Ridley and William Duguid HERE and HERE.