The former colonial governor of the northern province, Alister Jack, who was given a peerage by Rishi Sunak as part of a back room deal. Jack rejected an earlier nomination by Boris Johnson in 2023 to avoid triggering a by-election while he was still an MP, only later to stand down for the 2024 General Election and accept a seat in the Lords in 2025.
Jack is the worst Scottish Secretary in modern times, quite an achievement in a list of ignominy which includes Jim Murphy, Douglas Alexander, Alister Carmichael and David Mundell. Jack completed the transformation of the role of the Secretary of State for Scotland from its historic and supposed aim of giving Scotland representation at the highest level in the British Government and a seat at the cabinet table, to what it is today, a colonial style means of allowing the British Government to exert its power in Scotland, over-ruling, over-riding, and side-lining the directly elected Scottish Parliament. The Scotland Office is no longer Scotland’s voice in the British Government, which it was originally created to be in one of Westminster’s many efforts to forestall the appetite in Scotland for self-government. It’s now solely the British Government’s voice in Scotland, another instrument of Westminster’s centralising control freakery.
In Jack, Scotland found itself lumbered with a Secretary of State who rejected the foundation stone of traditional Scottish Unionism, the idea that the UK is a voluntary union of nations, saying in 2019 that he completely disagreed with this formulation. Later that year he was ridiculed after suggesting a new “Union Day” bank holiday should replace “one of the left-wing ones”. Jack has asserted that the UK is a unitary state, a country, a nation, not a Union of four sovereign nations. In Jack’s view, Scotland is merely a region of a unitary British state and British nation, not a country in its own right. In a state which truly respected Scotland as a constituent nation in the voluntary union of nations Westminster tells us the UK is, a man like Jack would never have been allowed anywhere close to the office of Secretary of State for Scotland.
But the truth is that Jack’s views are not unusual amongst the British nationalists whose defining characteristic is a denial of their own nationalism, Jack just said the quiet bit out loud. Most British nationalist politicians find it politically expedient to maintain the charade that the Union is voluntary and that they respect Scotland’s right to self-determination. The haughty and patrician Jack sees no reason why the sensibilities of the lower orders need to be pandered to.
As a member of the Lords, Jack is still exerting his pernicious influence on Scottish politics and public life. In a breathtakingly outrageous intervention in the Lords this week, the unelected Jack demanded that the British Government strip powers away from the Scottish Parliament, which unlike him actually has a democratic mandate from the people of Scotland. Jack told the Lords that there was a list of areas which he wanted to see explicitly reserved to the UK Government.
Under the Scotland Act, competencies which are not explicitly reserved to Westminster, such as defence, currency, immigration, energy policy, pensions, broadcasting etc. are automatically devolved to the Scottish Parliament. Jack is unhappy about this as he fears that the development of new technologies means that the Scottish Parliament will acquire new powers by default as these matters were not specifically reserved to Westminster when the Scotland Act was drafted in 1998. There’s immense irony in Jack being so interested in new and developing technologies when his politics and view of Scotland are mired in the 18th century when the British army subdued Scotland by force.
Jack called on the British Government to enact primary legislation to revise Section 5 of the Scotland Act, the section which details the powers to be reserved to Westminster, and to add to it a long shopping list of additional powers over AI, hydrogen gas and other issues which Jack wants to be explicitly reserved to Westminster. This upends the entire basis of the devolution settlement, a settlement which is already tattered and torn under the onslaughts of the ‘muscular unionism’ of which Jack and the Conservative governments in which he served were such enthusiastic proponents.
Jack’s real issue of course is that the people of Scotland have stubbornly refused to elect a Scottish Parliament which is safely in the hands of the anti-independence parties. From his position as an undemocratically appointed legislator for life, Jack is seeking to subvert the democratic will of the people of Scotland for having the audacity to refuse to submit to him and his ilk.
The Labour government in the shape of Labour’s whip in the Lords Magrit Curran – and just typing that name provokes PTSD – another example of how it’s impossible to get rid of failed politicians in the UK, declined to accept Jack’s suggestion, but not without getting in one of Labour’s obligatory wee digs at the SNP and the Scottish Government.
Curran and her party still harbour hopes of electoral recovery in Scotland and know that adopting Jack’s suggestion would be political suicide for a party which is still reeling from its drubbing in May’s Holyrood election.
The real danger here is that Jack is signalling the intention of a future Conservative government or a Conservative-Reform government. The devolution settlement will be gutted. The far right Restore Britain of Rupert Lowe, who manages to pull off the incredible feat of being even more odious than Farage, who’s currently got his summer laid out for him in his farce of a by election arguing with a bin and an assortment of extreme right wing attention seeking loons. It may be the first time in British political history that a politician has run on a platform of scrutiny not being supposed to apply to him. If this is how Farage behaves as an opposition MP leading a party of eight MPs, we can imagine how he’ll behave as prime minister when he has the power of the state at his disposal. Under the Westminster system there are almost no effective checks on the power of a prime minister who commands a loyal majority in the Commons. An assault on the devolution settlement will be the least of our worries.
Farage’s Clacton stunt may lead him to crash and burn, even should he win this by election and the one that would be held following a suspension from the Commons, but the far right represent an ever more dangerous presence in British politics and the Westminster system with its fetish for the absolute power of Parliament leaves the UK uniquely vulnerable to capture by fascism.
The next Westminster general election has to be a vote on independence. Devolution is dead, and far right Anglo-British nationalist barbarians are howling at the gates of Westminster power.
After wrestling for hours with PayPal, I have finally compiled a list of the emails of almost everyone who makes a regular monthly donation to the blog and will soon launch the weekly bonus premium email article for those who make a monthly contribution to the blog. I had hoped to launch this in June but unfortunately it will be delayed for a while. There are a number of people whose emails I am unable to find. Some people donate monthly by Ko-Fi, one makes a monthly donation to last year’s GoFundMe fundraiser, a few people make monthly payments directly by bank transfer. I cannot access the email addresses of any of these people and so cannot add them to the new mailing list. If you are one of these folk, please email me at weegingerbook@yahoo.com and I’ll add you to the mailing list.
_____________________________________
The annual blog fundraiser has reached its initial target but will keep running for a few weeks more. The initial target represented the bare minimum necessary to keep the blog going. Many thanks to everyone who has contributed. There are a number of ways to donate. You can contribute to my fundraiser on GoFundMe, the link is here.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/wee-ginger-dug-annual-fundraiser-2026
By Default GoFundMe has configured the donation page to monthly donations. You can still donate as a one off When you Click donate, on the donate page under the title WeeGinger Fundraiser 2026 you’ll see two buttons, one on the left saying GIVE ONCE and one on the right saying GIVE MONTHLY. This seems to be a new thing with GoFundMe. Click the left GIVE ONCE button so it is highlighted in Green then choose the amount you want to donate or enter it in the box below. If not, you can always make a one off donation by PayPal or Ko-Fi
You can donate via Ko-Fi here:
Or click the following link https://ko-fi.com/weegingerdug
One of the easiest ways to support this blog is with a PayPal donation. Please log into Paypal.com and send a payment to the email address weegingerbook@yahoo.com. Or alternatively click the donate button below. If you don’t have a PayPal account, just select “donate with card” after clicking the button. You can also donate by PayPal by using my PayPal.me link PayPal.Me/weegingerdug
https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/weegingerdug
If you would prefer to donate some other way, for example by bank transfer or cheque, please contact me at weegingerbook@yahoo.com for details. Once again, thank you to everyone for your support.
