When I agreed to write the week in Scotland this week, I imagined a nice quiet week with a little gentle fencing around next week’s budget. I could not have been more wrong. The three big stories this week were the Growth Commission, Brexit, and named person legislation, but the only one of those that anyone is talking about remains Brexit.
The week started with teasers from the SNP about how great the long awaited Growth Commission report from Andrew Wilson was going to be and how it would answer all of the questions you ever had about the Scottish Economy after independence. As Donald Trump might say, it’s going to be great, it’s going to be huge, you are going to love it. Meanwhile, just as the SNP were on full tease, Prime Minister Theresa May was delivering a master class in being neither strong nor stable.
What was intended as a fairly simple fudgy form of words about avoiding borders on the island of Ireland looked like it was suggesting “regulatory alignment” of Northern Ireland with the EU and an unspoken assumption of “divergence” between the countries of the UK. This was never going to be acceptable to the DUP, anything that entrenches difference between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK seems to bring forward the prospect of NI breaking away, and if the divergence leaves it closer to the Republic it’s all the more troubling because of the prospect of a united Ireland. That is a prospect the DUP are not happy with. And if the DUP aren’t happy, the Tories find any strength and stability they may have ebbing away.
Curiously enough, here in Scotland, the SNP might find themselves delighted at such a prospect for exactly the opposite reasons, and the First Minister was quick to call for bespoke deals and single market membership for Wales, the city of London and for Scotland.
Sensing weakness on the part of the Tories, and doubtless in an effort to be helpful, the SNP engineered urgent questions for Tuesday to allow them to demonstrate just how much disarray anyone who isn’t the SNP find themselves in over Brexit. As a strategy for generating some television clips of Mr Russell (SNP, Argyll and Bute) looking angry and earnest in equal measure it was quite successful. One unintended consequence was to allow Ruth Davidson (Con, Edinburgh Central) who has had a quiet few weeks, to emerge as a thought leader for the Conservative party across the UK. On Tuesday morning, Westminster Tories were still struggling to form a coherent sentence let alone a narrative to respond to the DUP. Ruth Davidson’s line, however, became the de facto line to take for Tories everywhere:
“If regulatory alignment in a number of specific areas is the requirement for a frictionless border, then the Prime Minister should conclude this must be on a UK-wide basis.”
Daniel Johnstone, (Lab, Edinburgh Southern) asked a largely unnoticed little question about the Scottish Government’s impact assessments of Brexit options, to which he got no answer but given the salience of the issue later in the week for David Davis, it’s a clever little marker to have down for future.
By Thursday’s FMQ’s, Ruth Davidson led on the Named Person legislation, the Education Committee having just delayed progress by seeking more information it looked like it might be a productive line of enquiry. The First Minister held her line well and drew in the children’s organisations as supporters of the idea if not the detail. We have to assume there will be more to be said about the Named Person in the weeks ahead.
Meanwhile the new Labour Leader Richard Leonard (Lab, Central Scotland) dusted off his script from last week and asked about council cuts and the Scottish Budget which will be unveiled next week. It was much more of the gentle fencing I had been expecting, instead of the rollercoaster week we ended up having.
This week also saw the AGM of ASPA and Alastair Ross, who has served the industry as ASPA convenor, stood down. He deserves our thanks and appreciation for his service over the years. Alastair will be a tough act to follow and new convenor Callum Chomczuk will, I’m sure, have the support of colleagues across Scotland in the coming year.