The Case for Tartan Tories

An exiled commenter takes a little issue with my suggestion that Alex Salmond's relationship with David Cameron (if the latter becomes Prime Minister) might be easier than his dealings with Gordon Brown:

If the Conservatives win power at Westminster while remaining the third or fourth party in Scotland (far behind Labour and the SNP), that is going to increase pressure in Scotland for more autonomy at the very least, and probably outright independence. It's hard to think of a Conservative policy that would not be unpopular with the vast majority of the Scottish electorate. With Cameron and Osbourne in charge in London, many Scots are going to think they have little or nothing in common with the British government and wonder why they should be ruled by it. Foreign policy would become a major issue, especially if Cameron tries to lead Britain into another Iraq. That could be the final straw. Even if he doesn't, the two nations will clearly be moving in different directions and a split might be inevitable, sooner or later.

I suspect this analysis is closer to the majority view than my own. So let me explain my point a little further.

Firstly, Cameron's relationship with Salmond isn't poisoned by Cameron believing Scotland is his personal fiefdom (which is the way Gordon Brown views his native land). Secondly, if, as seems quite likely, the UK Tory party ceases to exist and the Scottish Tories are granted independence from London (along the CDU/CSU model in Bavaria) then the nature of the relationship between a Tory government in Downing St and an SNP ministry at Holyrood changes. If Cameron does not, so to speak, have a dog in domestic Scottish politics there's a greater incentive to work with Salmond, not against him. Cameron may be more of a grown-up than Brown too.

Thirdly, and most importantly, there's every incentive for there to be a political alliance between the Tories and SNP anyway. Admittedly I've been arguing this for years to no effect at all, though there's at least one former SNP MSP who also thinks it makes sense. It's not as though the Tories are being led by Barry Goldwater; they're only tepidly right of centre. An SNP-Tory coalition would temper the worst SNP excesses while perhaps encouraging the Tories to be a tiny wee bit bolder than they've been lately...

True, one might need to put the constitutional question aside for a moment. But that might fade from prominence anyway, for reasons we'll get to in a moment.

Since the Tories are, or ought to be, the parliaments' leading champions of responsible government, they need to take some risks if they ever want to be influential or even relevant again. They need, in other words, to embrace the idea that the parliament must be fiscally responsible.

The current system is the worst imaginable. The parliament receives a £30bn cheque from the Treasury to spend as it sees fit. As any parent knows, teenagers are likely to spend money they've had to earn more
responsibly than money they've been given by a doting parent. The same is true of politicians. The present system, which has decoupled the responsibility of raising money from the pleasures of spending it, promotes juvenile, irresponsible politics.

It also, it should be said, stifles creativity and reform. When money is always on tap it becomes tempting to suppose that problems can be spent away. More money will cure everything and anything. Experience suggests, shall we say, that this is not the case. The only way the parliament is really going to concentrate on the sort of enterprise-friendly policies one would like to see is if it's responsible for raising revenue. 

So, the Tories have an interest is changing this. Making the parliament responsible for its own finances should be a Tory ambition. Now, it happens that the SNP want this too, though of course they see fiscal autonomy as an important stepping-stone to independence.

But would it be? That's not certain. A fiscally responsible parliament might satisfy most voters. How much more value would or could independence bring in those circumstances? Voters might think they had enough. A gamble? Yes, but a better one than the current, unsatisfactory situation. There isn't a great desire, right now, for independence but a plurality of voters, I think, would like to see the parliament enjoy more powers.

What you would have then is a situation whereby Scotland is 75% detached from England rather than just semi-detached as it is now. Unchartered waters indeed. And yes, a foreign policy crisis could cause trouble, but it seems unlikely that it alone could break the Union.

One problem: both the SNP and the Tories have persistently, consistently, stubbornly refused to talk to one another. That's what you call a detail, folks. Perversely I take this as a sign that such an arrangement cannot be countenanced precisely because it makes too much sense...

Comments

[dc]

Come on. The Scottish tories are primarily a unionist party. They're actually called the Conservative and Unionist party. They opposed devolution and there is a strand in the English party which regularly calls for the abolition of the Scottish parliament.
Also the SNP has spent too long trying to disprove the 'Tartan tories' slur to consider getting involved with the Consevatives.