In January 1763, Charles Churchill, a poet and friend of the radical MP John Wilkes, published a notorious satire titled The Prophecy of Famine. Churchill warned his compatriots that England was menaced by a new threat from the north. The Scots, not least those favoured by the prime minister, Lord Bute, had “sapped our vigour to increase their own”. In the poem’s two most famous lines, Churchill complains that “Into our places, states, and beds they creep/They’ve sense to get, what we want sense to keep.”
I thought of this thunderous complaint this week when the Conservatives unveiled their latest election poster.
It depicts a sharp-suited Alex Salmond gazing benignly upon a miniaturised Ed Miliband perched in Mr Salmond’s breast pocket. The message was clear: don’t let the Scottish tail wag the English dog. A vote for Labour in England risks leaving England at the mercy of Mr Salmond’s marauding band of strange and terrifying Highland warriors. Churchill and Wilkes would have been proud.
My immediate reaction, on the other hand, was one of incredulity. My second thought was that these people really don’t care how this stuff plays in Scotland, do they? And then I remembered the wise words of Philip Collins, writing in this paper recently, that politics is a simple game until the point it starts being played by people who don’t know what they are doing.
You see, the Conservative party has spent the last two years campaigning against SNP-inspired attempts to divide the United Kingdom in two. The Tories have rejected the Nationalists’ narrative of a Britain divided between “them” and “us” in which Scotland, of course, always receives a hard and unfair deal. No, the Tories have argued, this is a time to remember that what unites us is very much greater than anything that divides us.
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Sure, Scotland is not precisely the same as England (and Wales) but nor is it separate from the other parts of the United Kingdom. There is no “them”. Not really. There is only “us”. There is ample room for difference but rather less space for division.
That was then, of course, and now that the referendum has been “settled” (sic), the picture is rather different. There is an election to win and if that requires short-term expediency at the expense of long-term stability then so be it. Just six months ago, the Tory party deplored rhetoric designed to cause mischief and set one part of the kingdom against the other. Now they issue those provocations themselves. Now they cast the election as Scotland against England. Now they do the SNP’s work for them.
It is a stupefyingly stupid approach. One that leaves me wondering if there’s a part of the Conservative brain that would, despite everything, actually like to be rid of these troublesome Scots. This seems the simplest explanation for an approach that’s guaranteed to raise Caledonian hackles. And not just Nationalist hackles, either. On the contrary, it is Scottish Unionists who have greatest cause to feel aggrieved, even betrayed, by this latest Tory campaign story.
Suggesting there is something improper, something dangerous, about outsized Scottish influence at Westminster is the kind of thing that makes Unionists despair too. It hints that while it may be fine for the Scots to be led to water, on no account can they be permitted to drink. It jabs a thumb in Unionist eyes, telling Scottish Unionists that Scots are, in some strange sense, second-class or alien citizens at Westminster.
It might, I suppose, be an approach that will win the Tories some support in England but in Scotland the only beneficiaries will be the SNP. It is one thing for Scottish Unionists to deprecate the prospect of the SNP holding the balance of power in London — a power to be exercised mischievously, of course — but quite another for English Tories to do the same. They lack standing to do so.
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Instead, however, these Tory “strategists” seem determined to ask Scots to choose between being Scots and Unionists. There should be no need for any such choice, but if one is forced upon the people it will not be answered in terms favourable to Unionism.
If Unionism is not generous, inclusive and imaginative it will be lost. This current Tory campaign is none of these things. It may know the price of identity but it has no appreciation of its value.
During the long referendum campaign there was always something false about SNP assurances that there was no “Scotland versus England” element to the campaign, but that in turn makes it all the worse that the Tories should now insist that, actually, there is now. Reckless, stupid, counterproductive and dishonourable: apart from that there’s nothing wrong with this latest Tory tactic.