In the midst of a Rwandan deportation scheme that has become something of a touchstone for the Conservative right, as well as a bizarre hill that their party members are choosing to die on, I feel slightly uncomfortable quoting from Enoch Powell. But his words come not from his infamous Rivers of Blood speech from 1968, an address that helped further send to the margins of Scottish political discourse an ideology that voters here have rejected here since 1955, but from a comment he once made about devolution.
“Power devolved”, he said, “is power retained”.
Two stories caught my eye this week that suggested Powell’s observation was as prescient as it is relevant.
The first concerned the news that First Minister Humza Yousaf had spoken to Türkiye’s President Erdogan, about the situation in Gaza amongst other things, without first informing the Foreign Office, a breach that put Foreign Secretary David Cameron into a huff so dreadful that he wrote a stern letter to Scotland’s constitution minister Angus Robertson in which he reminded him of protocol and threatened to remove Scottish Government offices from UK overseas posts in the event of any further transgressions.
It did appear that the Foreign Office was crushing a butterfly on a wheel. If we really are a family of nations in an equal union, why the need for a snooty letter? Couldn’t he just have picked up the ‘phone? He seemed at pains to stress the importance of “speaking with one voice to the international community”, but you’d like to think that foreign leaders had the maturity and intellectual bandwidth to recognise that the First Minister of Scotland, particularly given his own backstory, might have a more nuanced view about how to approach the unfolding tragedy in the region.
But much as being told to know our place through a patronising letter from an unelected Foreign Secretary appointed by an unelected Prime Minister appointed by an unelected Head of State would gar onybody greet, I found myself resisting the temptation to resort to faux outrage, for one good reason.
And here’s the rub. Baron Cameron of Chipping Norton was actually correct.
Strip away all the fluff and here’s what you’re left with.
Foreign affairs are reserved. Scotland is not, as yet, independent. Until we are, this is the kind of high-handed disrespectful guff we chose not to escape from when we had the chance to do so a decade ago, and will be stuck with until we finally have the cojones to be a normal, self-governing country. Until then, it is what it is and rather than wasting our energies greeting about a snooty letter from a posh guy with a preposterous and wholly undeserved title we should instead keep the heid and bring about a way to bring our democracy home.
The whole manufactured stooshie actually reminded us of an important point about devolution. It has limits. Power devolved is power retained.
Which brings us to our second story, the interesting but unsurprising news that the courts have ruled in favour of Westminster over their blocking of Holyrood’s gender bill, which would be an open goal for independence supporters were it not for the fact that the legislation was so controversial, flawed and deeply unpopular. That said, it ought to be possible to separate the act from the principle that is may have set a troubling precedent – if they can veto this, is anything off the table? That certainly seemed to be Humza Yousaf’s position when he described the ruling as a “dark day for devolution”. And as the dust settles he will face a dilemma. Does he appeal something so toxic? And if he doesn’t, thus crossing what is a red line for his coalition partners, whither the Bute House Agreement? And part of me wishes they’d tried to veto a really good bill, rather than a really bad one, because it would have given the independence cause so much more traction. And “only independence can get the gender bill through” doesn’t sound like much of a rallying cry.
So was this a “dark day for devolution”?
Perhaps only if we hadn’t been paying attention. As some on the unionist side are correctly observing, Section 35 (the veto) has always been part of the Scotland Act. Indeed, it could even be argued that devolution rendered obsolete the position of Secretary of State for Scotland, and that the only reason it still exists is to allow what Alister Jack chose to do – the scuppering of Holyrood bills. And it’s not as if Holyrood ministers weren’t being advised that the bill might impinge on reserved powers, and as it’s likely we’ll see more court cases in the years ahead we need our legislators to be more legally savvy. Because the whole gender bouroch shows it’s not just the Tories choosing some questionable hills to die on.
So the lessons to be learned from the two stories are these. Firstly, devolution is many shades of grey but Westminster is now happy to ignore the spirit of the original Scotland Act and interpret devolution in the narrowest way possible. And while Yousaf may be technically correct in saying there’s an effective veto on everything, in reality that’s unlikely to be used.
And if you want a great example the limits of devolution, look no further than my industry – farming.
Yes, farming is devolved. We determine our policy. We determine our support structures. But rejoining the EU? Formulating an immigration policy that allows us to pick our berries and milk our cows? All the stuff that would really allow us to prosper? Not so much.
But the biggest lesson from the last few days is one long ago learned by scores of countries across the world who decided that, for better it’s always better to plough your own furrow. And that the best possible type of devolution is independence.
Keep the faith good people. I’ll meet you further on up the road.
