Scots a target for the Lord of Misrule

When United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson dismissed Scottish devolution as “a disaster” he was speaking with some authority.

He is, after all, an expert on disaster.

He presides over a disastrous Government at Westminster; many if not most of his Minister are either proven disasters or disasters waiting to happen.

In a few weeks he is likely to lead his nation into the biggest disaster it has faced in peacetime – exit from European Union’s trading bloc without a deal, without a relationship, setting it adrift on a friendless sea.

Well, perhaps not entirely without friends. There are of course the Government’s mates in the infamous ‘high priority line’ who have grown fat on the thousands of public contracts handed them during the COVID-19 pandemic (the handling of which is another Government disaster).

Contracts worth billions awarded without competition following the suspension of procurement rules, some to companies of little known and questionable backgrounds, with what the National Audit Office has stated “with inadequate documentation”.

The expenditure has been so great that Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak is now likely to implement an indefinite freeze on public service pay for all but front-line National Health Service workers.

A move described by one union leader as "insulting to those public sector workers that have underpinned the fabric of society during this continuing pandemic".

In effect, those who worked to hold the country together, must now pay for the Government’s mismanagement. 

So it is little wonder there has been a great deal of push back to Johnson’s description of devolution as [former Prime Minister] Tony Blair’s biggest mistake.

Blair delivered on his 1997 manifesto commitment to hold devolution referendums, with Scotland and Wales voting for their own Parliaments, and Unionists and Nationalists in Northern Ireland forming a power-sharing coalition.

Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon tweeted: “The only way to protect and strengthen the Scottish Parliament is with independence”.

The Scottish National Party (SNP) leader at Westminster, Ian Blackford said it was a clear sign that devolution was under attack and echoed Sturgeon: “We can stop this wrecking ball; it is called independence”.

With successive opinion polls showing Scots favouring independence and the prospect of pro-EU Scotland being dragged out of the European Union by an English majority, it is hardly surprising Johnson’s views have been swiftly condemned north of the border.

Scots will be frustrated for now, while Johnson’s Conservatives have a healthy majority at Westminster, but there will come a time when that will not be the case.

The SNP must hold its nerve, and wait for when that time arrives.

Now for the easy bit…

Not quite the victory speech, but United States Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden came close to it in his address to the nation yesterday.

He made all the right remarks about the need to “look beyond” the deep divisions exposed by the election “toward a more perfect union”.  

This is what many Americans wanted to hear, and it was a refreshing memory of what Presidents used to say in the days before Donald Trump’s Administration.

However, Biden must know he is about to embark on four years in office far more different, and difficult, than that of any of his predecessors other than in times of war.

For a start, he is not going to receive any of the assistance that is usually extended during a change from one Administration to another.

Expect Trump to drag out the election result itself with multiple challenges in many states and at different levels of the court process.

When this fails he will persist with his refrain that many of Biden’s votes were “illegal”; that the Democrats “stole” the election; that there was something underhand in the counting process after Election Day itself.

Having exhausted the legal process he will turn to the people who voted for him in large numbers across the States where he won easily – in the heartland stretching from West Virginia to North Dakota. Expect him to continue to hold rallies in which he will rage against the illegitimate Administration in the White House.

Do not rule out that he will declare himself, or possibly a member of his family, a candidate for 2024, telling his supporters to maintain the rage through the next four years.

Maybe we saw son Donald Jnr already staking a claim in a rabble-rousing address in which he urged supporters “to go to war” over the election.

Never to be outdone, far right pundit Steve Bannon supported the “beheading” of officials who had been disloyal to the Administration.  

Where does that leave the Republican Party itself? We are already getting a glimpse of things to come in an angry exchange between two Republican members of the House of Representatives, Dan Grenshaw (Texas) and newly-elected Marjorie Taylor Green of Georgia.

After Grenshaw said that allegations of illegality in the vote count must be investigated, but if this was disproved Republicans should accept the election result, Greene jumped in accusing him of defeatism.

“President Trump has fought for us and we have to fight for him,” Greene said.

For the moment it appears that Republicans are split into three camps —  moderates such as Grenshaw, die-hard rightists like Greene, and a large group in the middle who for the moment are staying silent, not returning calls and waiting to decide which way to jump.

Greene, who sees herself elected as a ‘Trumpist’ rather than a Republican in the traditional sense, will certainly resist views such as that of former National Security Adviser John Bolton who described the President as “an albatross round the party’s neck”.

The difficulty for Biden is that he must begin his presidency with some hard words for those who believed Trump in 2016 and again this year — that he could bring home jobs lost to Asia and elsewhere.

Biden has to state clearly that the country’s old-style manufacturing base has gone, and gone for good, that history has no reverse gear.

That done, he should present a vision for what America does best, and what has kept it at the forefront of the world’s economies for generations – innovation.

Barack Obama realised this when he called for the promotion of innovation hubs around the nation, putting researchers at the forefront of a range of sciences and technologies.

Biden needs to promote a crash program of infrastructure repair and development —bridges, roads, inner-city transformation, that has been allowed to languish for too long.

Most controversially, he should re-energise the space program, promoting a sense of adventure and enthusiasm among young Americans that he would have experienced as a young man during the Apollo Moon missions.

And he must do all this with the Trumpists snapping at his heels, waiting for mistakes, ever ready to drag him down.

Apart from that it’s an easy ride.