The next government must fight for the Union

Of all the roles I have filled since leaving parliament eight years ago, few gave me greater pleasure than working alongside the Secretary of State for Scotland, Alister Jack, as Lead Non-Executive Director at the Scotland Office.

It was a privilege to advise Alister at a crucial time in the history of both the department and of devolution, as he fought to re-establish the role of the UK government in Scotland after many years of Unionist complacency. 

It was on his watch that Holyrood’s attempt to reform the gender recognition process – by allowing anyone over 16, including sex offenders, to change their legal gender with or without a diagnosis of gender dysphoria – was effectively vetoed by Westminster using an obscure section of the Scotland Act.

It was on his watch that the UK Internal Market Act was introduced and enforced, protecting all parts of post-Brexit Britain from trade barriers – vital for Scotland’s interests, given that more than 60 per cent of its “exports” are destined for other parts of the UK.

And it was on Alister Jack’s watch that large sums of UK taxpayers’ money was distributed directly to local authorities and communities without having to go through the now familiar process in which the Scottish Government receives the money from the Treasury, rebrands it with a St Andrew’s flag and then top-slices it before distributing it as it sees fit.

Jack considered extremely carefully the consequences of issuing a Section 35 order to prevent the Gender Recognition Reform Bill receiving Royal Assent, and sought the views of many individuals and advisers before making the decision. 

It was a gamble, but its success as a political act – the welcome given by most Scots to the intervention entirely wrong-footed Scottish ministers who had assumed that such high-handed behaviour by UK government would see a sharp rise in support for independence – obscured the point that from Jack’s point of view, it was an act of principle and necessity, not opportunism.

Similarly, the advent of the Internal Market Act was, like just about everything the UK government does, blasted as a “Westminster power grab” by increasingly desperate SNP ministers, who were never seriously challenged about their support for membership of the European Single Market, with similar restrictions imposed on Scotland from Brussels rather than London.

Jack won’t be Secretary of State by the end of this week, whoever wins the election; he is standing down as an MP after seven dramatic and successful years in the Commons. I had originally decided to remain as Non-Executive Director only until October, when my first term was up, in the expectation that that would coincide with the general election, allowing the new Scottish Secretary to choose his or her own preferred candidate. But when Rishi Sunak surprised us all with an early polling day, I resigned with immediate effect.

So I will not be around the table when Alister Jack’s replacement arrives. But it’s important that the “muscular unionism” approach he adopted is maintained by his successor, however it is reframed. For decades, Scotland was allowed to disappear from Whitehall’s radar, successive Labour and then Conservative administrations having decided that “devolve and ignore” was the strategy to pursue. 

And then the independence referendum happened. But even a mere ten per cent margin of victory for the pro-UK campaign and the subsequent wipeout of all but three non-SNP MPs at the 2015 general election could not tempt Westminster to change its approach, which, since 2007, had been to keep granting Holyrood new powers in the hope of sating the nationalist beast’s appetite. A less successful political strategy has never been embarked upon.

When first Theresa May and then Boris Johnson said “No” to nationalist demands for a second referendum, the SNP establishment started to panic. How dare a British prime minister – and a Tory one at that – insist on holding the nationalists to their promise of a “once in a lifetime” vote? 

With Jack’s arrival at the new purpose-built Queen Elizabeth House, the UK government headquarters in central Edinburgh (a building whose very existence continues to infuriate the SNP), the nationalists had finally met their match: a politician who was not only adept at politics but prepared to challenge the SNP administration on its many failures. Such a thing had never been attempted before.

And it worked. Nicola Sturgeon’s resignation in 2023 was about more than her failed attempt to introduce self-ID, but it played a significant part, as she herself has since acknowledged. And the unpopularity of the parliamentary agreement between the Scottish Greens and the SNP was only exacerbated when Jack used the Internal Market Act to prevent the Greens’ ill thought through Deposit Return Scheme from inflicting untold damage on Scotland’s economy. It was just another straw that eventually broke the camel’s back – and Humza Yousaf’s leadership.

The new Secretary of State must learn from Alister Jack’s fine example. Standing up to the SNP Government, insisting on the UK Government’s rightful and legitimate role in the life of Scotland, is an essential part of the job. Jack will be remembered as the most effective Secretary of State in the devolution era, bar none. His successor will find his a hard act to follow. But the effort should be made anyway.