Eyes wide shut
The SNP is weirdly blind to the gap between its progressive internationalist rhetoric and its actions at home
TWO speeches on some the biggest issues of our time - energy security in an era of war and climate change - were delivered earlier this week. One was given by a Scottish Nationalist, the other by an English Conservative. You could almost have swapped one for the other.
“The current crises (in Ukraine) should increase, not diminish, our determination to deliver…and honour the Glasgow Climate Pact,” said one. “The debate in Europe must be about how Europe rapidly accelerates its transition to a new, lower carbon economy,” said the other.
“We must urgently adapt and reduce emissions….the window of time we have to act is closing fast,” said one. “It is not exaggeration to say that the 2020s will be the most important decade in human history,” said the other.
It would be a “monstrous act of self-harm to break the targets” on cutting carbon, said one.
“Catastrophic”, concurred the other.
The first set of quotes came from an address by Alok Sharma, the UK government minister who acted as president of COP26 last year, and who returned to Glasgow on Monday to mark six months since the event. The second set came from a speech by Nicola Sturgeon to Washington DC’s Brookings Institution hat same day. The only real difference in their respective speeches was that Miss Sturgeon burned more jet fuel in order to make it.
I raise the similarities between the pair to make a simple point. A series of vast, interlocking challenges afflicts us all. President Putin’s appalling act of aggression in Ukraine has only added to the list. And when it comes to the responses we require in the face of these threats, a broad western consensus is emerging. Democratic nations are once again finding their voice, and discovering how much they share in common. The priorities of geopolitics and climate protection are aligning around the need to wean ourselves off Russian gas and to transition to home-grown sources of low carbon energy. It may not have been his intention, but Mr Putin has delivered a clarifying moment. Politics has suddenly become very, very big. And on these big issues, a united response has emerged.
As she showed in her speech on Monday, Miss Sturgeon sits firmly within this western mainstream. She may even be right that this indeed the “most important decade in human history”, though I imagine previous politicians in different eras may well have felt the same. But from here on, it gets weird. For if she truly believes in the momentous nature of our times, the question is why she wants to lead Scotland down a constitutional rabbit hole which has precisely nothing of value to add to any of it.
“Weird” isn’t my phrase. It comes from her hosts at the Brookings Institution this week who, while offering the First Minister a characteristically well-mannered American welcome, could not but help raise a quizzical eyebrow over the First Minister’s current list of priorities. The First Minister, let us remember, insists that – next year – Scotland should hold a second referendum on independence. If successful, this would end the United Kingdom. With the world grappling the threat of climate change, war in Europe, the aftermath of a pandemic, and the consequent cost of living crisis, Michael O’Hanlon, director of research in foreign policy at the Institution told noted he was “sceptical that this kind of disruptive idea would go over well right now”. The international community “has bigger fish to fry”, he pointed out. He continued: “It just feels a weird moment to push this, with – sorry – much bigger issues dominating the news and the schedules of policymakers.”
Mr O’Hanlon’s take is an entirely reasonable and it doesn’t just stop at the SNP’s sense of priorities. It takes in too those solutions which, based on Miss Sturgeon’s mainstream analysis of the situation, simply do not bear the weight of her own logic. Ms Sturgeon’s position on NATO, which she also outlined in her speech on Monday, is the most obvious. The current crisis had only underlined her belief in the need for an independent Scotland to join NATO’s nuclear-backed umbrella, she reassured her American guests on Monday. For the record, the SNP still insists that the UK’s nuclear submarines would have to go the day after independence. It is extremely weird. You cannot reassure and threaten friends at the same time.
Similarly on delivering the transition to net zero, the same dissonance occurs. Scottish Ministers accept that the massive steps required – to increase renewable energy, to shift to electric transport, to make homes more energy efficient, and to decarbonise home heating – will require tens of billions of pounds in private investment. It is why, in February, Miss Sturgeon visited financial institutions in the City of London to discuss how they might help. It could include joint projects with UK Ministers who (as noted before) want to do precisely the same as the SNP. It is clearly the right way to go. Yet Miss Sturgeon appears to want to smash up her own policies. As energy expert Nick Butler, a former advisor to Norway’s national energy company, wrote recently: “The uncertainties over independence – in particular the risks that corporate taxation will have to be increased to balance the books and that Scotland will lose access to the UK market - will act as deterrents to major inward investment.” He added: “An unhappy divorce is likely to encourage any Government in London to focus its own spending and investment on its own citizens.” You don’t need to be an expert to see this: it is obviously the case that the billions of pounds in financial investment from the City of London which the SNP says it wants would be hampered by severing the UK internal market.
Miss Sturgeon is a victim of her own carefully nurtured style here. She stepped away from Alex Salmond’s boosterish approach to independence, instead seeking to hug the rational centre-ground. She talks the global progressive talk and attacks the easy answers of populism. Then this technocratic, moderate approach rubs up against the faith-based certainties of nationalism. And the gears suddenly go crunch.
It can’t continue to be ignored: if on all of the most important issues in this the most important moment in the entirety of the human story – on the defence of democracy in Europe, on energy security in a time of change, on the cataclysm of climate change - the SNP agrees with the need for existing western alliances and existing UK cooperation, to what exact problem is independence the solution? Having our own DVLA?
I’m reminded of “Don’t Look Up”, Netflix’s political satire screened over Christmas, In it, two astronomers try, and fail, to warn humanity about an approaching comet that will destroy human civilisation. It is an allegory for climate change, satirizing government, political and media indifference to the crisis on our hands.
Unlike the politicians mocked there, Miss Sturgeon is clearly looking up. As her speech showed on Monday, she adopts the standard off-the-shelf analysis of the problems affecting our planet, in line with UK and western opinion. The dissonance comes when it comes to her prescription. For then she immediately looks down. Or just closes her eyes entirely. It is, as the man said, weird.
ENDS
This article first appeared in the Scottish Daily Mail, 18th May 2022