It might seem like a relatively small thing, on the surface. But Anas Sarwar’s decision to defend Liz Truss’s remarks about Nicola Sturgeon – that she’s an attention-seeker – is a very welcome development.
The Labour leader could very easily have done what other commentators have done and clutch his pearls at the Foreign Secretary’s insult to ‘Scotland’. Pretending that an attack on themselves is an attack on the nation they govern is a very common devocrat tactic.
Instead, he forewent the chance of a cheap hit on the Tory frontrunner to make the case that the First Minister is a politician like anyone else. This might seem a basic point but given the allergic reaction of many Labour figures to any sort of association with the Conservatives after the Better Together campaign, it should not be taken for granted.
And it means that his actual criticism of Truss’s comments – that Sturgeon needs to be ‘exposed’ rather than ‘ignored’ – looks less like partisan point-scoring. Which is good, because it’s right.
Ignoring the SNP doesn’t make them go away. Unionists ought to have learned this by now, because as Tam Dalyell noted with regret, it was ignoring the problem in the long years of Conservative rule between 1979 and 1997 that, in large part, landed us in the constitutional mess we are currently in.
Rather than building on the victories over devolution in the 1979 referendums, the Government simply neglected the topic, allowing Labour to present it again as the answer when they finally returned to power – with predictably dire consequences for the coherence of the UK.
‘Muscular unionism’, if that’s what we’re calling it, cannot amount to a dual policy of stonewalling the devocrats whilst calling them names. It needs to be a pro-active agenda for building a stronger British state.
Rishi Sunak seems to get this, which is perhaps why ten senior Scottish Tories endorsed him this week.
This morning’s FT reports that the Democratic Unionist Party has said it won’t return to power-sharing in Belfast until the new prime minister is in place. This means that Northern Ireland will be without devolved government for at least another month.
Cue outrage from the other parties in Ulster, who say that the DUP have by now received more than sufficient assurances about the sea border to get devolution back up and running.
But is this really the case? As I outlined in this column a couple of weeks ago, the NI Protocol Bill currently going through Parliament is not, in itself, a solution to unionist concerns about the status of Northern Ireland. It merely gives the Government new powers to address those concerns… if it is prepared to use them.
This is why unionists can’t be blamed for being wary that Sunak, who opposed the legislation in Cabinet, is now simply citing it as evidence that he will do something about the sea border. They will want to see clear proposals from the new prime minister about how they will use the powers in the legislation.
Doubtless both candidates’ plans will come under scrutiny at the Belfast hustings on August 17. Perhaps they could, at a stretch, expedite the process of restoring power-sharing by setting out detailed proposals sooner.
But given the Party’s previous conduct over the sea border under Theresa May and Boris Johnson, it is at least understandable why the DUP aren’t prepared to surrender valuable leverage on the basis of breezy promises.