John Swinney is entertaining delusions of Scottish grandeur

Last week the United States military stationed Osprey aircraft on a small airfield on Benbecula in the Scottish Hebrides as part of a raid targeting Putin’s shadow fleet. Scotland’s First Minister, John Swinney, said he supported enforcement efforts, but said it with a grimace. The SNP’s leader contacted the British Government to make clear he expected to “have sight” of such operations in future.

It was another tiptoe onto the world stage to look statesmanlike, while things stagnate at home. When Trump bombed Caracas and captured Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Swinney felt “deeply concerned”, and couldn’t “see how international law has been respected”. On Ukraine, he declared he’d be willing to send troops from an independent Scotland as part of an international force in the event of an “acceptable peace”.

So, where, exactly, were the voices of the other great British regional powers?

Putin, I’m told, would not make his next move in Ukraine until he’d heard what the leader of North Yorkshire Council had to say. In Taipei it’s generally accepted that Plaid Cymru’s foreign policy statements are the only thing stopping Xi invading. And Greenland, of course, will remain safe from Trump so long as our metro mayors take a stand.

Pretending that international players not only know who you are but care what you think is far easier than confronting mounting trouble at home. Better to talk geopolitics than deal with the fact you are far more likely to face a two-year NHS wait in Glasgow than in the whole of England. Better to pontificate about international law than explain why NHS Scotland spends £440 unnecessary million a year on hospital beds, with one in nine occupied by patients medically fit for discharge.

More fun to play toy soldiers than explain why six of the UK’s top ten sickness-welfare hotspots are in Scotland, with a third of the working-age population in parts of Glasgow claiming long-term sickness benefits.

And why fight Edinburgh’s slide down the Global Financial Centres Index, or the deindustrialisation of once oil-and-gas rich Aberdeen? Why talk about £3 million paid in compensation to ScotRail customers for disruption since nationalisation, when it’s far more enjoyable to imagine yourself at the UN sternly rebuking Washington and Moscow?

In an election year it’s easier to play the statesman than cancel projects to plug a £1bn infrastructure black hole – and easier to talk geopolitics than tomorrow’s Budget that may include council tax hikes of up to 15 per cent.

There’s always merit in pointing out all of the above again and again. Scotland’s domestic policy failings shame the nation. But, annoyingly, the truth is – and has been for some time – these issues just don’t matter to enough voters thanks to the baked in maths of the constitutional question.

Over Christmas I heard of one voter’s argument with an SNP aide, making the point that the party in power has delivered nothing but incompetence for 15 years. The aide was genuinely bemused. “We’ve won six elections,”he replied. “How is that incompetent?” For that’s the only metric that really matters to this party.

And so Swinney’s international grandstanding is not just about distracting from his domestic record the day before the Budget or in the run up to May’s Holyrood elections. It’s about keeping alive the fantasy of an independent Scotland in the global game and as a country worth listening to.

That’s not to say an independent Scotland would be too wee or too stupid to play a part in global affairs (though it would clearly be too poor). But pretending we would have any meaningful influence is pure delusion.

The old world, which consensus seems to say we’re returning to: of spheres of influence – does not reserve a place for small countries led by people with one eye on retirement jobs at a UN climate or poverty quango. The Scotland the SNP imagine is one that believes joint statements and conventions will change the behaviour of whoever is leading Russia, China or the United States. They won’t. We’d be too irrelevant to even be laughed at.

Swinney, more than his predecessors, has respect for the importance of the military in world events. His uncle posthumously won a Victoria Cross for World War Two bravery. But he must also be smart enough to know his interventions about the legality of Trump’s Latin adventures or Ukrainian peacekeeping forces appeal to no one except the a small group of most loyal SNP voters with delusions of grandeur. Better, and more honourable even, to do the job of devolved government and focus on improving public services. Stop the global commentary John, and just get the bins collected.

[Source: Daily Telegraph]