No denying legitimacy of Scottish party

The general election is exciting in Scotland and Scotland is exciting the rest of the country. Not many expected the result now rolling down the length of Britain towards Westminster, but we need to come to terms with what this is going to mean. For the UK does not just need good and stable government after May 7, it needs responsible politicians too, whether in office or opposition. At the moment, the current state of the campaign greatly concerns me.

Naturally, the Scottish National Party (SNP) is the first concern. Listening to Nicola Sturgeon’s progressive pan-British rhetoric, you could have thought you were listening to one of the finest unionists of the age — there was not a corner of the kingdom her concern did not extend to. But for all the SNP leader’s talk of the common good, her unionist words are not going to be matched by unionist deeds. By definition, the SNP does not have the interests of the United Kingdom at its heart. More will mean worse, if it is more SNP MPs at Westminster.

Ironically, the problem with the SNP will stem not from nationalist dogmatism, but almost unequalled political opportunism. A party that pledged itself at Westminster not to vote on non-Scottish issues, that swore the referendum was a once-in-a-generation opportunity and claimed Scotland was economically ready for separation, now reverses all these positions. It does not matter that on any specific issue — say, full fiscal economy — SNP arguments disintegrate as soon as they hit reality, this is a party whose leaders will shamefully say anything in the expectation that their supporters will credulously go on backing them, whatever the flip flop.

In a hung parliament, regardless of ideology, these are not politicians set on stability and good government, even if they wanted it. Yet, whatever those who believe in the continuation of the UK as a pluralist, multi-national state might think, they must not allow themselves to be provoked into behaving the same way. And this is where the campaign south of the border has so alarmed me.

Take the “right” of SNP MPs to vote in the Commons, or the supposed lack of legitimacy that stems from it. No one who purports to be a unionist can question it. They have the right. That is why the referendum was fought and won: To enshrine the rights of Scots to go on sending representatives, fully equal to every other, to Westminster. Glib and lazy talk about SNP MPs somehow not being as entitled to vote in every division in the Commons, as any other British MP, simply fuels nationalist paranoia.

In the last parliament, William Hague was badly served by the putsch attempted against speaker John Bercow but, if anything, even worse has been the using of him to drum up support for Evel (English votes for English laws). I have yet to hear from a Tory colleague standing in England that a single door anywhere has been opened with the query, “whither Evel?”

But it is not just a flawed political tactic, it’s also a constitutional mess. The Commons cannot be used as an ersatz, part-time English Assembly. It is the union parliament and abusing it in this way would not and could not answer England’s real needs. For far too long now, we have blundered into unthought-out, one-sided constitutional change. This fatal habit has to end.

Evel, unfortunately, would simply be more of the same. Some of what has happened in the campaign so far is pure froth. I cannot take seriously the notion that a responsible party of government would vote against the defence estimates . Which, because of the Tory-Labour consensus on the nuclear deterrent, is what it would take to give parliamentary effect to the SNP’s bluff about Trident.

That has to have been tweetable overexcitedness by press officers and not a signed-off on line from on high. Since it would be in the interests neither of the country nor any other party to intentionally talk up the SNP, we can assume this has not been happening. No one committed to the union would deliberately do that.

Obviously while we want a stable and secure government to emerge in the next parliament no stability can come from any conscious effort to ramp up the numbers of anti-UK MPs. Many commentators assume a swift second election is almost inevitable. I don’t share this assumption.

In Northern Ireland, there is a particular problem in that elections bring out the worst in Sinn Fein. It has used the current one to run away from what it agreed to at the Stormont House talks last Christmas and finds itself in an electoral mincing machine, between Westminster, Stormont and the Dail. Nothing that encourages its tendency towards Micawberism does anything for peace and progress in Ulster.

However, my reading of both Tory and Labour backbenchers alike is that neither will be amenable to sweeping away the Fixed Term Parliament Act, whatever their frontbenches may want. Since no one ascends to or clings on to office by risking the country, this election calls for something beyond partisanship. In Scotland, pro-union voters should, just this once, give very serious consideration to voting for the unionist best placed to win their seat. Brave voices such as Norman Tebbit have risked tribal discontent to urge this and I urge it too. The SNP is trying to get out of England the answer it couldn’t get out of Scotland last year. No one who believes in Britain should assist them, least of all in England.

— Guardian News & Media Ltd

Nigel Dodds is MP for North Belfast. He is deputy leader of the Democratic Unionist party and leads the party at Westminster.