Alex Massie

Mistakenly, I assumed that politicians supporting Kate Forbes’ campaign to succeed Nicola Sturgeon as leader of the SNP understood she has certain views which diverge from modern orthodoxy. I assumed her pro-life credentials on the question of abortion could be accompanied by an acceptance that, whatever her personal views, the law – and debate – on abortion was settled.  If this was all, I thought, priced-in, I also assumed that Forbes would have a better answer to questions she must surely have anticipated. For reasons that are currently hard to understand, Forbes is engaging in a live experiment to see if you can become leader of a political party without doing any politics.  Yesterday, Forbes confirmed something which was hardly a secret.

The greatest trick an ideologue can ever pull off is convincing people they are not, in fact, an ideologue. But Nicola Sturgeon was just as much an ideologue as her predecessor. In some ways, indeed, her convictions eclipsed Alex Salmond’s.  The country is cleft in two and for all that Sturgeon may now deplore this polarisation she played an outsize part in producing it Whereas he did not join the SNP until he was an undergraduate at St Andrews university, Sturgeon signed up for the national cause while still a teenager. In all the years which followed, her faith never faltered. Regardless of circumstance, political moment, or fashion, she remained guided by her unfalsifiable conviction that Scotland’s future lay as an independent state.

Have you heard about the British citizen facing the prospect of spending the rest of his life in a Chinese prison? Perhaps not, because the case – the cause, indeed – of Jimmy Lai has not attracted quite the level of attention in this country that you might expect.  Last week, Lai – founder of the pro-democracy Apple Daily newspaper – was convicted of fraud in Hong Kong. To the outside, lay, observer the case seemed suspicious: it involved the subletting of an office and a five year prison term, a disproportionate response even if you accept – as you need not – a crime had been committed.  The fraud case, however, is merely an amuse bouche.

Yesterday Nicola Sturgeon spoke at an event celebrating 30 years of the charity Zero Tolerance and its long running – and essential – commitment to ending violence against women. In a revealing sign of the times in Scotland today, organisers emailed those attending the event to warn them certain subjects should be ignored. As they put it: ‘We wish to create a safe and supported environment for our guests and ask you to support us in this aim by refraining from discussions of the definition of a woman and single sex spaces in relation to the gender recognition act.’ The intellectual poverty displayed here is embarrassing Well, good luck with that.

The idea that a referendum on Scottish independence could be held without it having any bearing on the constitution of the United Kingdom was – though Lord Reed did not quite put it like this – utterly preposterous. This was what the Scottish government argued, however: Holyrood could legislate for a referendum because such a plebiscite would be of no consequence. As a matter of common sense this was evidently specious nonsense; as a matter of law, it is an argument which has been rejected by the Supreme Court today.  Sturgeon’s response was risible. Lord Reed’s judgement that Scotland is neither a colony nor an oppressed nation actually demonstrates that it is.

What should Liz Truss do about Scotland? To ask the question is to illuminate its limitations. Scotland is no more Truss’s to manage than it was her predecessor’s plaything. Truss may call herself a 'child of the Union' but a few years in a Paisley primary school are not enough to justify such a claim – there is, in any case, no obvious sense that Truss exhibits the kind of conflicted subtlety that’s mother’s milk to any true 'child of the Union'. For this is a Janus-faced business and everything we know about Truss suggests she favours the clean lines of simplicity – and directness – over the contradictions and ironies of reality.

If the first rule of leadership is, as Barack Obama once said, ‘don’t do stupid shit’ then this Tory leadership contest offers ample reasons for thinking neither Rishi Sunak nor Liz Truss is remotely capable of being prime minister. Having advertised himself as the only adult in the race, the only candidate prepared to tell the truth, the former Chancellor has proceeded to set ablaze the rationale for his own campaign. Sunak’s imbecilities on the green belt and farming, to say nothing of his fantastical pledges on income tax, are the mark of a man spooked by the discovery that pandering to the worst instincts of the Conservative party membership is the only way to make progress in a race to the bottom.

So it ends as it was always likely to end: as a disgrace inside a shambles, lost in a fog of delusion. Boris Johnson’s fate was sealed the moment he became Prime Minister. As was apparent to those who cared to look, nothing in his past suggested he would have the chops to be a successful Prime Minister. The manner of his departure now is wholly in keeping with the substance of his premiership. In years to come, we may wonder how it ever happened at all even as we do our best to forget it did. This has been a low and embarrassing period in British political history. There have been failed prime ministers before and shameless ones too but few, if any, who can match Johnson’s inadequacies. Even his great election triumph was built on a false prospectus.

What is it about Angela Rayner that so thoroughly irks so many Conservative MPs and their friends in the press? The Daily Telegraph could scarcely contain itself last week when it reported – exclusively! – that Labour’s deputy leader had attended a Glyndebourne performance of The Marriage of Figaro even as – get this! – other things were happening elsewhere. Not only had she attended the opera, she was seen attending it. Worse still, she was spotted drinking champagne. The nerve and the state of her! Dominic Raab, whose parliamentary performances make Iain Duncan Smith’s seem alert, agile and vibrant, was at it again today. ‘Where was the right honourable lady when the comrades were on the picket line last Thursday?’ he demanded.

Despite what the SNP and its supporters insist, Nicola Sturgeon did not 'announce' a second referendum on independence today. Far from it. Her statement to the Scottish parliament quietly accepted that a referendum is highly unlikely to take place on 19 October next year. The 2014 referendum – an act of self-determination that inconveniently produced the wrong outcome for the SNP – was an agreed plebiscite. All parties and Scotland's government agreed it should take place and that its outcome would be politically, if not legally, binding. This is still the path Sturgeon would prefer. Holding such a referendum, however, requires a section 30 order by the British government, which accepts the Scottish parliament’s right to legislate on an otherwise reserved matter.

The worst possible outcome for the Conservative and Unionist party is also a pretty lousy result for the country. That this needs saying – that Tory MPs need reminding of this – is itself yet another data point supporting the proposition that Boris Johnson’s leadership has thoroughly corrupted the party. So what to do now? This is now the necessary question. Since Johnson will not depart voluntarily he must be pushed. Those cabinet ministers with an ounce – imperial measurements, obviously – of moral fibre must surely recognise the game is up. This barky won’t float. You cannot credibly lose the support of 40 per cent of the party – including a chunky portion of the payroll vote – and remain in office.

It isn’t just the fines. It isn’t just the behaviour that has led to the Prime Minister being issued a fixed penalty notice by the Metropolitan police. It isn’t just the lies told about that behaviour, lies issued with the most sweeping confidence inside and outside the House of Commons. It isn’t just the fines and the indifference to the rules he and his ministers set for everyone else and demanded they follow – on pain of arrest – and the lying about that behaviour and the cavalier assumption that public opinion can go hang. It is all of those things wrapped together.

Conservative sympathisers, Conservative voters and Conservative parliamentarians have a simple choice to make this week. Do they stand by a Prime Minister who besmirches his office and whose moral credibility diminishes a little more each day he remains, squatting, in Downing Street? Or do they, instead, accept the obvious reality that Johnson is not fit for the office he holds, draw the obvious conclusions from that recognition, and do the decent thing? For every Tory MP and cabinet minister who fails to act this week deserves to be judged themselves. These MPs might be weak or venal or cowardly or blind or simply stupid but they cannot claim to be ignorant. Those who fail to support this Prime Minister’s removal soil whatever remains of their own reputations.

Oh for heaven’s sake, come off it. British politics has long had a comfortable relationship with the absurd but this week – not yet over, its revelations not yet exhausted – takes a very pretty biscuit nonetheless. I do not imagine that 'Downing Street apologises to the Queen for party revels' is quite the kind of headline Conservative prime ministers dream of. And while Boris Johnson has a copper-clad alibi for the suitcase-of-booze party in as much as he was at Chequers that night, it remains the case – as has always been the case – that a government is led from the top. Consequently, the character of the man or woman at its pinnacle slowly but surely informs other aspects of the government’s behaviour. It is a question of culture.