Michael Gove has said Boris Johnson’s government has to show that Scotland would be better off remaining in the union, after he brushed aside questions about a legal challenge over a Scottish independence referendum. Gove refused to rule out going to court if Holyrood were to pass a referendum bill but said the overriding priority was for each part of the UK to collaborate on a joint strategy to deal with the aftermath of the Covid crisis, and on economic and public sector recovery. The Cabinet Office minister said talk of a referendum and possible legal challenges “was sucking all the oxygen out of the room where we should all be concentrating on recovery. [To] my mind, every second spent asking questions about the supreme court is a second wasted when it comes to concentrating on the matters in hand.” Johnson and Gove are trying to adopt a much more conciliatory tone with Scotland’s government after Nicola Sturgeon’s Scottish National party comprehensively won the Holyrood elections last week, taking 64 of its 129 seats.
Recent opinion polls show support for independence has dropped sharply, from a record high of 58% last year (excluding don’t knows) to as low as 46%. The UK government hopes to prove the value to Scotland of remaining in the UK after Brexit by offering billions of pounds in extra investment, on roads, rail links, freeports and the NHS. “I’m a strong supporter of the capacity the UK has to exhibit solidarity, to pool risk and to share resources. Every day we just need to demonstrate how those institutions work for the benefit of all,” Gove said.
On Saturday, Johnson wrote to Sturgeon and her Welsh and Northern Irish counterparts to invite them to take part in a UK-wide Covid recovery summit. To the alarm of UK ministers, the SNP and the pro-independence Scottish Green party now have a combined majority of 72 seats overall. On Sunday nigh Sturgeon said the question of holding a second referendum was not a matter of “a matter of when, not if”. Sturgeon has indicated her government will table legislation later in this parliament authorising it to hold an independence referendum. She said last week UK ministers would need to challenge that in the supreme court to prevent it happening. Speaking on BBC One’s The Andrew Marr Show yesterday, Sturgeon accepted that the Scotland Act 1998, the Westminster legislation that set up the Scottish parliament, explicitly barred Holyrood from changing the UK’s constitutional arrangements. Sturgeon said she believed the UK government would instead be forced to accept the political and democratic case for the vote, and agree to authorise it. John Swinney, the deputy first minister, said on BBC Radio Scotland on Monday morning that Gove had appeared to rule out a legal challenge when he appeared on the Marr show.
Speaking to reporters on a visit to Glasgow on Monday, Gove implied several times he had not intended to rule it out. He said: “We are not thinking about it; we’re not going there. We are concentrating on the recovery.” The former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown said Johnson risked further alienating Scottish voters by pursuing a model of “muscular unionism” that failed to recognise most Scots did not feel British. He said it was vital the UK government accepted the need for constitutional and political reform.