WE all thought that Boris Johnson was going to be the Conservatives' biggest asset to the Scottish independence campaign. It seems that we were wrong. It's clearly going to be Liz “child of the Union” Truss.
Truss describes herself as a child of the Union because she went to primary school in Paisley for a couple of years. Her big problem is that she deals with Scotland as though she were still at primary school.
At the Conservative hustings in Devon on Monday evening, egged on by a braying mob of Southern English Tories whose knowledge of Scotland begins and ends with what they read in the Mail and the Telegraph, Truss, who has no mandate in Scotland and who represents a party which has not won an election in Scotland since more than 20 years before she was born, loftily dismissed Nicola Sturgeon as an "attention seeker" who was best ignored. The remark was met with claps and cheers from the Tory audience whose attention Truss was seeking.
Even if you disagree with Nicola Sturgeon, if you believe in democracy, Truss's remarks are completely outrageous. Nicola Sturgeon is the First Minister of Scotland who is pursuing a demand for another referendum because she was given a mandate to do so by the electorate of Scotland, which in a Holyrood election dominated by the issue of another referendum chose to elect a Scottish Parliament with its largest pro-independence majority ever.
For Truss to assert that the only reason there is a demand for another referendum is because Nicola Sturgeon is an attention seeker is a gross insult to the people of Scotland even more than it is to Nicola Sturgeon personally. Truss is casually dismissing Scottish democracy and treating Scotland as a territorial possession, not a partner in a union of nations.
There is an irreconcilable contradiction between what Truss must say in order to become the next prime minister and what she must do in order to be a successful one. The greatest damage is being done by the laughter, applause and cheers which met her asinine dismissal of Scottish democracy, and how that will be perceived by people in Scotland who are not fully on board with the Conservatives' right-wing Anglo-British nationalist project.
The real disgrace here is not so much that Truss said she'd ignore Nicola Sturgeon – that's merely the contempt we have come to expect from the Conservatives, even though most Conservatives have been too circumspect and cautious to say it out loud as they understand it's a gift to supporters of independence.
Tone and presentation matter but Truss lacks the political nous to understand that, which is further proof that she is a political lightweight who is unfit for the job she craves. The Tories then compounded Truss’s insult by sending out the walking, talking parody of a Bertie Wooster novel, Jacob Rees-Mogg, to defend it.
Rees-Mogg said: "What we [the Conservative Government] need to do is hold Ms Sturgeon to account for the failings of the Scottish Government." Eh … no, Jacob – that's the job of the people of Scotland, not the British Government or a Tory from Somerset.
Truss made the comment on the very same day that her supporters among the Tory contingent at Holyrood published a graphic on social media saying that they are supporting her because with Truss as PM, Scotland would be at the "centre of the Union". Then within hours Truss said that the Scottish Government was best ignored. Timing is key to comedy, but this is still a very bad joke.
The real disgrace is that the British nationalist media in Scotland will celebrate the fact that Truss said it, and the comments sections of those publications will be filled with the usual unrepresentative minority of right-wing British nationalist frothers exulting in Scotland being openly told that its democracy doesn't count.
Labour peer George Foulkes, who spends his time in the House of Lords trying to undermine Scottish democracy, said that Truss's assessment was "very shrewd". Foulkes lost all contact with reality a very long time ago. Foulkes and the modern Labour party are now unrecognisable to the founders of the Labour Party and, at least where Scotland and trades unions are concerned, have become enthusiastic supporters of an increasingly far-right-wing Anglo-British-nationalist Conservative party.
So now we know that Westminster's answer to the independence question, the much-vaunted positive case for the Union, basically entails doing away with Scottish democracy. The answer to the democratic demand for another referendum is: "Let's pretend it's not happening."
Well, that's me convinced. Convinced, that is, that this is another nail in the coffin of this so-called Union and that Truss will be the worst British Prime Minister ever, and the last that Scotland will ever have to endure.
This piece is an extract from today’s REAL Scottish Politics newsletter, which is emailed out at 7pm every weekday with a round-up of the day's top stories and exclusive analysis from the Wee Ginger Dug.
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