The Westminster Tories’ anti-Scottish mask comes off

If anyone in Scotland still clung to the naive notion that the Tories had made peace with Scottish democracy, this week provided a rude awakening.

In a sudden, shameless display of arrogant overreach, the Tories have made it crystal clear that they do not regard the Scottish Parliament as the sovereign expression of the Scottish people’s democratic will, but rather as a regional sub-office whose keys can be repossessed the moment Holyrood refuses to toe their line in Westminster.

First came Shadow Energy Secretary Andrew Bowie, puffing out his chest and declaring that a future Tory government would legislate to strip the Scottish Parliament of its devolved planning powers.

His goal? To force new nuclear power stations and radioactive waste on Scottish communities whether they want them or not. With all the swagger of a landlord changing the locks because the tenant picked the wrong wallpaper for the living room, Bowie bellowed: “No more Mr Nice Guy. No more devolve and forget.”

Then, barely twenty-four hours later, the greater threat dropped. Senior members of Kemi Badenoch’s shadow cabinet admitted to the Daily Mail that they are actively drawing up plans to revisit the Scotland Act and systematically withdraw powers from Holyrood to ensure “better governance”.

It is a plot as arrogant as it is absurd. The Westminster Tories treating the Scottish Parliament like a leased hatchback they can repossess whenever Scotland refuses to pay the ideological installments reveals everything you need to know about their true anti-Scottish tendencies.

To understand the sheer magnitude of this contempt, one must look at where these powers came from in the first place. They were not handed out like party favours by benevolent ministers in Westminster; they were won at the ballot box by the people of Scotland.

The fundamental planning and legislative powers the Tories now casually threaten to yank away were part of the robust democratic mandate settled in the 1997 devolution referendum, when an overwhelming 74% of Scots voted to establish our own parliament.

Furthermore, during the 2014 independence referendum, Westminster party leaders – including the UK and Scottish Tory leadership – signed a high-profile pledge guaranteeing that a ‘No’ vote meant “There shall be more powers for Scottish Parliament“.

This promise was further enshrined in the famous ‘Vow‘ on the front page of the Daily Record and sold to the electorate as an ironclad “guarantee” that voting ‘No’ wouldn’t lead to a reduction in Holyrood’s authority.

To turn around now and suggest those very powers can be torn up at the whim of a shadow cabinet in London is a flagrant betrayal of those solemn pledges.

The Tories have zero mandate to touch a single clause of the Scotland Act.

So great is London’s contempt for Scottish opinion that Badenoch’s team did not even bother to inform their own colleagues in Edinburgh.

Appearing on the Holyrood Sources podcast, Scottish Conservative Deputy Leader Rachael Hamilton was forced to make the embarrassing admission that she hadn’t been consulted on Badenoch’s proposed review of the Scotland Act, timidly explaining: “I’m a bit down the pecking order.”

She went on to insist that stripping Holyrood of powers was “not a Scottish Conservative policy.” It was a humiliating spectacle for her.

Watching Scottish Tory MSPs discover their UK leader’s policy live on air is like watching a branch manager find out from Twitter that head office is converting the shop into a car park.

Scotland has not voted for a Conservative government in over 70 years. Yet time and again, we are subjected to the spectacle of Tory politicians treating our national parliament not as a pillar of democracy, but as a temporary concession to be trimmed back whenever Scottish voters dare to make choices that London dislikes.

The Westminster Tories opposed any form of devolution or Home Rule in the past, and these latest developments show that they have never abandoned that position.

Any political expression of Scottish nationhood is opposed and they continue to privately want to extinguish any form of it. It seriously begs questions of what they have against Scotland acting as a nation?

First Minister John Swinney rightly warned that these proposals represent a “very direct threat” to the Scottish Parliament.

The truth is now staring us in the face: within the UK framework, devolution exists purely at the mercy and goodwill of whichever UK government happens to hold the keys to Downing Street.

When a party with no democratic mandate in Scotland feels entitled to override our laws, ignore our voters, and muzzle our parliament, the illusion of a “union of equals” is shattered beyond repair.

If the Tories have proven anything this week, it is that Scottish self-government will never be secure while Westminster can hold a power of veto.

The only true, unbreakable guarantee for Scottish democracy – the only way to ensure our parliament’s powers can never be stripped away by politicians we didn’t vote for – is for Scotland to take its full place as an independent nation.