Nicola Sturgeon won the admiration of her American public earlier this year as she pledged a future independent Scotland’s support for NATO. “We are clearer than ever,” she said, “that membership of Nato would not only be vital to Scotland’s security – although it certainly will be – it would also be the main way in which an independent Scotland, in an interdependent world , would contribute to the collective security of our neighbors and allies.”
She won further plaudits by unequivocally condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February and insisting the conflict strengthened the case for Scotland’s membership of the North Atlantic alliance.
But such stirring rhetoric has now been exposed as nothing more than that – rhetoric. Because when it comes down to it, nationalism, regardless of its variety, shares one common value: self-interest.
Kate Forbes, Sturgeon’s financial secretary, reacted badly to the UK Scottish government’s request to contribute £65 million to a fund to buy weapons for Ukraine’s fight for survival. Defense is ultimately a reserved matter, so why should Scotland contribute?
Forbes would agree to the payment “on this occasion” but made it clear that “this should not be seen as any precedent”.
God forbid, the devolved Scottish Government has to spend money on everything that is reserved for Westminster by the Scotland Act. To the side, that is. of £20 million of UK taxpayers’ money allegedly earmarked to fund an independence referendum – a matter surely reserved for Westminster.
And if the division between devolved and retained powers is so sacrosanct to the SNP, perhaps they could explain why they are spending £36m on international aid – another policy area where Holyrood has no responsibility.
If Forbes wants to help Ukraine (doesn’t it?) without negatively impacting Scotland’s domestic budget, perhaps it could pay some attention to the saga of the unbuilt ferries costing taxpayers £150m more than originally estimated. some of which may be justified if they were built and delivered at all.
Or perhaps she could have a word with fellow ministers who chose to delay the Scottish census by a year to separate it from the UK census – a decision that has resulted in a return rate so low it risks made the data, in Sturgeon’s own words, “useless”. The one-year delay and repeated extensions to the deadline for returning census forms resulted in an extra cost of £21m.
Perhaps Forbes argues – with some justification – that ministerial negligence and incompetence are already costing Scotland so much that further pressure on budgets simply cannot be allowed.
Yet this is a party and an administration that claims to support the rights of small states that stand up to bellicose neighbors. He believes in international solidarity, in international alliances and collective solidarity… up to the point where they are expected to help finance that solidarity.
This nasty little row puts the SNP and nationalism in general in a bad light. But it’s also accurate. For all the SNP’s talk of inclusion, progress and ‘civic nationalism’, its philosophy remains what it has always been: limited, selfish and exclusionary.
The fact that this devolved government resents a nation threatened by Russian aggression says all you need to know about how an independent SNP-led Scotland would function.
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