Scotland: General Election and Constitutional Future

Debate between Gary Sambrook and Christian Matheson

Wednesday 17th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)]

I look across at the SNP Benches and see Members who I consider to be friends and who I have worked well with in parliamentary cross-party groups. I am proud that the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) has described me as a grandson of Skye, in memory of my grandfather Alexander Matheson, who was born there over a century ago. Of course, I am English. I am also British, and I am a Cheshire man—a Cestrian. It is possible to identify as all three, which is why I am saddened that the narrow, divisive nationalism of the SNP has been allowed to eat away at people who, in every other sense, should know better. If nationalism is the answer, they are asking the wrong question. It is an ideology based on division, difference and setting one against the other solely on the confected grounds of limited, singular identity.

SNP Members cannot see the irony, as they sit across from the Conservatives, that they are two cheeks of the same backside. The Tories have become the party of petty little Englander nationalism. They claim to be Unionists, when in fact the current Government are the biggest threat to the Union, as we see with the predicted consequences of Brexit for Northern Ireland and the slashing of parliamentary representation in Wales. The SNP revels in this, as though working in a symbiotic relationship with the Tories, perhaps to promote its own narrow agenda and distract from its own terrible failings in government.

[Gary Sambrook]

The hon. Member says the Conservatives are the biggest supporters of separation. May I remind him that the Labour party lost its voters in Scotland because it did not stand up for the Union as strongly as it should have done, which opened the door to the Scottish National party?

[Christian Matheson]

Oh, so it is all our fault. Well, it is the Conservatives’ fault what is happening in Northern Ireland and for driving the Scots away, because the truth is that the SNP is more similar to the Tories than it lets on.

Today, there are two debates led by the SNP, one on constitutional affairs—independence—and one on Brexit. In fact, they are the same debate, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) said, because exactly the same baseless arguments that the Tories made about Brexit, the SNP now makes about Scottish independence. The Tories showed the UK the failings of their own Government and said, “Look, everything will be fine if we are free of the EU.” The SNP is also showing the failings of its own Government and the UK Government and saying, “Look, everything will be fine if we leave the UK.”

In the case of Brexit, every prediction was that we would take a hit to our economy, but that did not matter because we would be free. In the case of Scottish independence, every prediction is that the Scottish economy would take a big hit, but that does not matter, according to the SNP, because it would be free. Both campaigns were and are about narrow nationalism, appealing not to sense, reason or objectivity based on facts, but to emotion stirred by distrust of others. None of the Brexit argument stood up; it was pure ideology. None of the Scottish nationalists’ arguments stands up to scrutiny either; theirs is a pure emotional ideology. I am just waiting for them to roll out “Take back control” as their campaign slogan and the circle will be complete.