Demonstrators greet Prime Minister Boris Johnson as he visits the Orkney Islands on July 23, 2020 | Robert Perry/Getty Images
Not such a warm welcome as UK prime minister visits Scotland.
The first time Boris Johnson visited Scotland as prime minister, he faced a reception so frosty he left a meeting with the first minister via the back door.
Despite steering clear of both Scotland’s main cities and Nicola Sturgeon during his visit on Thursday, there was no escaping the boos.
The people of Orkney, a sparsely populated island with a Liberal Democrat MP, were given less than 24 hours notice the prime minister was coming, armed with a £50 million funding package for Orkney and other Scottish isles.
If the lack of notice was designed to deprive nationalists of time to organize, it didn’t appear to have worked. A small band of protesters, many clutching saltire flags and a few with EU flags booed and held up placards as Johnson’s car moved through a dreich Orkney to the delight of nationalists.
“The union is a fantastically strong institution,” he told broadcasters. “It’s very, very valuable in terms of the support we’ve been able to give to everybody throughout all corners of the U.K.”
“We’ve had a referendum on breaking up the union a few years ago,” Johnson added. “I think what people really want to see is our whole country coming back strongly together.”
It’s an attack line the Conservatives often return to on Scotland — that the referendum has happened and people want to move on. Ruth Davidson, the former leader of the Scottish Conservatives, used the strategy to great effect in 2016 and 2017 elections, first displacing Scottish Labour as the main opposition at Holyrood and narrowly depriving the Scottish National Party of an outright majority. A year later, Tory gains in Scotland saved Theresa May’s government, as opposition to a second independence referendum saw the SNP lose more than a third of their Westminster seats.
The problem for Johnson this time is that things appear to have changed. The most recent Scottish independence poll split 54/46 in favor of a Yes vote, and renowned pollster John Curtice said the Yes side “are narrow favorites” for the first time ever.
It’s that change that has unsettled Downing Street and moved Johnson to come north this week — something First Minister Sturgeon gleefully welcomed Thursday morning.
Responding later on to Johnson’s comments to broadcasters, she said the prime minister should not use the coronavirus pandemic as a “political weapon.”
“I don’t think any of us, and I include myself in this, should be trying to use COVID and the pandemic and the crisis situation we continue to face as some kind of political campaigning tool,” Sturgeon told reporters at her Thursday coronavirus briefing. “Every leader has a real duty to focus on doing everything we can to tackle this, and not use it as some kind of political weapon.”
Johnson and Sturgeon did not arrange to meet during the prime minister’s visit.
