Contrasting approaches to handling of COVID-19 pandemic gives boost to push for Scottish independence

Open this photo in gallery:

The pandemic has caused havoc across Britain but has also given an unlikely boost to Scottish independence, which has become more popular than ever since the coronavirus outbreak.

Support for sovereignty hit a record 54 per cent in one recent opinion poll, and the “Yes” side has been consistently above 50 per cent in other polls for months. That’s a marked turnaround from the 2014 referendum, when 55 per cent of Scots voted to remain in the United Kingdom.

“This is the first time in Scottish polling history when one could say that if there were an independence referendum today on the evidence available, the ‘Yes’ side are narrow favourites,” said Sir John Curtice, a politics professor at the University of Strathclyde and senior research fellow at the National Centre for Social Research.

The surge in nationalism has become worrying enough that Prime Minister Boris Johnson made a campaign-style visit to Scotland Thursday to talk up the importance of unity. “The union is a fantastically strong institution. It’s helped our country through thick and thin. It is very, very valuable in terms of the support that we have been able to give to everybody through all corners of the U.K.,” Mr. Johnson told reporters during a stop in Orkney.

Much of the change in support for independence can be attributed to the contrasting approaches to the pandemic of Mr. Johnson and Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, who leads the Scottish National Party (SNP). While Mr. Johnson has been keen to kick-start the economy and lift lockdown measures quickly, Ms. Sturgeon has been cautious about easing restrictions and more vigilant about masks and quarantines for international travellers. So far, most Scots think the First Minister has done a better job. In a recent survey by BBC Scotland, 82 per cent of respondents gave Ms. Sturgeon high marks for her management of the outbreak, while just 30 per cent said Mr. Johnson had done well.

Ms. Sturgeon has been the unlikely beneficiary of 21 years of devolution, which has gradually handed the governments of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales control over health care, education and policing – the key public services that have been most affected by the outbreak. That has allowed her to pursue a different strategy from Mr. Johnson’s, whose direct control over those services is limited to England.

Both Scotland and England have struggled to get the virus under control, but the rate of infection has slowed considerably in Scotland and there has been just one death from the disease in the past 15 days. By contrast, the number of infections has been rising sharply in some cities across England, which has roughly 10 times the population, and 19 people died in hospital Thursday. That brought the total number of deaths to 29,231 in England, compared with 2,491 in Scotland.

“What we’re doing in Scotland is right and we should keep doing it,” Ms. Sturgeon told reporters Thursday.

Sir John said people in Scotland have noticed that all the crucial decisions during the pandemic have come from Edinburgh, not London. “The pandemic has added evidence that as an independent small country Scotland can govern more effectively,” he said during a recent podcast.

The First Minister has rarely shied away from tussling with Mr. Johnson, particularly over Brexit, which the Prime Minister wholeheartedly endorses and most Scots oppose. While 52 per cent of the U.K. voted to leave the European Union in 2016, 62 per cent of Scots voted to remain. The SNP has seized on Brexit to push for a second referendum on independence, something Mr. Johnson has refused to allow.

Now with growing approval for Ms. Sturgeon’s handling of the pandemic, the SNP is soaring in opinion polls and furthering the argument that Scotland can stand on its own. “I think what we’ve demonstrated over the past two months, in the areas of devolved responsibility and of public health, is that the leadership that has been shown by our First Minister is in sharp contrast with the bluster we have seen from Boris Johnson,” Ian Blackford, the SNP’s leader at Westminster, told the BBC Thursday.

During his trip to Scotland, Mr. Johnson highlighted the financial support the U.K. government has provided Scotland during the outbreak, including wage subsidies for 900,000 Scottish workers and extra funding for the health service. In an article for The Times, the Prime Minister said the pandemic could have spelled disaster for Scotland but didn’t because “there has always been one thing of which we could all be sure: that Scotland would not be forced to face this crisis alone.”

Ms. Sturgeon dismissed suggestions that Scotland could not have coped as an independent country and pointed to Ireland, Denmark and New Zealand, which have managed the pandemic. And in a backhanded greeting to the Prime Minister she added: “I welcome the [Prime Minister] to Scotland. One of the key arguments for independence is the ability of Scotland to [make] our own decisions, rather than having our future decided by politicians we didn’t vote for, taking us down a path we haven’t chosen. His presence highlights that.”

Our Morning Update and Evening Update newsletters are written by Globe editors, giving you a concise summary of the day’s most important headlines. Sign up today.