David Mundell signals the SNP will have to beg for powers

David Mundell, the lone Tory in Scotland and thus the Secretary of State for Scotland, signalled last night that he would not be pro-actively campaigning for more powers for Scotland.

His stance was made blindingly apparent in a rather blunt interview yesterday evening with Rona Dougall on Scotland Tonight, a Scottish news & current affairs program on STV. At first he said he wanted to develop "a constructive approach with the Scottish government," complaining that there had been too much "politicking" and too much "bickering" in the past between Holyrood and Westminster

However, this "constructive approach" was quickly made clear to mean that he would only work to implement the Smith Commission proposals for new powers to Holyrood. When presenter Rona Dougall asked him if he accepted the SNP landslide victory gave them a mandate to seek further powers, he replied that the SNP will be able to "make their views known in parliament" and that it gave them the opportunity to "debate and discuss" the Smith Commission proposals.

When pushed on this, he said that "the governments position is to implement the Smith Commission" and added that the SNP "are at perfect liberty" to put forward amendments and "they'll be listened to and in the normal course of parliament, some amendments may be passed and others may not be." Asked what further powers he might consider devolving, he bluntly stated "Just be clear, I'm not suggesting that we're proposing further powers - we're not."

So much for David Mundell's "constructive approach." What this boils down to is that the Tory government believes the Smith Commission is all that Scotland needs and is all that Scotland is getting. If the SNP want any more powers, they're going to have fight for them in the House of Commons.

He also made the fatuous claim that implementation of the Smith proposals would make Scotland the most powerful devolved parliament in the world - but we know that is not true, with even an article in today's Daily Mail pointing out that "Holyrood will become the third most powerful devolved parliament in the world, behind Canada's state governments and the canton administrations of Switzerland."

When asked if he agreed with Boris Johnson that federalism was now the way forward for the UK, he bluntly ruled it out by stating "I don't agree with federalism."

This is the UK democracy in action. Despite the fact that 50.0 % of the Scottish electorate voted for the SNP and their desire for more powers for Holyrood, a party that polled just 14.7 % of the same vote in Scotland is now dictating what the people of Scotland will get.

Given that David Cameron has U-turned on his notion that the United Kingdom is not one nation but a family of four, and stated in his victory speech on Friday that:

"We will govern as a party of one nation, of one United Kingdom."

then we can clearly see the direction of Union politics during the next 5 years of Tory majority rule. The Tories are in charge of all of the UK and they will fight tooth and nail to keep it that way.