BY STEWART SLATER

Beyond “Don’t invade Russia” (in case any Ukrainians are reading this), there are few laws of international relations. So, in a spirit of due modesty and humility, allow me to propose Slater’s Law: any country which borders a far more powerful state will define itself in contrast to its neighbour and project a public image of itself as a nicer version of the badlands across the frontier. Switzerland (or at least its Eastern cantons) is Germany minus the bloodlust, Canada is a house-trained America, New Zealand is Australia with table manners.

Like many laws, however, Slater’s Law has a corollary: countries are never as nice as they would have you believe. Canada seems, currently, to find it strangely easy to kill people it deems to be a burden on the health system, and to close the bank accounts of those who disagree with its leading politicians. Switzerland may not have acquired any loot during the war, but it found it strangely easy to look after it, no questions asked. New Zealand tipped into authoritarianism during the pandemic. Sweden may tout itself as a “moral superpower” but the only thing it led the world in during the 20th century was eugenics.

It is England’s tragedy that, in deference to its status as the first global superpower, it acquired two chippy neighbours. Ireland would have you believe it is a land of leprechauns, Guinness, poetry and progressive politics. A victim, like so many, of the rapacious barbarians across the sea. The stultifying catholicism which characterised so much of its independent existence and led to such niceties as the Magdalen laundries is less frequently mentioned, nor the fact that the polls are currently led by the political wing of a terrorist group which had no compunction about murdering children.

To the North, Scotland, in its current incarnation, spends most of its time telling people that it is a nice, social democratic, Scandinavian nation, stuck by history in a loveless marriage with the nasty, brutish English. Left to its own devices, it would have spent the previous centuries wearing tartan and inventing the welfare state rather than being forced to join their heathen neighbours in their campaign of rapacious global slaughter.

As a historical account, this leaves much to be desired. Sir Stamford Raffles, for example, may have founded Singapore, but he left after a few months, the real work of establishing the colony being done by Scotland’s William Farquhar. It was to protect the “rights” of Scottish drug dealers that Britain launched the Opium Wars. But if the country was up to its elbows in the imperial project, neither was it the land of milk and honey its current residents would have us believe. As Niall Ferguson argues, rather than a Scandinavian social democracy, for most of its history, Scotland was more like Europe’s Afghanistan – poor, tribal and violent.

But countries can change. Italy is notably less keen on crucifying perceived threats to the political order than it once was, and it has been many a long year since Mexico has regarded human sacrifice as the done thing. So if Ireland and Scotland were not, perhaps, as nice in the past as they would like to think, are they nice now?

To answer this, we need some definition of “niceness” and, conveniently, both Ireland and Scotland have hit on the same one – fidelity to the progressive mores which increasingly define Western society (at least at the upper echelons). With a few, ever diminishing, exceptions, everyone should be allowed to live in the way they prefer and, further, they should be celebrated for it. If most of the 10 Commandments told believers what not to do, modern liberalism seems increasingly to converge on Aleister Crowley’s imprecation, “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law”.

A belief that, just a century ago, earned its inventor the title of “the wickedest man in the world”, has now become the main tenet of moral orthodoxy.

Given this, it is easy to see why the entry of Kate Forbes into the race to succeed that saint of modern progressivism, Nicola Sturgeon, should be so discombobulating. For she seems not to have got the memo about the new moral order and hews closely to the older version. Indeed, a fairly hardcore version of it. The Free Church of Scotland, of which she is a member, makes the, to modern eyes, unpardonable sin of actually believing what the Bible says. Its evangelical Calvinism is rather more keen on fire and brimstone “Thou Shalt Nots” than “Go, girl” “Thou Shalts”.

Despite never being anything less than transparent about her beliefs, a number of her SNP colleagues have suddenly been “shocked, shocked I tell you” to discover that she is not entirely up for sex outside marriage, or abortion. Such discoveries happen frequently enough that one must begin to wonder about the perspicacity of the political class – Keir Starmer was, apparently, similarly surprised recently to learn of the company Jeremy Corbyn keeps.

After a little gentle Farroning (noun: a process whereby a devoutly Christian politician makes increasingly cringeworthy attempts to avoid answering the media’s increasingly abstruse questions about their theological beliefs), last week’s front runner has become this week’s also-ran. Nobody with those beliefs could lead the SNP.

Our separatist chums might be quick to call themselves liberals (as would those in the media who have subjected her to trial by Leviticus), but how liberal are they?

It is important to note that, whatever her beliefs, Ms Forbes has consistently denied any intention to impose them on others. She is not running (assuming she still is by the time you read this) on a platform of turning Scotland into Gilead from The Handmaid’s Tale. Like many other devoutly Christian politicians such as Jacob Rees Mogg, she appears content for the current settlement regarding matters such as abortion to remain, even if she personally disagrees with it. She may not extend Nicola Sturgeon’s progressivism any further, but with the passage of the Gender Recognition Bill (about which the courts will have the final say), what else is left to do?

Nor are her political rather than moral beliefs in any way outside of the SNP mainstream. She wants independence and she is a bit of a lefty. To a right-wing unionist such as myself, these views might be questionable, but I am not, as you may have guessed, a member of the SNP.

Whatever she may believe personally, there is no reason to believe that her election would change anything about the SNP’s platform. Had John Major run to succeed Margaret Thatcher on a platform on renationalising British industry, we might reasonably expect Conservative eyebrows to have been raised, but that is not the case here.

There are certainly some beliefs the holding of which might raise questions about one’s competence to hold office. Believing the Earth is flat, for example, something known to be untrue since ancient times, might well make us question whether the individual is just too stupid to be entrusted with a high office of state. But moral beliefs do not fall into this category. We cannot prove that believing that abortion is wrong is incorrect. We can certainly argue about the reasons for doing so, but belief in God is unfalsifiable in a way that a belief in yogic flying is not.

Moreover, there is nothing which Ms Forbes believes that did not enjoy majority support within a human lifespan of the present. Her beliefs are not alien to Scottish traditions, the worst that can be said for them is that they have, comparatively recently, fallen out of fashion in that country. In numerous other parts of the world, places from which progressive politicians have been far from averse to taking money, they are positively mainstream.

Bertrand Russell, no mean authority as the grandson of a Liberal Prime Minister, argued that “The essence of the liberal outlook lies not in what opinions are held but in how they are held: instead of being held dogmatically, they are held tentatively…new evidence may at any moment lead to their abandonment.” Looked at this way, there is nothing liberal about Ms Forbes’ treatment. Rather than holding their own views tentatively, her opponents are adamant that they are right and she is wrong. Rather than tolerating her opinions, they are insisting that she recant them to win high office.

But being intolerant is part of the SNP’s DNA. From the “cybernats” who harass their opponents in cyberspace, to the Hate Crime Act which punishes “inflammatory or insulting” utterances, even when they cause no actual harm and occur within a private residence, the separatists appear to believe in every freedom save those of speech and belief. That is not liberalism, that is petty and unpleasant authoritarianism. Bertrand Russell may have been wrong about many (most?) things, but when, 70 years ago, he wrote “narcissistically hypnotised by contemplation of their own wisdom and goodness, they proceeded to create a new tyranny, more drastic than any previously known”, he captured the SNP and its media enablers to a tee. The exception to Ferguson’s dictum was the period when the country was under English dominion and devolution seems to be allowing the land of the Scottish Enlightenment to return to its old, witch-burning ways.

I hold no candle for Ms Forbes either politically or philosophically. But as Karl Popper argued, liberalism can tolerate everything except intolerance. And she is not the one being intolerant. It would do us all well to stand up to those who would drive her out of politics.

America’s Cardinal George said, “I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square.” Looking at the treatment of Kate Forbes, there must be a few Scottish priests anxiously fingering their collars.

Stewart Slater works in Finance. He invites you to join him at his website.