Coronavirus: Can Scotland shut the border with England?

Imposing journey restrictions on folks getting into Scotland from the remainder of the UK has not been dominated out by Nicola Sturgeon. However what do calls to “shut the border” really imply in observe, and what might the Scottish authorities do?

Is there a border between Scotland and England?

This would possibly seem to be a reasonably apparent level to begin on, however it has really been a topic of some debate because of Boris Johnson’s assertion that there’s actually no border.

Mr Johnson was presumably talking in a constitutional sense, given his place as Minister for the Union (a task he created himself and which in keeping with his authorities’s personal web site entails no duties). A Conservative prime minister will inevitably take any alternative to situation a reminder that folks in Scotland voted to stay a part of the UK in 2014.

Nonetheless, there may be clearly a line the place Scotland ends and England begins, and vice versa. It winds from the river Tweed within the east to the Solway Firth within the west, and was established in near its present kind in 1237. The phrase “Tweed” really means “border” in an historic Celtic language.

Extra to the purpose, there may be clearly a line the place the Scottish authorities’s authority and duties start – and thus the place Nicola Sturgeon’s management over responses to the coronavirus pandemic begins.

What does ‘shut the border’ imply?

One situation with this debate is that there is not really a agency coverage on the desk to look at. The Scottish authorities has not put this ahead as a proposal, as such – quite it’s regularly put to Ms Sturgeon as a query, and he or she refuses to rule it out on the premise she needs “all choices on the desk”.

It’s unlikely that the proposal in any situation – even the mainly imaginary ones we’re working with right here – can be to bodily shut the border, given it’s 96 miles lengthy.

There are dozens of roads which cross the border, and no one is proposing erecting checkpoints on the A1 – or certainly the A74, A68, A7, A697 and even the B6318. There are an honest variety of unnamed roads crossing forwards and backwards the place the closest factor to frame infrastructure is a cattle grid.

A extra real looking prospect can be asking folks both to not journey from English virus hotspots into Scotland in any respect, or to ask them to quarantine on arrival.

What might the Scottish authorities do?

Whereas borders and the structure could also be reserved to Westminster, public well being and the broader response to the coronavirus disaster could be very a lot devolved to Holyrood.

It’s totally throughout the present of the Scottish authorities to have completely different quarantine guidelines north of the border – they already do, in requiring travellers arriving from Spain to isolate for 2 weeks.

So the method outlined above, of getting folks from different elements of the UK quarantine on arrival, would successfully put the likes of Leicester in the identical basket as Spain.

Truly imposing such measures is perhaps tougher, provided that it is simpler to drive unobtrusively into Scotland from Carlisle than it’s from Catalonia.

However a superb most of the coronavirus restrictions imposed up to now rely mainly on belief, quite than the specter of punishment.

The present quarantine system entails one traveller in 5 getting a follow-up cellphone name to ensure they have not been out and about an excessive amount of – hardly a daybreak raid by Border Drive. Breaches can theoretically be punished by a advantageous of as much as £1,000, however it seems none has really been issued.

So this might be extra about asking folks to conform than making them. In that sense, the border was successfully closed for some time earlier within the pandemic, when the five-mile journey restrict was in power in Scotland and English travellers had been urged to abide by native restrictions.

Equally when elements of Dumfries and Galloway had been briefly topic to stricter guidelines than the remainder of the nation resulting from an area outbreak, residents had been advised to not cross over into England to go to beer gardens.

Politics or public well being?

Maybe the most important hurdle to establishing a divide between Scotland and England is not a sensible or public well being one, however a political one.

Nicola Sturgeon has all the time insisted that she is 100% targeted on the well being query, that that is totally in regards to the suppression of a probably lethal virus and never constitutional squabbling.

The issue she has politically is that she is the chief of the SNP, a lot of what she does could be considered by her opponents by means of the lens of that get together’s guiding objective, Scottish independence.

The irony is {that a} Labour or Conservative first minister would in all probability have a a lot simpler job imposing cross-border restrictions, as a result of there would not be the identical trace of suspicion – nevertheless unfair it might be – about their motives.

All selections about virus restrictions contain a difficult stability – public well being and the financial system, ranges of danger and of public compliance. Ms Sturgeon has developed a popularity for weighing these components up very rigorously certainly up to now within the pandemic.

She is going to hope that an infection charges in the end is not going to diverge sharply sufficient on both facet of the Tweed to power her right into a selection about quarantine measures – but when they do, this inescapable political factor will make it a very a tough one.