IN the history of implausible political alliances the emerging Michael Gove/George Galloway axis is not perhaps as unlikely as the courtship of Jackie Robinson and Richard Nixon in 1960, but it seems startling nonetheless.

Robinson, the great American baseball player and a giant of the civil rights movement, was unconvinced by John F Kennedy’s commitment to the cause and came out for Nixon. Robinson’s dalliance with the Republicans lasted only until 1964 when the GOP chose Barry Goldwater, who had opposed the Civil Rights Act, as their presidential nominee.

This, I suppose, is why a lang spoon is advised when supping with the devil. The Prince of Darkness is not renowned for making concessions. I’m sure both Mr Gove and Mr Galloway will forgive me if I suggest that, for some, the identity of Auld Nick in this esoteric coupling may be subject to perpetual speculation.

The Twitter alliance of these seemingly irreconcilable political foes has been born of mounting Unionist fears over the break up of the United Kingdom. Two more opinion polls this week continued an extended recent trend in favour of independence with one indicating an all-time high of 55% for Yes.

Mr Gove, unofficial minister for the Union Jack in Boris Johnson’s hard-right cabinet, has thus been seeking cross-party allies for what is likely to be Britain’s last imperial battle. According to the London Times, he has already held discussions with Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale (Jack when he was a Socialist) and Danny Alexander, the former Liberal-Democrat chief secretary to the Treasury.

When Mr Galloway, leader of the Workers Party of Great Britain, suggested this week that the “795,000 Scots living elsewhere in the UK” must have a vote in the second referendum on independence Mr Gove replied “interesting question”. Mr Galloway at least possesses that rare commodity in British politics: principles.

He might well have enjoyed a stellar career near the top of British politics were it not for his habit of reminding assorted Labour leaders how to spell S-O-C-I-A-L-I-S-T. Presumably, he’ll defend his present dalliance with Mr Gove, a man who once apologised for participating in a strike, on the grounds that nationalism in whatever form is the enemy of international socialism. But if your beliefs drive you into a camp led by one who has built his career abjuring everything you hold to be dear then perhaps you might ask yourself what it was you thought you were fighting for all this time.

Mr Gove’s fireside chats with the laird of Glencorrosdale (no, me neither) are much easier to understand. Lord McConnell and his brother Labour barons were chiefly responsible for reducing Labour in Scotland to its current status of Holder of the Jaikets. In this wretched period the party has come to be defined not by its commitment to the communities that once nurtured it but by its alliance with the Conservative and Unionist Party.

I’m also intrigued by Mr Galloway’s late attempt to gerrymander the boundaries for a future referendum. In the six years since the last independence referendum Unionists have cited the “people of Scotland” in their claims of a once-in-a-generation event. I’m interested to know by what geographical contortion an address in Dorset can now be considered to be “of Scotland”.

Let’s leave aside for the moment concerns about being over-optimistic at the shiny Yes numbers. As I’ve suggested previously, we are living in abnormal times when the usual scrutiny of a party’s domestic policy record has been suspended. And be in no doubt, when the second independence referendum does begin the British state will deploy every artifice and lever at its disposal to maintain Westminster rule.

It’s now apparent, though, that the Yes cause is building momentum over a prolonged period of time. It would be tempting to ascribe this merely to Nicola Sturgeon’s ‘presentational’ skills and Boris Johnson’s lack of them. Certainly, it would be foolish not to acknowledge that the First Minister’s leadership has been a factor in the recent numbers for independence. If you can trust the nation’s leader when a pandemic threatens your existence then trusting her when she makes the economic and cultural cause for independence would not seem to be the massive leap it was in 2014.

There is something else at play here. It’s become clear that from the lived experience of coronavirus has sprung a desire for profound and lasting societal change at many levels. One of the strongest suits of Better Together in 2014 was the perception of stability. Many who had seriously considered voting for independence ultimately recoiled from taking a step into the unknown and a future uncertain. But when our immediate and (perhaps) long-term future is wreathed in uncertainty the perceived risks of self-determination recede a little.

During the five months of lockdown many have found that those institutions they once looked to for security and stability have let them down or revealed to have been a mirage. They have seen officials at the top of the Westminster Government recklessly disregard lockdown restrictions with impunity and disregard for the safety of the nation. They have come to discover that being locked out of Britain’s affluence means you are three times likelier to die of Covid-19 than those you entrusted with your health and wellbeing.

From the outset of this pandemic they have witnessed the worst excesses of the capitalist system that gives oxygen to the forces now telling them to preserve the Union at any cost. They now know that those who always tell them “we are all in it together” wasted no time in saying “you’re on your own” when super-rich shareholders demanded redundancies to protect their dividends. At the first hint of trouble after years of massive profits the lowest-paid workers were first to be thrown overboard. And they know too that ‘emergency funding’ means large quantities of cash being handed to the families and friends of UK ministers for sub-standard protective equipment and no questions asked.

Britain during coronavirus has been exposed as a vicious little gangster state and this is what George Galloway and Lord McConnell are being duped into defending. I would advise them to give some more thought to the functions they are being asked to perform for the UK establishment’s puppet-masters.

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