OK. It turns out that Johnson has NOT said what the Torygraph predicted he would say. He has not promised “no referendum, no matter how people vote in May”. Whether he was preparing to say that, I don’t know. But if he was, then presumably he listened to Scottish Tories who, as might be expected, know Scotland better than Tories do who are based in London.
As for the “creation of Civil Service jobs” in Scotland, including posts in the Cabinet Office and Foreign Office, rather than primarily an “employment” measure this is probably to do with buying votes in Glasgow by giving bungs to those who are considered to have an influence over how people vote in that city.
It will be a fascinating election, particularly in Glasgow. The party that came second in all seven Glasgow seats in the 2019 British general election was…Labour! In 2017 Labour came second in six of them, the exception being Glasgow North East, which they won. In the 2016 Glasgow city council election, Labour won more than twice as many votes as the Tories. (When I lived in Glasgow Northeast – or Glasgow Springburn as it was called then – the seat had a 22000 Labour majority.)
In places such as Glasgow North East and other parts of Glasgow too, Nicola Sturgeon or whoever leads the SNP in May may find it hard to articulate the message “If you vote Labour, you’re helping the Tories”. Many who have never voted Tory in their lives may not take kindly to being insulted like that. It’s true that the Tories may find it hard to articulate the message “Vote Labour”, but they’re unlikely to be saying that openly anyway.
Might Sturgeon possibly be attackable as a West Coaster who has sucked up to the Edinburgh establishment? 🙂
I will be celebrating if the fine city of Glasgow tells the SNP where it can go.