In 2014 when I was campaigning for Scotland to
remain a part of the UK it never occurred to me that the result of the
referendum might be ignored or obstructed. If the Yes side had won, I fully
expected that in a short time Scotland would become a fully sovereign
independent nation state. I might not have liked this, but I had no intention
of doing anything to prevent it. I might even have been willing to lend a hand.
It’s impossible to know exactly how you would have reacted to something that
didn’t happen. It would depend on all sorts of things that are unknowable. But
things have changed. Most of all everything we have learned since 2014 makes a
rerun of indyref completely pointless.
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Alexandr Nevsky (1938) the Battle on the Ice 1242 |
The first thing that changed is the idea that
everyone would accept the result of a referendum. We learned in 2014 that
immediately after their disappointment the SNP and the Yes movement in general
started to try to overturn the result of the independence referendum. They
didn’t wait for a year, they didn’t wait for a month, they didn’t even wait for
a day. It was full on campaign mode from day one.
That’s fine. But how do they expect us to behave if
there were ever to be a second independence referendum. Pro UK people would overwhelmingly try to
overturn a vote for Scottish independence by campaigning in whatever Scottish
or UK wide elections were to take place between a vote for independence and
independence actually taking place. If somehow independence did happen I
imagine some present day Pro UK parties and perhaps some new ones would campaign
for reunification of the UK. Under those circumstances I imagine Scotland might
end up being even more lacking in peace and harmony than it is now. There might
be a few tough early years for Scotland if only nationalists were onside and
the rest of us remained sullenly delighted to see the whole thing go wrong,
cheering on each set-back, siding with the UK at each point in the divorce negotiations,
unwilling to help in any way and telling the nationalists that we told you so,
but you wouldn’t listen.
We are already today in Scotland more divided than
at any point since the eighteenth century. Scottish nationalism has set Scot
against Scot. Can you imagine what it would be like if we carried on a Pro UK
rear-guard action because we refused to accept the result of a Scottish
independence referendum. But that is just what the nationalists are doing now.
What have we learned since the EU referendum in
2016? This is the second thing that has decisively changed British politics. We
have learned that the Remain side have done everything in their power to
frustrate what the electorate voted for. They have gone to the courts. They
have used the House of Commons. They have used the House of Lords and they have
cooperated with the EU negotiators so as to make it as difficult as possible
for the UK to actually leave the EU. It may reach a point when we leave in name
only.
My guess is that the Remain rear-guard action was in
part inspired by the SNP’s refusal to accept the indyref result. In the
short-term at least the SNP prospered from this. But who knows perhaps Remain would have
fought to keep the UK from leaving in a meaningful way even without the SNP example.
But what if there were to be another Scottish
independence vote. For a start why do Scottish nationalists suppose that the
question would be Yes versus No? The Electoral Commission ruled that Yes had an
advantage. So we should expect the question instead to be something like “Do
you want Scotland to Remain in the UK or do you want Scotland to leave?” There
are other ways of phrasing the question, there are other words instead of
“Leave” and “Remain”, but clearly no-one is going to be campaigning for “Yes”
or “No.”
But the most important lesson that we have learned
since 2016 is that referendums are advisory. You campaign for months and 17
million people tell you to leave, but you don’t actually have to leave. You can
tell them that all of that effort and all of those crosses in little boxes were
pointless indeed meaningless, just a long string of xxxxxxxs going up to 17
million.
Well Scotland can only legally achieve independence
in the following way. There has to be a legal referendum. This means that the
UK Parliament has to agree to allow such a referendum. It doesn’t have to.
Spain has shown that it is possible to block separatists from legally seceding.
An illegal referendum or a declaration of UDI didn’t lead to Catalonia gaining
independence. It led to criminal charges against the leaders of the secession
movement, exile and jail.
But Britain is not Spain. Who knows the UK
Government might at some point in the future allow a second independence
referendum. But if Scotland voted for independence there would still have to be
an Act in the UK Parliament and votes won in the House of Commons and the House
of Lords.
Well what is stopping a disappointed Pro UK Scot,
call her Effie Deans from going to the High Court to try to prevent Scotland
actually leaving the UK. What is preventing Pro UK Scots campaigning for the UK
Parliament to treat the vote for Scottish independence as merely advisory? It
is impossible, unless they start campaigning throughout the UK, for the SNP to
have a majority at Westminster. So what would you do if Westminster simply
voted for Scotland to Remain the UK? You could of course revolt. You would be
justified in doing so. But that really is to say that democracy hasn’t worked.
Instead of using the ballot box to settle disputes we will instead use clubs.
It might be that the UK “leaves” the EU only in
name. But then it might be that a Scottish vote for independence had the same
result. If the biggest vote in UK history doesn’t actually really lead to the
UK leaving the EU, why should Scottish nationalists expect that they would be
allowed to leave? Why should anyone obey the result of indyref2 if they don’t
obey the result of EUref1? Why obey the result of any referendum or indeed any
election?
This state of affairs is in fact is the natural and
entirely just consequence of the SNP’s failure to accept the result in 2014. None
of us are going to accept the result if you ever win a referendum. But there
isn’t going to be another referendum, because we have discovered since 2016
that referendums are merely advisory and Parliament and indeed everyone else is
free to ignore the vote.
Scottish nationalism since 2014 has depended on the
idea that if we lose the loss can be ignored, but if we win our opponents will
say well done let’s all join together to create an independent Scotland. But we
won’t. We will ignore the result too. We will fight you in the courts, in the
House of Commons and in the House of Lords. As a unionist said in 1863 we “will fight until Hell freezes over and then fight on the ice.” So what on earth would be the point of having a
second referendum? What would it decide? Now do you understand what your failure to
accept the result in 2014 has cost you? It has cost you a second change and at the same time it has cost all of us our democracy.