Lorna Slater, coleader of the Scottish Greens thinks
that Scottish independence is inevitable and if there were a referendum
tomorrow Yes would win. What Slater appears to be unaware of is that if there
were ever to be a second referendum on independence the question would
obviously not have a Yes/No answer. The precedent of the EU referendum makes
that clear. While support for independence is around 50% on the 2014 question
it falls considerably if the question is reworded as “Should Scotland leave the
UK or remain part of the UK”. Would the SNP/Greens win a referendum on that
question tomorrow? That would be much less likely.
But we are not going to have a referendum tomorrow. We
would only have a referendum after a reasonably long campaign that explored all
of the issues involved. The questions that the SNP was unable to answer in 2014
still await a convincing solution. Even so it was much easier to come up with an
argument for independence with both the UK and Scotland in the EU. Brexit has
changed everything and neither the SNP nor the Greens have an answer to the
issue of a hard regulatory border between Scotland and England, nor to Scottish
goods having to pay tariffs to enter the English market. Whatever power Scotland
generates by wind, unfortunately has to go through England if it is to be sold
to anyone else.
We learned in 2014 that a lot of Scots may desire
independence with their hearts, but that a majority of us won’t vote for it if
we conclude with our heads that it will make us poorer. Everything that has
happened since, from the decline in oil, to our dependence on the Treasury to
fund furlough, tells us that independence would at least initially make us
poorer. The nominal deficit that Scotland runs, would immediately become real
if we left the UK.
If Slater and Sturgeon believe that Scotland does not
need Treasury money allocated each year according to the Barnett formula, why
don’t they give it up and raise all Scottish revenue by means of Scottish
taxes? If Scotland can’t give up this money now, how could it sensibly give it
up when leaving the UK. The idea that Scotland is merely getting back what we
pay in, doesn’t fit with the Scottish Government’s own figures. If you are a
GERS denier, you might as well be a climate change denier too.
It may be that Scottish hearts would win over Scottish
minds in a referendum campaign. Nationalism appeals to the emotions such that
it can cause some people to lose contact with reason. But that was not our
experience in 2014. Since then, some older No voters to the delight of the SNP
have died, while the SNP has succeeded with its “Curriculum for independence”
in turning quite a lot of school children into nationalists. This leads both
Sturgeon and Slater to conclude that time is on their side. We’d win tomorrow
thinks Slater, but we’d win with even more certainty years from now.
But each of us evolves politically as we grow older,
apart that is from Sturgeon who believes exactly what she believed when she was
16. When we start working and having to pay bills, mortgages and bring up children,
our ideas change. It doesn’t seem quite such a good idea if the SNP want to
increase public spending without limit. We realise that the free things we are
supposedly given come from our taxes. We begin to worry that our little boy
might come home from school one day as a little girl. Flag waving and
separation from our neighbours begins to look less desirable, especially if it
would make us poorer.
Most importantly for those concerned about climate
change and the world moving away from using fossil fuels, it isn’t at all
obvious that Scottish independence would help.
Climate knows no boundaries. It matters very little
indeed even if Scotland burned no fossil fuels whatsoever. If the UK burns 1%
of the world’s fossil fuels, then Scotland must be burning rather less than
0.1%. Slater says she wants independence to do all the things the UK prevents
her from doing. But it is hardly going to make much difference even if she
could turn Scotland into a pre industrial society living in crannogs. So long as
India and China keep burning coal it will not help if we paint ourselves blue
and chew on raw carrots because we have given up cookers.
The only way giving up fossil fuels will make a
difference is if everyone in the world does so. But this will require
international agreement. Scotland would have very little influence on the world
stage after independence. It wouldn’t increase as Slater thinks. We might be
one among 28 in the EU with no more say than other small countries like
Slovakia. The EU would have a common policy on the environment and Scotland
would be expected to agree to it.
Glasgow is going to hold the 2021 United Nations Climate
Change Conference shortly, but it is only being held in Scotland because the UK
is a member of the UN and has a fairly important voice internationally. If
Scotland had voted Yes in 2014, there is zero chance that COP26 would be taking
place here. So how would independence have increased our influence?
Ceasing to use fossil fuels is going to take a vast
amount of political energy and money. But if Scotland voted for independence
both Scotland and the former UK would need for years to devote most of their
political energy to the divorce. Scotland after independence would need to
devote its political energy to joining the EU and to finding a way to reduce
our deficit. But this would make us less able to afford the very expensive
changes such as increasing insulation for homes and building a network suitable
for electric cars. People concerned about climate change should vote for anyone
but the Scottish Greens or the SNP.
If preserving the environment required secession, we
should expect every European Green party to be in favour of breaking up their
own country. But German Greens don’t want independence for Saxony and French
Greens don’t want independence for Burgundy. So clearly it is not necessary. If
Lorna Slater was so in favour of independence movements it is a wonder she did
not move to Quebec and campaign for the breakup of Canada. I find it
distasteful that she chose to move here in order to break up my country.
No country in the world would allow immigration of
people who wished to destroy it. If immigrants from the United States to Canada
were trying to make Canada a part of the USA, the Canadians would no doubt stop
them coming at all. Well likewise if Canadians typically came to UK to break it
up, the Government would reasonably stop them doing so.
Lorna Slater came to Scotland when she was 25 and no
doubt liked how it was. If she hadn’t liked it, she could have stayed at home
or gone elsewhere. At some point she must have chosen to live here. She would have been granted leave to remain
by the UK. She may even have made pledged her loyalty to the UK. But at any
rate she took advantage of the hospitality the UK gives to people who move
here. Obviously, everything she has done politically since then is legal. She
has the right to do it. But I personally find it rather ungrateful behaviour.
If I had moved to Canada when I was 25 and spent my
life campaigning to destroy it, I could imagine Canadians looking at my actions
and wondering whether it would not have been better if I had been prevented
from coming there. To campaign to break up someone else’s country while leaving
your own intact, is the behaviour of a hypocrite. Even if it is legal, it is
morally indefensible.
If she loves the EU so much, why didn’t she campaign
for the North American Union ruled from Washington? But no one in North America
would accept that, would they? Not even Slater.
There won’t be an independence referendum tomorrow. We
have just discovered that neither the Greens nor the SNP have a mandate for
one, in which case there may never be one. Those people who campaigned for
Quebec to be independent must have thought it was inevitable when they came so
close in 1995. I wonder which way Slater voted. Someone should ask her. But now
there is nothing inevitable about it all about Quebec’s independence. Indeed,
it is unlikely.
So too with Scottish independence. Support for it
increases and falls, but until and unless people like Slater come up with
convincing arguments which address the real problems of separation, then we
must be forced to conclude that they are mere opportunists who got on a
bandwagon because it pays well, but are making no more contribution to dealing
with climate change than a green Canadian moose.
