The rumours that Liz Truss will make it harder for the
SNP to both obtain a legal independence referendum and to win it, don’t so much
matter in their detail but in the fact that they demonstrate that Truss is not
willing to play the SNP’s game.
The UK is unique in present day western democracies in
facing a continual threat from separatists who only have to win a simple
majority once at a referendum to gain independence. It makes it impossible to
plan. It adds an element of economic risk that no one else faces. It means that
for short term reasons like an unpopular Prime Minister, a 300-year-old country
might face dissolution. It might survive any number of referendums, but lose
just once and it loses forever.
The rumour is that the SNP will now require a 60% lead
in the polls for a year to or more and then win a majority of the electorate in
a referendum. Of course, Scottish nationalists are complaining that this isn’t
democratic. But there is no right in western democracies to have an
independence referendum. It is a simply a mistake to suppose that there is.
Nowhere else in the EU or the USA does a part of country have the right to
leave the whole. So, by the standards of most democracies Truss is being
ultra-generous to the SNP.
Her generosity is for the following reasons. The UK
has been playing a losing hand since 2014. We have made continual concessions
to Scottish nationalism. We have increased the powers of the Scottish
Parliament and allowed it to act almost as if it were ruling a separate
country. We have seen support for Scottish independence rising and falling
between about 45% and 50% which means the SNP wins every election. If you give
the SNP a referendum each time it wins an election, you will be tossing a coin
until one day you lose. You can say No not now, for a while, but unless you
change the game, in the long run you will lose. Everything else is managing
decline.
It is in my view unimaginable that if the SNP won
60-65% in a referendum, but only won 49% of the electorate that it could be
prevented from achieving independence shortly thereafter. It would be like 1979
all over again, where a majority supported getting a Scottish Parliament, but
lost because turnout wasn’t high enough. The winners had a grievance and nursed
their wrath to keep it warm until winning in 1997. The increase in the vote
during the years between was in part because of the grievance.
But this is to mistake the power of the Truss gambit.
Since 2014 Yes has not come close to 60%. It will take a big shift in public
opinion for Yes to reach 60% for a year or more. Even then the SNP would be
gambling if it went for a referendum, because winning a plurality of the
electorate might not be possible even if it won 60%.
In 2014 Yes would have needed 2,141,696 to win 50% of
the electorate which is more than No got (2,001,926) meaning Yes would have
had to win 59% of the vote. But that was an exceptionally high turnout.
It was always said before that the SNP would need 60%
of the polls to be reasonably sure of winning, because the status quo has an
inbuilt advantage, but this means that the SNP now would now have to reflect
that even 60% in the polls might not be enough. It might have to wait until
70%.
The reason for this is that 50% of the electorate is
an extremely high bar. The SNP won 1,454,436 votes in the 2015 General Election
nearly 49.97% of the vote, but that isn’t even close to half the electorate. If
that becomes the task in Sturgeon’s de facto referendum/General Election, then
she might as well roll a rock up a hill like Sisyphus.
But it is perfectly reasonable to argue that those who
don’t bother to vote want independence less than the packet of fags they walk
to the corner shop to buy. So why not count them with those who oppose it?
Under the present circumstances where support for and
against independence is about even and that hasn’t changed at all since 2014, the
Truss gambit make independence practically impossible. We would never get to
the referendum, because the SNP would never dare ask for it. But this means
that we would never get to the grievance of the SNP winning say 59% but not
getting independence.
I always favoured changing the law to ban referendums
on independence, but arguably the Truss gambit is cleverer. It basically does
ban referendums, but allows them if an unlikely condition is met.
Scotland of course can go down the rebellious route.
The Scottish Parliament can make a unilateral declaration of independence, but
it won’t because it knows that it doesn’t have the support for this with the
voters. A no deal Scexit unrecognised by anyone with no cooperation and
beginning immediately does not have close to majority support in Scotland. Even
a majority of Scottish nationalists would reject it. Make it clear that this is
what rebellion gets you and we will retreat from Derby once again.
A lot of Scottish voters may not much like the UK, but
we rely on it in times of trouble to pay our wages in a pandemic or our fuel
bills in an economic crisis. Many of us would love to be independent, but only
if we have a safety net which is made in Britain.
We have a standard of living, which is better than 90%
of the world’s population and we are not going to risk that for independence
even if we like the idea in theory.
So, both sides have a limited room for manoeuvre.
Scottish nationalists can play at being rebellious in their Jacobite outfits,
but we are too prosperous to rebel and too careful to risk ending up much
poorer after independence.
The British Government recognises the problem that we
all think of the UK as four countries held together by “the union” like the
Treaty of Rome. It would like very much to tell everyone that we are one
country like France, but try convincing England fans when they just beat
Germany. So instead, we gain twenty years by giving the SNP a hurdle it can’t
jump over. After twenty years we might say that the SNP now needs 70% for a
year. Twenty years after that we can rule out independence referendums and say
actually, we are only one country not four.
The main point however of making independence
impossible to achieve is that independence supporters will have to judge the
SNP on its domestic record rather than on a dream that is not going to happen. If
you make independence impossible, you make the SNP pointless, because it is a single-issue
party.
It puts us back to the days before 2014 when Scots voted
Labour if they wanted a more left-wing UK Government and didn’t vote SNP on the
whole because it had no chance of forming a UK government.
It doesn’t much matter if you agree or disagree with
the Truss gambit. What it signals is that Scottish independence is not
happening and the British Government will do this, or that or something else
entirely to stop it. This changes the
calculation. It takes away the idea that Scotland could leave the UK with consent
and with cooperation and with goodwill. But without these, independence loses
much of its attraction for reasonable Scots who might otherwise be tempted.
Once Sturgeon sees that she will not lead the tribe to the promised land, she will leave the task to someone less famous and less talented at which point it will be amusing to watch Scottish nationalist marches dwindle. I might even shed a tear as I watch Scottish nationalist hopes fade.
