Scotland could become an independent nation without another referendum if Scots elect a large majority of SNP MPs or if the SNP win a majority of the vote in Scotland at a Westminster GE.

The SNP won 35 out 59 seats at GE2017 with under 37% of the vote.https://t.co/HAIRzuSZ58 pic.twitter.com/gElzpubu8c

— TSE (@TSEofPB) December 2, 2018

Even though I’m someone who considers Brexit the greatest blunder this country has undertaken since appeasement I’m not a fan of another referendum until we’ve actually left the EU for a variety of reasons such as democracy must be honoured.

The risk of No Deal was repeatedly communicated to the voters during the 2016 referendum campaign there’s no point mewling now. But one of the primary reasons I’m most opposed to another referendum this soon is that it creates a precedent to rerun the 2014 Scottish Independence referendum, something that the SNP are skilled to exploit from the fallout from Brexit.

Today’s Sunday Times reports that

SNP ministers believe they can avoid the need for a second independence referendum on leaving the UK if a future Labour government refuses Nicola Sturgeon permission for a fresh vote.

Yesterday Labour’s shadow chancellor John McDonnell rejected the idea of a deal with the first minister on a new referendum in exchange for supporting a minority Labour government.

He told The Times there would be no horse-trading with the nationalists to install Jeremy Corbyn as prime minister.

However, a growing number of senior SNP politicians, including some ministers, believe Westminster’s refusal to grant a section 30 order to Holyrood to hold another referendum would not be enough to prevent secession.

With the possibility of Theresa May’s government collapsing over Brexit, SNP insiders suggest the party’s next UK general election manifesto will contain a commitment to another referendum.

Party insiders say if another referendum were to be blocked, then winning a large majority of Scottish seats, or Scottish votes in a Westminster election, may suffice as a basis for negotiations.

The SNP won a majority of Scottish seats with under 37% of the vote in last year’s general election, it is possible we could see Scottish independence occurring on a similar or lower threshold than that.

If you consider yourself a Unionist and you voted Leave then it appears you have well and truly soiled the bed, after all warnings about Brexit leading to the breakup of the United Kingdom were also strongly communicated during the referendum campaign.

TSE

In addition, I was elected as FM on a clear manifesto commitment re #scotref. The PM is not yet elected by anyone.

— Nicola Sturgeon (@NicolaSturgeon) March 14, 2017

Her window of opportunity could be closing

The SNP exists to achieve independence for Scotland. This simple fact shouldn’t really need stating but keeping it at the forefront of our minds is crucial to understanding why what’s going on is going on, and how events might pan out in future.

As with other nationalist-seperationist movements across the world, including UKIP within the UK, independence is an ideological objective; one that ranks so highly that other considerations pale by comparison. Short-term pain is justified by long-term gain. To the extent that short-term pain needs to be minimised, it’s a matter of the tactics and politics necessary to gain the support that will launch independence but otherwise only a secondary consideration.

Which is why Sturgeon is going back on the once-in-a-generation/lifetime expectation given during the last referendum. Salmond, when he was making that claim, was no doubt doing so in part so as to pressurise doubtful Yes voters to stick with the cause for fear that they might otherwise miss the bus but also because he probably believed that it would indeed be a once-in-a-generation event, at best; that the SNP wouldn’t have the opportunity to call another vote for many a year.

Given the extent of the SNP’s dominance north of the border, that might sound strange but it’s not. For a start, it was far from obvious that the SNP would continue their hegemony if they lost. Losing the 1979 referendum preceded the party entering the doldrums for most of the 1980s, and that despite a more legitimate sense of grievance than this time. Labour certainly wouldn’t have acted as they did had they known how events would turn out. Without Salmond and with potential division over the way forward, with uncertainty over both the 2015 and 2016 elections, who could have known in advance when another opportunity for the SNP might come?

And that opportunity only exists because of the maths in the Scottish parliament: the crucial factor that hasn’t been much mentioned this last week. It isn’t even certain now that Sturgeon will be able to call a referendum: the SNP doesn’t have a majority in Holyrood and while the Greens might well support IndyRef2, or at least abstain (which would be good enough for the SNP), their compliance can’t be taken for granted.

Therein lies the rub, and the reason for assuming that 2014 would be a once-in-a-long-time chance: the Scottish system makes winning an outright majority very hard. To have done it once and to have come close to doing so again were extraordinary achievements but no-one – and particularly the SNP – can assume they’ll pull off a hat-trick in 2021. Even a small slip in support would drop them back to the 2007 situation: able to govern but not to impose. Fourteen years in office leaves a legacy and it’d be a highly optimistic strategist to assume that electoral gravity can be defied so long. Indeed, as mentioned, the likely thinking pre-2014 was that it couldn’t even be defied this long.

Hence why Sturgeon is agitating so strongly now. Yes, there is a sense of a win-win in that if the vote is denied, it’s good propaganda for a grievance to be nurtured into the future but that’s consolation material. The more pressing factor is that her window of opportunity remains surprisingly open and Brexit provides a saleable reason for calling a second vote. Sure, it’d be messy and rooted in confusion but those can be fertile conditions for constitutional change, and launching a new country is constitutional change on the biggest scale. Carpe diem, and all that.

David Herdson

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