Yahoo News Nicola Sturgeon’s independence plan has a fundamental weakness
Sometimes “don’t know” is the most intelligent answer to a question: 45% of Scots think Scotland would be better off economically as an independent country within the EU than as part of a post-Brexit UK; 35% disagree; and 20% don’t know, because how could you? There is so much chaos contained in that sequence of events: under what terms would the UK leave? Under what terms would Scotland and the UK separate? How would Scotland rejoin? And how long would all this take?
The only thing you could say for certain is that nobody will be as well off, individually or collectively, as they would have been had the Conservative party washed its laundry in private. Perhaps that goes without saying, but it still seems important that history doesn’t record this destructive phase as culpritless, like a typhoon.
Related: Independence for Scotland is inevitable – we need a plan for it | Simon Jenkins
Nevertheless, there are some things Scottish people could be reasonably sure of: in 2016, it was considered very unlikely that they could rejoin the EU without England; some nation with its own independence issues – Spain the most obvious – would surely veto that. That is no longer the case. The Spanish foreign minister, Josep Borrell, said explicitly at the end of last year that Scotland would be accepted.
As important is the Brexiters’ mood music: three years ago it was assumed that their intense nationalism and nostalgia made them the natural defenders of the United Kingdom. The opposite was true: they had no respect for the Good Friday agreement; most leavers were prepared to see the breakup of the UK. Worse still, these radical stances tumbled out without the ghost of a plan, giving the unavoidable impression that no ardent Brexiter had even considered the voters of Northern Ireland or Scotland or Wales.
It is completely understandable that in Scotland support for independence reached an all-time high of 50% last week. It is, likewise, reasonable for the first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, to push hard for a second referendum in 2020, the roadmap for which has been widely discussed at the Scottish National party’s conference in Aberdeen.
But it is easy to forget, since its result was the status quo, how bitter the 2014 referendum was: there was a strong sense among many expat Scottish people living in England – who didn’t have voting rights – that independence was a narrow, nationalistic project, dressed up as a grand social one. This debate has been made irrelevant by the crisis in English politics. There is nothing narrow or nationalistic about wanting to separate from a government that actively seeks its own economic destruction.
It is perfectly reasonable to look back at the joint pledge to give Scotland more powers – made by David Cameron, Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg just before the referendum – and say “this hasn’t been met” (only 9% of Scots think it has). Perhaps the insufficiencies of the Scotland Act in March 2016 were due to a lack of enthusiasm in Westminster for deeper devolution. Now, however, the one thing every party leader can agree on is the absolute constipation of the British state. Who, given the chance, would not try to escape? On pessimistic days, I’d vote for an independent London that could rejoin the EU.
But Sturgeon’s immediate tactical hurdle segues into a fundamental contradiction. Her plan is to force a general election via a motion of no confidence in Boris Johnson. She then plans to use her leverage with whoever emerges as the largest party to bring about a second independence referendum next year.
Realistically, the SNP stands no chance of exerting that pressure on a minority Conservative government, which would be implacably opposed, and wouldn’t be relying on a prop-up from the SNP in the first place. So she’s throwing that gauntlet down for the Labour party, which has often let slip the softer stance on an indy ref of “not now, but maybe at some time in the future”. Sturgeon’s argument relies heavily on the very area where it is weakest: the Scottish people must have a vote because 50% of them want seismic constitutional change. But 50% don’t.
Further, she relies on the inevitability of Brexit to give momentum to the case for independence, yet a Labour government would have a people’s vote as its first order of business. The result, if it went remain, would suck the air out of Sturgeon’s enterprise.
Most importantly, the case for Yes in 2014 was a radical, progressive one: the SNP flipped from Tartan Tories to leftwing crusaders; grassroots groups such as Common Weal made a powerful case for social renewal based on equality, pluralism and justice, if only Scotland could throw off the yoke of the self-interested, austerity-obsessed government in Westminster.
Were the campaign replayed, this time against a British prime minister holding the same progressive values, they’d be fighting in the cracks: not whether to nationalise, but what to nationalise first; not whether to go carbon-neutral, but wind or solar; not whether to have a humane benefits system, but whose sense of humanity was the keenest. It would be an ugly and pointless scene, in which narrow nationalism might well emerge as the most solid ground, and lofty talk of “sovereignty” the best call to arms. And we’ve all seen where that ends.
• Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
