At least our First Minister can walk and chew gum at the same time

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Unionists aren’t exactly frothing at the mouth over yesterday’s meeting between the First Ministers of Wales, Scotland and the north of Ireland, but some seem to be getting close to doing so. The allegation, apparently, is that the leader of a party committed to independence for Wales has dared to talk to like-minded others about the difficulties placed in the way of leaving a ‘voluntary union’, despite having said that he would not call for a referendum during his government’s first term of office.

Whether winning at least two elections first was a wise caveat to place on independence aspirations is another matter. The real determinant of when we can seriously discuss holding a referendum will be when there is a majority in the Senedd in favour of doing so. Since that didn’t happen, not holding a referendum during the current Senedd term is the inevitable outcome of the election; in practical terms the caveat about two elections makes little difference. It does, though, frame the terms for debate in a way which may come back and bite us in the future.

Whatever the reason for the lack of a referendum during the current Senedd, nothing said during the election campaign precluded a party (and First Minister) committed to independence as a goal from continuing to campaign for that aim or talk about how it might come about, whilst also getting on with the day-to-day business of government. Yet that is what the government’s political opponents seem to expect. In the case of some of them, I can understand why they might have difficulty in believing that the First Minister can walk and chew gum at the same time (as Lyndon Johnson didn’t quite say); it’s not a feat which they could emulate. It’s disappointing, but by now not surprising, that a Labour Party founded on dreams of what might be is so tied in to the Overton Window that it has become incapable of even having any real long-term aspirations of its own.

The real issue being addressed yesterday was a very simple one. If the union is, as we repeatedly told, a ‘voluntary’ one (and that is arguably true in the case of Scotland – especially after the 2014 vote – albeit rather less so in the case of Wales or the north of Ireland), what is the mechanism by which the decision can be revisited? If one of the members of that union has an absolute veto on when the other members might even be ‘allowed’ to vote on the matter, in what sense is it ‘voluntary’? It’s a question to which they have no rational answer, which might explain the diversionary tactics of telling the ‘lesser’ members of the union to shut up and get back to the knitting.

The bit that really surprises me though is this: if I were a unionist and wanted to maintain the union of the UK, I’d want to hold referendums sooner rather than later, choosing the time and the question myself, as well as, perhaps, formally setting a (lengthy) timeline for any future reconsideration. It might already be too late in Scotland (although sooner rather than later might give unionists their best chance of winning), but in Wales and the north of Ireland, holding a vote whilst the majority opinion still seems to be against any change might enable the ball to be kicked further down the road than delaying a vote. Sometimes, unionists are their own worst enemies.