Unionists are celebrating their supposed ‘victory’
in the Supreme Court earlier this week, with a ruling which establishes very
clearly that, under UK law, there is no legal route for Scotland (and the same
would obviously apply to Wales) to determine its own future which does not
involve being granted permission by the UK Government, and that there is no
requirement for that government to give – or even have – any reason other than
they don’t want a particular outcome. Scotland is, it seems, trapped in a
curious version of Catch 22: the country has an absolute right to leave a ‘voluntary’
union of ‘partners’ if it chooses, there is just no legal way of exercising
that right. Asked the question, specifically, one of the unionists in chief, ‘Keith’
Starmer said that it wasn’t for him to explain how Scotland could exercise that
right, it was for those seeking independence to set out how they intend to
proceed. They have, of course, done so, several times, even complying fulsomely
with the route set out by Thatcher decades ago (who said that, if a majority of
Scottish MPs were elected on an independence platform, Scotland would become
independent). It’s just that, every time they set out a route, Labour-Tory
politicians – backed up by the courts which are bound by the principle that
absolute power stems from the Crown and resides in the UK parliament, whatever
the acts of union might have said – conspire together to change the unwritten
rules.
Whether their celebration is justified or
not is another proposition entirely: it looks more like another example of the
short-termism which dominates UK politics, and is based on the assumption that support
for independence (and the SNP) is a temporary phenomenon which will go away if
denied loudly enough for long enough. After all, every promise and policy they themselves put forward is regarded as nothing more than a short-term fix to get elected,
and many do not survive election day, let alone detailed parliamentary
scrutiny. Why would they expect the SNP to be any different? Perhaps they’re right; perhaps the desire for independence will fade away
in the light of stubborn refusals to countenance it. The evidence to date
suggests otherwise, though. And trying to present the whole debate as nothing more than some sort of
personal campaign by Nicola Sturgeon contains more than a hint of traditional
imperialist misogyny, to say nothing of contempt for the mass of the Scottish population.
They are right, of course, in legal terms
(and in terms of normal English politics) to say that the SNP (and other
pro-independence parties) cannot simply turn the next general election into a
plebiscite on independence. But normal English politics has ceased applying in
Scotland, where a different political reality rules. Have the unionists really
thought through what happens if (and I’ll accept it’s a big ‘if’, although
within the range of currently credible outcomes) 60% of the electorate votes
for parties who have declared that their only policy for that election is
independence, and every MP from Scotland belongs to a pro-independence party?
They seem, instead (the Tories as much as Labour), to be putting their hands
over their eyes and ears and clinging to the assumption that people will be so
keen to get rid of the Tories and replace them with a Labour government in London
that the SNP will be defeated electorally and replaced by Labour MPs. And they’re
betting the house on that outcome.
There are those independentistas in
Scotland who have been critical of Nicola Sturgeon, suggesting that she has
been too slow, too cautious. It’s a difficult call, but I suspect that she’s as
aware as anyone that moving too fast and losing would be the biggest setback of
all. The issue really would be off the table for a generation. Indeed, one of
the surprising things to me has been the unwillingness of the unionists to
allow a referendum at the point at which they had their best chance of winning
it. Looking at the support for independence across the age demographic, the
simple fact is that young independentistas are entering the electorate
and older unionists are leaving it. A Scottish parliament along with a Scottish
contingent in Westminster, both filled with independentistas, and enjoying
overwhelming electoral support (the only bit of the puzzle still missing)
should be the unionists’ worst nightmare, yet they seem determined to bring it
about. The unionists can and always will win the legal arguments, because the
absolute sovereignty of the Crown trumps all else. But all the Supreme Court decision
has really done is to emphasise that it’s a political issue, first and foremost
– and it will ultimately be determined by the voters of Scotland. The
assumption that a territory and its people can be held in a union indefinitely against
the clear will of those people because the monarch's ancestors declared themselves absolute rulers is a very silly basis for celebration.
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