Wishart’s warning to pro-indy movement

A Perthshire politician has warned supporters of Scottish independence that an advisory referendum would set the movement back “considerably”.

Pete Wishart MP has been openly critical of calls to hold a referendum without the backing of Westminster, as well as those who call for the SNP to unilaterally declare independence.

And in a post on his blog last week, the Perth and North Perthshire representative warned that a so-called ‘advisory’ vote may “unleash a range of forces that could quickly escalate out of control”

Saying that methods of Scotland breaking away from UK that did not include a referendum backed by both parliaments were not “consequence free”, he warned nationalists that new support for independence “remains tenuous”.

He said: “Let’s look at what would in fact happen if the Scottish Government went down the ‘advisory’ referendum route.

“Firstly, there wouldn’t be a Brexit type drama at the Supreme Court, instead there would just be the UK Government continuing to say their usual ‘no’.

“Their strategy would be to boycott the whole process and refuse to engage and acknowledge any result.

“They would not dirty their hands on a legal challenge on something they refuse to even countenance.

“Instead, they would leave that to any number of unionist groups who would be positively salivating at the prospect of having independence declared ‘illegal’.”

Mr Wishart also said that even if an advisory vote was deemed legel, then yes would win but: “It is in what happens next that we enter the unknown and where things could get really messy.

“Firstly, we would need to win over 50 per cent of the total electorate as the boycotters would claim ‘victory’ with anything less.

“This is a huge threshold to achieve and would have to be done with co-operation from unionist local authorities who may not be particularly well disposed to participate in such a referendum.”

His lengthy piece suggested a victory for the independence movement would not bring the UK Government to the negotiating table and would leave the movement “right back to roughly where we are having indulged in a one sided supra-opinion poll that may or may not have given us a useful result.”

He adds: “More worryingly there could be pressure to use the result as a mandate for independence and simply declare UDI with all the Catalan-style consequences and impacts on our international standing.

“In the meantime the people of Scotland will be observing all of this and we can only start to imagine what their reaction might be.

“Then there is more than a good chance that any advisory referendum is declared ‘illegal’.

“You could just imagine the whoops of joy from the unionists.

“A court case would have turned independence from a political cause into a legal one and we could well have confined ourselves to our own designed legal cage.”

Despite his misgivings, Mr Wishart remains confident a pro-indy majority at the 2021 Scottish election will lead to a referendum, although he says if it does not, then other methods may need to be used.