Who WILL speak for Union?

The SNP machine is primed and ready for a second bitter referendum. But, cautions a veteran of the Better Together campaign, their opponents are asleep at the wheel...

THE number of advisers allowed into Nicola Sturgeon’s inner sanctum these days to discuss a second independence referendum is apparently dwindling. Fewer invitations are being doled out. The bouncers are enforcing their ‘opinion’ code more strictly.

Indeed for some of her critics within the SNP the First Minister’s office is becoming more of a bunker.

The arguments both for and against are familiar but there is one compelling reason which could clinch the case for those of her colleagues who want a second poll now – their opponents on the side of the Union are in disarray.

Those urging caution will point out that the polls have hardly moved since 2014. Support for Scotland leaving the UK is certainly nowhere near the 60 per cent the First Minister briefed would trigger it. Opposition to a second poll is strong even among those who voted Yes last time.

And they have still failed to come up with compelling answers to questions such as the currency or the deficit which so undermined their case first time around.

Those in favour will claim Brexit is the gamechanger. That the gap between support for Yes and No could easily be closed over the course of a campaign.

But the crucial question is: Where is the opposition?

The SNP machine did not break stride after its defeat last time around. While those of us in the Better Together campaign cleared our desks the Yes campaign held victory rallies instead.

They haven’t stopped. Two landslide election victories later and the campaign goes on, lately with a publicly funded ‘consultation’ to identify their vote.

Supporters of the Union haven’t even identified the people who could identify where their support is. Like it or not, the SNP is one of the most sophisticated electoral machines in Europe and there is nothing comparable on the other side.

Nor do I think Theresa May’s No10 understands what it is up against.

David Cameron’s sincerity during the campaign leading to the 2014 independence referendum should not be doubted.

The integrity of the United Kingdom mattered to him, as did his Scottish ancestry.

Then there was what he called the ‘George III’ factor. Those in No10 at the time talked of the king who lost the American War of Independence.

IF Cameron had lost in 2014 he had no doubt he would have to stand down as Prime Minister. You couldn’t continue to lead a country which had just broken up. Instead of being George III, it turned out he was a little more Napoleonic when he lost the European Union instead and was forced to resign.

One of his problems was that rather than analyse what had been good or bad about the much-maligned Better Together campaign, he took it as a template which would deliver again. But Cameron’s No10 in the run-up to 2014, genuinely cared – and would listen.

As Nicola Sturgeon prepares her next wave of post-Brexit outrage, Theresa May’s set-up is not showing signs of the same concern or, crucially, touch.

The word is they are in denial. They just don’t believe that Scotland’s First Minister will call one. The analysis from SW1 tells them she cannot win it. And even if she was daft enough to do it they have the power to deny her another referendum. Job done.

That mindset is what has led to their recent clumsiness when an opponent such as the SNP needs to be dealt with surgical precision.

The Number Ten spokesman who recently said there was no case for a second referendum because the polls hadn’t moved seemed to be wearing mittens, if not boxing gloves, as they held the scalpel.

What a hostage to fortune. In an era when polling is largely discredited, they made them the crux of their refusal. Oh, and by the way, since then it would appear some polls have moved.

Changing tack – but revealing no sense of tactics or strategy – they said they were ‘wargaming’ their response to a request for another referendum.

What a silly word to use. Is it ‘war’ or is it a ‘game’? Both words offend. It conjured up visions of youthful No10 advisers rolling a hexagonal die in a political version of Dungeons and Dragons. A better response to the initial inquiry would have been this: to say that over the past few years the United Kingdom’s history has shown how divisive referendums can be.

Even though she was on the losing side in the Brexit vote, the Prime Minister is respecting the views of the British people and acting upon them while trying to bring the nation back together.

She hopes Nicola Sturgeon will respect the views of the Scottish people and do the same.

But that would have required a touch that No10 doesn’t appear to have and that is a bigger danger to the Union than anything that will be said at the SNP’s conference in a few weeks’ time.

Compare that to Cameron’s operation.

At one point in the tortuous road to 2014, the negotiations for the Section 30 order to allow the referendum were going badly. A No10 adviser was dispatched north to canvass opinion on whether the UK Government should just call the vote at a time of its choosing.

Our response was unequivocal. The referendum had to be made in Scotland. If it was called by a coalition UK government, that would boost the separatists and play to the Nationalist narrative that London thought it could push Scotland around.

He looked perplexed, but No10’s man listened and talk of the UK government calling the referendum stopped.

In Cameron’s administration the voice of pro-Union Scots had more ears in which to be heard than today.

At the Treasury, for example, the then Chancellor George Osborne is nothing if not a political strategist at heart. His Chief Secretary was Danny Alexander, a Scottish MP with more than one dog in the fight. Even the then Permanent Secretary, Sir Nick Macpherson, is a Scot.

At the time there was a rumour that Alex Salmond had offered Osborne a deal that he would not call a referendum if he was given fiscal autonomy and in return accepted a reduction in the number of Scottish MPs.

Salmond had apparently argued that would let the Tories rule England forever while he did Scotland.

Osborne apparently favoured the deal but Cameron didn’t. The denials to all enquiries to

the UK government about it were always heavily qualified.

In today’s Treasury, Chancellor Philip Hammond has more fights to have with Tory Brex-iteers before Scottish nationalism even crosses his mind.

In No10, there is Theresa May’s formidable joint chief of staff, Fiona Hill – a Scot from Largs.

She is a talented person I admire but my fear is that, having been away from Scottish politics for so long, a little knowledge might be a dangerous thing.

No10 needs to do some serious thinking and come up with a compelling strategy if the United Kingdom is to survive the upcoming Nationalist onslaught.

It should start by analysing the opposition.

Any vestige of the SNP making a ‘positive’ case for independence has vanished. The Nationalists’ policy is not Scotland the Brave, but Scotland the Offended by being dragged ‘kicking and screaming’ out of the European Union against our will.

Interestingly, they made the same argument Edward Heath had ‘dragged’ Scotland into the EEC against our apparent will in the 1970s. This is grievance max. They should not be underestimated. In an era when identity trumps ideals it has resonance, however wrong-headed.

If Alex Salmond tried to frame the question in 2014 as ‘are you Scottish or not?’, in 2018 Nicola Sturgeon will try to make it, ‘are you prepared to be pushed around or will you finally stand up for yourself?’.

In face to face meetings, she apparently pleads with Prime Minister May to give her a way out of demanding another referendum on Scottish independence.

Then Scotland’s First Minister decries her in front of cameras in a pre-booked room.

The Prime Minister should call her out.

Whatever you think of Brexit, she cannot offer Scotland ‘concessions’ or a separate deal on Europe for the simple reason that European law, let alone EU politics, won’t allow it.

That boil of grievance can be burst by allowing Miss Sturgeon – with the backing of the UK government and civil service if necessary – to try to negotiate a separate deal with the EU herself.

Despite – probably illegally – allocating to herself public money to do so, Miss Sturgeon has already failed to engage a Europe that neither wishes nor could do Scotland a separate deal.

Westminster is not the block to the SNP’s alleged ambitions to be at the heart of the EU – Brussels is. That point needs to be made.

Then the reality of what Nicola Sturgeon seeks should be made clear.

Theresa May’s Lancaster House speech has been allowed to be interpreted as the so-called ‘hard Brexit’.

It can as easily be seen as an opening negotiating position to a Europe which is changing.

The very existence of the EU is under threat, not just because of the UK’s vote to leave but because of Greece’s possible exit from the euro, Italy’s banking crisis and rising nationalism in Germany, France and the Netherlands. The list goes on.

Whatever the final results in the elections in the last three countries, the winner will have to address their population’s concerns about migration.

If restrictions to freedom of movement are agreed the UK may not end up leaving the EU because the EU will have changed form.

In that world, what is Nicola Sturgeon’s offer? To leave the single market of the UK, and the single market of a tumultuous EU that would take years to rejoin?

Miss Sturgeon is trying to sell Scots the view that every other nation in Europe are but walkon parts in Scotland’s bio-pic with England the villain.

The unknown has become unknown squared. That is Nicola Sturgeon’s offer.

SHE argues Theresa May is making the UK jump off an economic cliff by pursuing Brexit – and then asks for her own bespoke Scottish economic cliff to jump off.

Theresa May’s response should be to be prepared to take a risk in taking on the SNP while realising that Scots don’t like taking risks.

Private research has shown a number of Scots who voted Yes in 2014, while not resiling from their position, are glad independence did not happen.

It is one thing to answer the question ‘are you proud to be a Scot?’ and say yes, and another to say, ‘what are Scotland’s best interests?’.

The question that Theresa May should implicitly pose in response to Scottish independence is: Why now?

Scotland is a proud nation which should make its own decisions. The present devolution settlement allows it to do that within the UK even if, ironically, the current SNP administration fails to make any meaningful change.

But however distressed many Scots are that the UK is leaving the EU, why make a clearly difficult situation worse?

The Nationalists have failed to answer the big questions they could not answer in 2014 on the currency, the deficit and the border. Instead they are trying to mask them behind the manufactured grievance of EU withdrawal.

The answer to uncertainty is not to create more.

That is a point which Theresa May’s government should make while she piles more resource into a movement to make the case for the Union.

No10 needs to listen more and think before it speaks.

The polls which it seems dangerously to set store by, will also tell No10 that many Scots think Scottish independence is inevitable in a decade or two.

They have to ask themselves why a nation that voted strongly to stay in the UK – and still wants to – thinks that.

It is because from a Scottish perspective 2014 was a battle. The separatists are continuing a war. The pro-Union side were the only signatories to the armistice that followed thereafter. The majority of Scots cannot see anyone fighting for them.

Theresa May has personally profited from David Cameron’s folly in calling the Brexit referendum when he did.

But a second Scottish independence referendum could be her undoing.

David Cameron feared being George III and ended up a defeated Napoleon.

While they fight their campaign in Europe, Theresa May and her team should think of Edward II – and shiver.