Like the shark that must constantly move, nationalists have to believe victory is just ahead
AFRIEND has informed me he has decided to move out of Scotland. he fears the country is heading towards independence and wants to sell his house before the bottom falls out of the property market.
he fears for his children’s education in an independent Scotland where the severest austerity would become the norm for a decade or more.
More tellingly, he fears for his wife, who is english, and who feels increasingly uncomfortable in a country where Saltire-waving nationalists dictate to the rest of us what being Scottish means.
But it was his next comment that struck me hardest: ‘And even if they lose a second referendum, Indyref 3 starts next day!’
My friend was right, of course. It’s a sobering thought that there will never come a time when Scottish nationalists are not campaigning for independence.
every setback, every pitfall is merely another chance to redouble efforts to try again.
When Alex Salmond gave his valedictory speech as First Minister in the aftermath of his side’s defeat in the independence referendum campaign in September 2014, his words were seen merely as poetic grandstanding: ‘The dream shall never die.’
In fact, Salmond was giving us fair warning that he would never accept the democratic decision made by the Scottish people – not until they agreed with him.
There are many things that Salmond’s successor as First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, wishes she had not said.
‘Judge me on my education record’ is undoubtedly one of them, for obvious reasons.
But repeatedly promising the electorate and the media that the 2014 referendum was a ‘once in a generation’ opportunity is undoubtedly the one she regrets most bitterly (and let’s not even think about her regrets over promising that the vote was a ‘once in a lifetime’ event).
It is obvious why she said it, and it is equally obvious why she didn’t mean it. She said it because she needed to get nationalist voters out to the polling stations.
If they were left with the impression that a second opportunity to vote for independence might be along in a few years, they might have been tempted to stay at home on polling day.
Of course, she and her party were always going to demand another referendum.
As soon as the results were known, nationalists started discussing how and when the next vote would be.
Sturgeon, on the first anniversary of the 2014 vote, announced her next holyrood manifesto would set out the ‘triggers’ for a second go.
Think about that – one year after promising a ‘once in a generation’ vote, she was laying the groundwork for a second referendum.
Rejection
Make no mistake: if Boris Johnson caves in to spineless advisers who warn him that a nationalist majority at holyrood next month must mean another independence referendum, and if the result of that referendum is another rejection of separatism, the SNP will set out, within months, how they intend to trigger a third vote. And a fourth. And a fifth… This is what nationalism does. This is what it’s about.
A nationalist movement that isn’t encouraging its activists to prepare for another attempt at independence is a movement without reason to exist.
As a shark must constantly move forward to go on living, the nationalist movement must always believe that victory is just ahead.
The 2014 result was, to them, no more than a setback, not the freely expressed democratic will of Scotland.
And it matters not to them the damage they do to their own country’s economy and international reputation when the rest of the world sees the 2014 result is being ignored or discarded.
Ah, they say, the EU referendum changed everything. No one saw that coming, no one anticipated Scotland voting by a majority to remain in the EU while Britain as a whole voted to leave.
except that is another lie. ‘Scotland’s Future’, the socalled White Paper, produced at public expense to promote the Yes campaign during the referendum, explicitly stated that an independent Scotland would ‘not be taken out of the EU against our wishes, as may turn out to be the case if we are not independent’.
In other words, we were warned repeatedly and explicitly by the SNP and the Yes movement that the EU referendum planned by the Conservatives might result in Scotland being ‘taken out of the EU against our wishes’.
Scots understood that warning, and rejected it in favour of remaining in the UK.
But even before the EU referendum in June 2016, Sturgeon herself warned that either the UK Government’s renewal of the Trident nuclear weapons system or the continuation of austerity would also justify a second referendum.
Basically, within one short year, Sturgeon went from promising voters that the upheaval of a constitutional referendum would be a rare event, to telling us that such a referendum could be held whenever anyone anywhere did something she didn’t approve of.
To an extent, Sturgeon cannot be entirely blamed for her behaviour.
She understands her party only too well and recognises that if she were seen, even fleetingly, to accept the democratic decision of Scots in the 2014 referendum, she would be looking for a new job within minutes.
To the SNP, the prize of independence is far more important than democracy.
The only point of the SNP is to campaign constantly and relentlessly for independence; the notion that it should respect a free and democratic referendum in which its fellow Scots rejected their vision of independence is anathema to party members.
They believe as an article of faith that the correct answer to the question on the ballot paper seven years ago, ‘Should Scotland be an independent country?’, was ‘Yes’.
If Scots gave the ‘wrong’ answer, then they must be given another chance to get it right, like exam resits.
except you only get one chance to resit your highers; the SNP will give us as many chances as we need to get it ‘right’.
Integrity
And in all of this, the one thing that is ignored is the rest of the country.
Independence would have a devastating impact on the international reputation of the UK.
Countries have the right to defend their territorial integrity.
They have the right to expect a constitutional issue to be settled, especially after a free and fair referendum delivered its result.
Most other democratic countries with annoying nationalist movements defend their constitutions robustly.
To many of them, allowing even a single referendum on breaking up their country would be a shocking concession.
But to surrender twice? Within a short space of time? Unthinkable.
Why should the United Kingdom be forced to go through all that again just because a small majority of Scots (at the moment) seem to support an option they decisively rejected just a few years ago?
An unending series of independence referendums might satisfy nationalists, but it would devastate and divide Scottish society and make Scotland and the UK international laughing stocks.
It is time that Sturgeon was held to her own promises.
Just because she didn’t mean them at the time is no reason to forget that they were made.