PM REJECTS NEW
Sturgeon’s independence plea thwarted in ‘last act’ by Boris
BORIS Johnson has formally rejected Nicola Sturgeon’s demand for an independence referendum next year.
The Prime Minister yesterday wrote to the SNP leader to confirm he would not grant the power to hold an independence referendum next October.
Miss Sturgeon dismissed the move, saying it could be one of his final acts as Prime Minister. In his letter, Mr Johnson said ‘now is not the time’ to return to the question of Scotland’s future within the UK.
The Prime Minister wrote: ‘I have carefully considered the arguments you set out for a transfer of power from the UK Parliament to the Scottish parliament to hold another referendum on independence. As our country faces unprecedented challenges at home and abroad, I cannot agree that now is the time to return to a question, which was answered by the people of Scotland in 2014.
‘Our shared priorities must be to respond effectively to the global cost of living challenge, to support our NHS and public services as they recover from the huge disruption of the Covid19 pandemic, and to play our leading part in the international response to Russian aggression in Ukraine.’
The Scottish Government has asked the Supreme Court to rule on whether it can hold a referendum without the consent of the UK Government.
In a major blow to Miss Sturgeon, it was revealed earlier this week that the Lord Advocate Dorothy Bain refused to give her support to plans to legislate for a referendum next year.
She said she ‘does not have the necessary degree of confidence’ the legislation is within the legislative competence of Holyrood.
Responding to Mr Johnson’s letter on social media, Miss Sturgeon claimed it could be ‘one of his last acts as PM’. She said: ‘To be clear, Scotland will have the opportunity to choose independence, I hope in a referendum on 19 October 2023 but, if not, through a general election. Scottish democracy will not be a prisoner of this or any PM.’
Scottish Labour constitution spokesman Sarah Boyack said: ‘The people of Scotland are being failed by an SNP government at Holyrood that is obsessed with separation and an imploding and corrupt Tory government at Westminster.
‘Boris Johnson and Nicola Sturgeon are two sides of the same coin.
‘Neither the Tories nor the SNP are focused on tackling the cost of living crisis or rebuilding our services from the pandemic, and both are damaging the future of devolution.’
Scottish Secretary Alister Jack also yesterday rejected Miss Sturgeon’s claim the SNP winning a majority of votes at the next general election would be a mandate for independence or lead to the UK Government approving a referendum.
Miss Sturgeon has set out her ambition to declare independence if nationalists win more than half of the votes at the next election if she is unable to hold a lawful referendum.
But Mr Jack compared the desire to turn an election into a vote on breaking up the United Kingdom with the SNP’s inability to remove the nuclear deterrent from Scotland.
Yesterday he said: ‘General elections aren’t for that purpose, general elections are about a myriad of issues as we know.
‘Nicola Sturgeon can no more put in her manifesto that she’s going to remove Trident from the Clyde, which is entirely reserved – which she’s done in the past, but she’s never removed Trident from the Clyde – than she can put in a manifesto that she’s going to break up the United Kingdom.
‘That isn’t how general elections work and if the Supreme Court have already said that’s out of scope, people will draw their own conclusions.’
Reacting to the Lord Advocate’s submission to the Supreme Court in which she admitted she believed it may not be lawful for the Scottish Government to re-run the 2014 vote without Westminster’s consent, Mr Jack argued that it was ‘crystal clear’ it did not have the power.
He said that he believed the Lord Advocate could not tell the Scottish Government that a referendum was lawful ‘with a clear conscience’.
‘It’s always been clear in the Scotland Act that certain matters – nuclear being one and absolutely the Constitution being another – are wholly reserved, to the parliament in Westminster,’ Mr Jack said.
‘She clearly didn’t feel she could bring forward a Bill, so we end up in the scenario where the Supreme Court now have to make that decision.’
‘Question was answered in 2014’
THE oddest thing about Nicola Sturgeon’s latest bid to hold an independence referendum on October 19 next year is that no one is talking about it. It never pops up on Facebook streaming. You never overhear related conversation down the shops. My parents, with whom nightly I dine, have not brought it up once, nor have any friends sent as much as a text message.
The chief reason, of course, is that no one – probably not even the First Minister herself – believes the plebiscite will actually happen.
Indeed last night, in what may prove the last significant act of his premiership, Boris Johnson politely said no.
The constitution of the United Kingdom is, after all, a matter reserved to Westminster and a binding independence poll is simply not within Holyrood’s competence or gift.
A low-fat ‘consultative’ referendum would be a waste of time: the parties of the Union would simply refuse to engage with it. Nor are we in anything like the same political weather Alex Salmond enjoyed after unexpectedly winning the SNP an overall majority in the 2011 Scottish parliament election.
The Nationalists have not been able to repeat that feat and the SNP administration no longer enjoys a reputation for unity, amity and competence.
They have lost the big moral argument for the poll that took place in 2014 – that the question had never actually been put to the Scottish people – and both Salmond and Sturgeon variously described that referendum as a ‘once in a generation’ or ‘once in a lifetime’ opportunity.
That it has, from Miss Sturgeon’s perspective, proved a curiously short lifetime, only reminds us this latest wheeze is not about popular sentiment or the common weal, but her own urgent problems of internal party management.
She has, after all, been First Minister for nearly seven years. In that time, the Nationalists have not lost one national election. We have had Brexit, we are not out of the Covid woods, a cost of living crisis is upon us – prosecco is already cheaper than a tub of Lurpak – and Mr Johnson has reduced Whitehall to a frat-house farce.
SNP activists, then, simply itch to tug the claymores from the thatch. But Miss Sturgeon is a supremely cautious politician. It is her greatest strength – if, arguably, also her greatest weakness – and she is smart enough to know that one thing that would assuredly kill off Scottish independence for a long, long time is a second referendum defeat too soon after the first.
WE need only look across the Atlantic. In the 1970s, the rabid francophones of the Parti Québécois seemed to be on the brink of sundering Canada.
But they lost a referendum on the independence of Quebec in 1980 – and then, if by a whisker, again, in 1995.
Much worse, from the perspective of Miss Sturgeon and her nervous Nellies, the Parti Québécois was in 2003 dumped from power after its third stretch of provincial government. In 2018, it came third, with only ten seats.
The parallel can only be taken so far – the SNP, unlike its Montreal cousin, has never been a party of ethnic and cultural nationalism – but anyone with a long view back over Scottish politics knows that no party, however dominant, is immortal. We decisively dumped the Liberals in 1922 and, in the past decade, have reduced Scottish Labour to a whimpering rump. A similar tide of anger may yet, one day, do for the SNP.
There are new complications today, too, unlike the political landscape in 2014.
For one, the SNP has foolishly coupled the achievement of independence with our return, as a new state, to the clutches of the European Union.
Indeed, at the First Minister’s express decree, the EU flag still flies outside the Scottish parliament – yes, the standard of an organisation we left more than two years ago.
But, again, resuming our seat in Brussels is not in the Scottish Government’s gift.
Scotland’s membership would have to be approved by every EU member state – some of which, remember, face secessionist movements of their own – and it would be on eye-wateringly difficult terms.
Scotland would, for instance, have to sign up to the euro, agonisingly balance its budget – there would be serious cuts in health spending and social security – and then deal in cross-border terms with the residual United Kingdom.
Which, by the way, is 60 per cent of all our international trade – now to be done on terms that would make the Irish protocol look like a Sunday school outing – even as, for instance, Brussels took complete control of Scotland’s fishing waters. Good luck selling that in Banff and Buchan.
And we have not even started on Westminster’s part in all this – admittedly, not the easiest of exercises at an excessively exciting juncture in Westminster politics.
BUT no Conservative prime minister, whoever it is by the time the autumn leaves lie thick and still, is lightly going to concede a binding referendum on independence in any circumstances, and certainly not when, save for some optimistic months a couple of winters ago, polls show most Scots do not want it.
Indeed, given what befell David Cameron, it may be decades before a prime minister of any hue will chance a referendum on anything.
Time may be on the SNP’s side, if it is only patient. The Nationalists came close to another Holyrood overall majority last May. At every Scottish parliament election so far, they have gained more constituency seats, just as Labour invariably drops some.
The trouble is that time is not on Miss Sturgeon’s side. There are already hopeful murmurs – especially in the ranks of her own party – about some exciting new role for her on the international stage.
And, although still only 51, she has been at the front and centre of this Nationalist administration since it first won the seals of office in 2007. Kindly as we are, even the nicest of electorates begins to tire of the same old face. Traits once endearing become an irritant – the little tosses of the head, the hiccupy chuckle, the latest cinched and block-coloured Totty Rocks twin-set. Slowly, implacably, but surely, the First Minister’s political sun already sets in the west.
There is a case for an independent Scotland – if it were made honestly. Visit the Republic of Ireland and you do not find its denizens going about in rags, or toiling in the fields gathering filth.
You are struck by the neatness of their houses, their proud and often very pretty towns, the strong sense of community, the cleanliness of their streets and the singular lack of vandalism.
The Irish would not for a moment return to the United Kingdom. But the Republic has no NHS. Rural Ireland has no refuse collection service. Every time you want to see your GP, you have to pay them – the charge ranges from 45 to 65 euros – and medical care is only free for children under six and adults over 70.
That is not because our Celtic cousins are a bunch of Cruella de Vils, but because the Irish tax base could not support an NHS. Oh, and did we mention that they tax your pooch? Fido will cost you 20 euros a year.
Scottish realities, one suspects, are very similar. But the independence referendum, at least on this occasion, is the dog that will not bark.