The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
SNP is tying itself in knots
There has been renewed hope in the SNP this week that the mess the UK has got itself into over Europe will further the cause of Scottish independence. Since June, when Britain voted to leave the EU but Scotland, by a large margin, opted to remain, the nationalists have hitched their separatist dreams to Brexit.
Scots, they believed, would be so incensed by their enforced removal from the European club that they would happily back the SNP’s revenge mission to break up the UK.
But this scenario did not unfold as hoped and, if anything, enthusiasm for a second independence referendum has waned, as voters north of the border came to realise that their relationship with the UK is more valuable than that with EU.
Lifeline However, the hearing of the Supreme Court on Monday has thrown the nationalists a lifeline, or so some of them believe.
The UK Government is trying to overturn a High Court ruling that the Prime Minister must seek MPs’ approval before triggering Article 50 and starting the Brexit process.
The Scottish Government is putting its oar in, arguing Holyrood should have a say, through a mechanism called a legislative consent motion (LCM).
If Scotland was granted the LCM it would vote against triggering Article 50, putting it on a collision course with Theresa May’s government.
This, said former First Minister Alex Salmond, would “result in a constitutional crisis” which “would put the Scottish Parliament, and in particular Nicola Sturgeon, in an incredibly powerful position”.
Now Salmond is au fait with parliamentary procedure, having served as an MP for many years before being re-elected in 2015. But he is not nearly so sure footed on politics these days.
Since returning to the Westminster backbenches he has repeatedly embarrassed his successor, once calling for a unilateral declaration of independence and generally misjudging the country’s mood.
He has done it again this week over Brexit.
A constitutional crisis, he claimed, would be good for Scotland, as if political upheaval was in the national interest.
Suffering Scotland has suffered enough from the uncertainty created in 2014 by the independence referendum.
It is surely no coincidence the Scottish economy is lagging behind the rest of the UK’s and that our housing market is sluggish in the wake of the political upheaval two years ago. Why would any more be good for us? In talking without thinking Salmond has admitted what many of us have long suspected: that the SNP is neither concerned with Europe or even with Scotland so long as its chief goal – breaking up Britain – is achieved.
But would the nationalists really welcome being backed into an indyref corner, as Salmond suggests? The crisis most likely to emerge would not be a constitutional one – he overestimates his party’s clout – but one within the SNP’s own ranks.
While Salmond was bragging in a BBC interview on Sunday that Scotland could easily go it alone in Europe (where has he been these past weeks?), a former party colleague was making a more serious point.
Jim Fairlie, once the SNP’s deputy leader, is the latest nationalist to speak out against the EU in what is becoming a major threat to party discipline.
He told a Sunday newspaper he would vote against independence if it meant keeping Scotland in the EU, and said many in the party felt the same way.
Opposition to rule by Brussels is as entrenched with some separatists as opposition to rule by Westminster, and they are beginning to find their voice.
Fairlie, who has long made his views on Europe known, said activists had been “frightened to say what they actually thought” on the matter, but maybe that will change as leading nationalists, including Jim Sillars and Alex Neil, speak out against the EU.
“By tying the second independence referendum to EU membership, it will split the movement right down the middle,” said Fairlie, “because there are far more SNP supporters who are just as opposed to the EU as they are to being a member of the UK.”
He said Sturgeon would lose a plebiscite now because people like him, a Scottish nationalist since he was 15, would vote No.
Leavers Up to six SNP MSPs are said to have voted for Brexit but won’t admit it, and some 400,000 SNP voters are thought to be Leavers too.
The SNP cannot take the support of this silent minority for granted forever. Sturgeon has been able to ride roughshod over the wishes of the electorate, who backed the union in 2014, because of the unquestioning loyalty of her party faithful.
If she loses her grip over them – and that doesn’t now seem so improbable – she will lose everything. It will then be Armageddon, but fortunately not for the constitution, or for Scotland.
Scotland has suffered enough from the uncertainty