Sturgeon hopes to strike before her dream slips away from her
Nicola Sturgeon has been running out of time not to hold a referendum. Her personal approval rating, once stellar, has been falling for months. Her party has governed Scotland for 10 years now, with results that do not make the case for independence.
The SNP lost its majority at the last Scottish Parliament election, and now relies upon the Greens to vote for a rerun of the 2014 referendum. Even this majority might vanish at the next Holyrood election so it makes perfect sense for Ms Sturgeon to strike now, demanding another referendum within two years. It makes less sense for Theresa May to agree.
Ms Sturgeon’s strategy is fairly simple: to trap the Prime Minister in a vice between the opponents of Brexit and her resurgent nationalists.
Ms Sturgeon has calculated that this is best done in 2019, when the terms of Brexit are being absorbed by a Scotland that didn’t vote for it – but even this is a huge gamble. Brexit has recruited strikingly few to the SNP’s cause; polls have usually shown support for independence at about 45 per cent. Nor is there appetite in Scotland for yet another referendum; a recent poll found that just one in four voters wanted to reopen a question that Ms Sturgeon herself had promised would be put “once in a generation”.
But never again might she face such weak opposition. The Scottish Labour party is in disarray, a danger only to
itself. The Scottish Tories have a popular leader in Ruth Davidson, but even she can’t win a referendum by herself.
The SNP, by contrast, has an army of supporters, most of whom signed up after the referendum defeat hoping for precisely this rematch. The coming local elections will almost certainly see Glasgow fall to the SNP, a result unthinkable not so long ago.
From the moment she entered No 10, Mrs May has been mindful that she might end up fighting two battles – one for Brexit and the other for Britain. She flew to Scotland two days after becoming Prime Minister, taking nothing for granted.
The risk has long been obvious: England voted to leave the EU but Scotland voted to stay, presenting the SNP with the perfect grounds for divorce. Mrs May has been painfully aware of how badly Unionists campaign: the Project Fear campaign of blood-curdling barely-plausible threats, which backfired so badly in the EU referendum, was pioneered in Scotland. It inspired tens of thousands to join the SNP.
The Unionists still have the best arguments. Since 2014, the oil price has collapsed. Even the Scottish Government’s own figures show it would have no chance of balancing its books. This isn’t a question of whether Scotland could be independent; if Andorra can, Scotland can. But the price for this would be sado-austerity on a scale similar to that inflicted on Ireland after the crash of 2007. How many would vote for that?
Nor, in spite of what Ms Sturgeon says, is Brexit the casus belli. It has given her a technical excuse for a referendum but it has not transformed the debate. Two in five Scots supported Brexit, as did half of England. A difference, yes, but hardly an irreconcilable one. And to many, Brexit magnifies the uncertainties that separation would bring.
The great SNP deception is to talk about Scots as if their – our – priorities are fundamentally different from those of the English. In fact, the differences are small and narrowing all of the time.
The British Social Attitudes Survey shows more divergence of opinion between south-east and south-west England than between Scotland and England. On immigration, welfare, university fees, tax and spending, even thinking that the world would be better if foreigners were “more like the British”, views north and south of the border are strikingly similar. We speak the same two main languages (English and Polish), watch the same TV shows, share a history, a world view and a job-creating economy that’s the envy of Europe. Three years ago, the Unionist side felt it didn’t have time to make the positive case – hence the relentless, shameless negativity. Now there is, at least, more time and how much more is in Mrs May’s hands.
To deny a vote, as Madrid does when the Catalans ask for one, is not the British way. But Mrs May can suggest a later time, when the trajectory of Brexit is clearer. She could even ask that, if Ms Sturgeon is to plunge Scotland into another referendum, the SNP seeks a firm mandate in a new Holyrood election.
“None but a mad fool would have fought that day,” said the aged Lord Lovat as he faced the axe after Culloden. One side had troops and supplies ready, the other side was in disarray. Similarly, it would be madness for Mrs May to agree to a referendum at a moment that suits the SNP. Deciding the timing is perhaps the greatest weapon at her disposal. Given the pitiful state of the Unionist parties in Scotland, she had best use it well.