Let Sturgeon have her referendum and send the SNP packing for good

The First Minister would rather stoke nationalist grievances than make the actual case for separation

In his memoir For the Record, David Cameron recalled the thinking in government in 2011 after the Scottish National Party had won a majority in the Holyrood parliament. “While I could understand the desire to avoid a referendum, I thought it would be a much bigger gamble to thwart it,” he wrote. “The sense of grievance against a distant, out-oftouch government at Westminster would only grow and be the fuel the SNP needed to turn an unlikely vote for independence into a near certainty.”

So the Coalition agreed what is called a Section 30 order under the Scotland Act 1998 and effectively gave up the power reserved to the UK parliament to allow the referendum to proceed. In 2014, Cameron’s judgment was vindicated when the Scots voted 55 per cent to 45 in favour of staying in the Union.

Yet here we are again, just eight years later, with another Conservative prime minister confronted with the same dilemma. Only this time, Boris Johnson is not minded to do what his predecessor did and agree to the request – nay, demand – from Nicola Sturgeon to allow a referendum lawfully to proceed.

This is potentially a grave mistake and, as Cameron observed, possibly one fatal to the Union. Scotland’s First Minister unveiled her battle plan at Holyrood yesterday and it is clearly based on that sense of constitutional grievance the former prime minister foresaw.

Rather than challenge head-on the case for an independent Scotland, this will become a messy argument about the refusal of an English-dominated parliament to let the Scots have a say over their own destiny. Ms Sturgeon rehearsed all of her best tunes as she set out the arguments. The SNP has a mandate, she said – although, strictly speaking, it doesn’t because it did not win a majority in last year’s elections and governs with the pro-independence Greens.

Scotland has a right to selfdetermination and any attempt to deny it comes ill from a Government denouncing the territorial aggression of other countries like Russia, she added. This is a bit far-fetched but it is true that Scotland is a nation that voluntarily pooled its sovereignty with England in the Acts of Union of 1707 and is not, as some appear to believe, a troublesome northern region of England.

The circumstances that brought about the union of the parliaments in 1707, more than 100 years after the Crowns were joined under James V1 and I, are well-known. Scotland was effectively bankrupted by an ill-starred attempt to match the East India Company’s trading success by investing heavily in a malaria-infested swampland in Panama. The venture was backed by around a fifth of all the money circulating in Scotland and its failure left the entire Lowlands in financial ruin.

Were Scotland to regain independence, it would risk a similar fate. At least in the past the SNP could make a case for economic prosperity by relying on the proceeds of what they called “Scotland’s oil” even if they exaggerated the likely revenues that would accrue. But the SNP and the Greens are against extracting this black gold and the gas from the seas around Scotland’s shores, so that model is broken.

An independent Scotland would seek to rejoin the EU, but that is problematic given Spain’s unwillingness to encourage its own separatists in Catalonia, where an illegal referendum was staged in 2017. Madrid would almost certainly veto Scotland’s application. (Incidentally, as foreign secretary in 2017, Mr Johnson backed the Spanish government’s decision to “uphold the constitution” and declined to criticise the deployment of the Guardia Civil to try to stop people voting in the Catalan plebiscite.)

If the Scots did join the EU, there would need to be a border between England and Scotland to stop goods entering the single market (cf the Northern Ireland Protocol), which would make little sense given that 60 per cent of its business is with its southern neighbour. This is the firm, pragmatic territory on which the argument over independence needs to be fought, not on the shifting sands of constitutional propriety. A positive case also needs to be made for the Union that recognises the pull of nationalism. It is possible to feel more Scottish than British but still want to be part of the UK.

This is the “heart and head” point made during the last referendum campaign by Gordon Brown, the former Labour prime minister. It can’t all be about the pocket, but the looming recession and double-digit inflation will prove a strong antidote to separatist inclinations.

The only counter-narrative that Mr Johnson is able to muster is that it is too soon after the 2014 referendum, which the SNP said was a “once in a lifetime” event. This may well be true but “now is not the time” is not a sufficiently robust response to Ms Sturgeon’s accusation that he is “thwarting the will of the people”.

In her speech in Edinburgh, the SNP leader conceded that the process leading to independence had to be “indisputably lawful”, otherwise its legitimacy would continue to be questioned. The new Bill containing both the question to be asked and a referendum date of October 19 next year would be deemed illegal without a Section 30 order, so Ms Sturgeon has referred it to the Supreme Court for a ruling.

This is a gamble, but only up to a point. If the court comes down on her side, it would put Mr Johnson in a serious quandary. If it rules against her then she will just say that proves that Scotland is a vassal state and fight a general election on the single issue of independence.

Mr Johnson may think it does him no harm in the eyes of English voters to be seen to face down the SNP leader, but he risks the future of the Union if he misjudges her ability to tap into a bottomless reservoir of perceived injustices. Ms Sturgeon is prepared to paint her face blue and turn this debate into a sub-braveheart cry for freedom, rekindling all the old myths (and some real episodes, it must be said) of Scotland being done down by the perfidious English. Mr Johnson must not let her get away with it. Let her have the referendum and send the separatists packing once and for all.

It can’t all be about the pocket, although the double-digit inflation will prove a strong antidote to separatist inclinations