Nicola’s Speyside summit may give us all a hangover
ACOUPLE of weeks ago, with the snow swirling around the Cairngorms, Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP leadership team gathered in a Speyside hotel for a highly secretive, extremely important meeting. But the group – a tight gathering of a few MSPs, MPs and party officials – did not see the snow. They were locked in meetings for two days, thrashing out where the party needed to go and how to get there.
It was, according to SNP sources, a pretty brutal affair. Everyone was allowed their say, no matter who they offended or what they said.
This is not the first time the SNP leadership has locked itself away for a weekend to ‘right the ship’. It came together in similar fashion in 2011 when the party was in danger of losing the election to Labour.
That get-together – one of several known as the Craigellachie Meetings – is largely credited with helping win the SNP that year’s election – and party figures hope this year’s gathering will reverse the faltering progress to independence.
I understand no definitive decisions were taken on a referendum, whether on the timing or the question – or questions – that will be asked.
Party leaders have, however, decided that this referendum, when it comes, has to be different from the last one – in everything, including its name. They hate the phrase Indyref 2, which has been used by media and politicians for months now. They want to rebrand the coming vote as ‘Indyrefnew’.
Senior party figures are desperate to avoid a rerun of the last referendum – not least because they lost. They believe that, if the next referendum is locked into the same arguments as last time, if it is simply Indyref 2, the electorate will turn off and the result may be the same.
They want to cast the new vote as a whole new event, with a new context, new arguments and a potentially new outcome – hence Indyrefnew.
Now, whether they can do this is open to question, not least because the Unionists will do their damnedest to make sure the new referendum is seen as a repeat of the first one.
What the Nats will do is launch a concerted effort to call the vote Indyrefnew in public statements, on social media and in speeches to cement this ‘new referendum’ idea in the public consciousness.
There is, apparently, a wider aim in rebranding the referendum: to turn the old arguments used by the Unionists against them. The Nationalists are acutely aware that, in 2014, the Unionists pushed the message of a ‘safe and secure’ status quo and a ‘risky’ break with independence.
With Brexit on the horizon, the SNP wants to reverse that theme, portraying the United Kingdom as the ‘risky’ option as it heads out of the EU and independence as the ‘safe’ harbour. There is also a strong strand of opinion within the party which wants to do something to attract those who voted Yes in 2014 but then voted Leave in 2016.
The answer, according to some, is to pause Scotland’s charge to get back into the EU, to park us – perhaps temporarily – as a ‘new Norway’, halfway in Europe and halfway in the UK.
UNDER these plans, Scotland would be independent and inside the single market – but outside the EU. Scotland would be outside the customs union – so would be able to trade across an open border with the rest of the UK.
This would allow the Nationalists to deflect two of the main Unionist arguments: that Scotland would be abandoning its main UK market and would struggle to get back into the EU. Ironically, this ‘halfway house’ may attract many wavering voters, enough perhaps to carry the referendum, but is also likely to find its fiercest
WILLIE Rennie likes to cultivate a reputation for saying it like it is. But even for the Scottish Lib Dem leader, it was something of a surprise when he said on live TV last week: ‘I don’t know whether you can
resistance from diehard SNP members.
The currency is another area where the SNP will attempt to reset the agenda, ditching the much-derided policy of sticking with sterling and backing a separate Scottish pound, pegged to either the euro or the UK pound.
But this remains the biggest weakness of the SNP case – and the leadership knows it. They are aware of how difficult it will be to resist the simple challenge of Unionists who flag up the danger of losing the pound we have had in our pockets for 300 years.
It is also understood that, at this latest Craigellachie Meeting, quite a lot of drink was taken – a distraction no doubt helped by being in the middle of Speyside.
What millions of Scots will be worried about, however, is that they are the ones who are left with the hangover.
tell from the campaign last May, but I love myself.’ What he meant to say was he loved campaigning – but in making this slip, he probably confirmed what many people believe about all politicians.