Scottish separatists adopt Parti Quebecois strategy

Salmond considers convoluted ‘ Devo- Max’ option rather than a simple Yes or No

Knowing that he can’t win a straightforward independence referendum, the separatist leader of Scotland’s government, Alex Salmond, is turning to the play book of the Parti Quebecois and promoting a weasel- word question.

With polls showing 54 per cent of Scots don’t want to sever the legal union with England created in 1707, Salmond plans to offer voters a Hibernian version of “sovereignty association” called “Devo- Max.”

Maximum devolution envisages the Scottish parliament and government taking responsibility for administering all aspects of the country and its 5.2 million people except foreign affairs and defence.

The suspicion is that Salmond, widely regarded as the most canny and able politician in British public life today, figures, like Rene Levesque before him, that Devo- Max is a confidencebuilding halfway house making inevitable the ultimate separation of Scotland and the breaking up of the United Kingdom.

Salmond announced last week that his government plans to hold a referendum in 2014 offering voters a choice of continued union with England, complete independence or DevoMax.

In this he is fulfilling a promise made during last year’s election for the Scottish Parliament, which opened in 1999 as part of a devolution policy instituted by then- British prime minister Tony Blair.

Salmond’s Scottish Nationalist Party ( SNP) won a clear victory, but as with the PQ, success in a provincial election has not translated into majority public support for the separatist agenda.

Much of the debate now going on in Britain and the issues being dissected will be familiar to Canadians.

Less than an hour after Salmond promised a referendum “made, built, and run in Scotland,” Michael Moore, the Scottish secretary in the government of Prime Minister David Cameron in London, said, in effect, not so fast.

Moore produced legal opinions saying that Salmond and the Scottish government do not have the power to call a legally binding referendum. Only the British government can do that.

Salmond is at liberty to hold a referendum, said Moore, but it will only be a public- opinion poll. Any attempt to act on the referendum result would be challenged in the Supreme Court in London.

But Moore held out the possibility, backed by Cameron, of Westminster conferring power on the Scottish government to hold a valid referendum. That power would, of course, come with strings attached.

One is that there would be no Devo- Max question. Cameron’s government, and, indeed, parliamentarians of all stripes in London, want a simple Yes or No question.

They are confident that at this point Scots would vote no, but London is suspicious of Salmond’s plan to hold the referendum in 2014, probably late in the year.

The thought is that Salmond wants time to work his undoubted political magic on the Scottish voters to give the SNP its best chance of a pro- independence vote or a win for Devo- Max, which can be paraded as a victory for separation.

Cameron has said that if there is to be a referendum, then it ought to be held as soon as possible — within 18 months.

But he has also raised all kinds of questions which could flow from a proindependence vote in Scotland that will be familiar to Canadians.

The British prime minister has warned Salmond not to be so fast with his assumptions when he envisages an independent Scotland carrying on using the British pound as its currency.

There’s the matter of dividing up ownership of North Sea oil. And there’s a big debate over whether Scotland now is a net recipient of revenue from London, and, if so, how much of these subsidies should be paid back on independence.

In this debate Conservative Party leader Cameron has an unexpected ally in Ed Miliband, leader of the opposition Labour Party.

While the Conservatives have only one MP from Scotland in the British Parliament, Labour has 41, an important segment of their 256 seats in Westminster.

Labour has a strong following in Scotland and Miliband’s Scots can be expected to be vocal proponents of a No vote. Not least of the reasons is that if Scotland does separate before the next British election, Cameron and his minority Tories would no longer need an alliance with the Liberal-Democrats to stay in power. They will have a majority.