Salmond: Second referendum lies in Nicola’s hands

A BRAZEN Alex Salmond has boasted a second referendum is ‘inevitable’ less than a year after independence was rejected by more than two million Scots.

The former First Minister, who failed in his separation bid last year, issued a list of moans he claims are pushing Scotland towards another vote.

And he contradicted nicola Sturgeon’s claim that the Scottish people will decide when and if there is another referendum – by admitting the decision rests with the First Minister herself.

Mr Salmond’s comments will horrify voters who decisively rejected independence.

Speaking on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, he said: ‘I think a second referendum is inevitable. It’s the timing, and that’s very much in the hands of nicola Sturgeon.’

Polls show support for the SNP soaring at

‘Timing is very much in Sturgeon’s hands’

60 per cent ahead of next year’s Holyrood election, but far less enthusiasm for another separation vote.

because of this, the SNP is keen to create the impression that the UK Government is forcing a referendum on unwilling Scots, rather than the nationalists doing so.

Mr Salmond said: ‘I can see three issues moving things towards a referendum at a timescale yet to be determined.

‘refusal to deliver the Vow – that’s not been delivered as yet.

‘Second is the european issue... where Scotland voted to stay in, but was dragged out by votes of people in england.

‘Third is the budget and Welfare bill. Instead of devo to the max we’re getting austerity to the max.

‘ That’s moving Scotland to another referendum.’

Miss Sturgeon has insisted it is for the people – rather than politicians – to decide if there will be another referendum, but in reality it will depend on whether she puts it in her 2016 Holyrood manifesto.

Scottish Secretary David Mundell has already warned the First Minister she must come clean with voters about her plans.

And now she also faces pressure from inside her party.

George Kerevan, nationalist MP for east Lothian, said: ‘It is an issue that cannot be ignored. The best thing would be for the leadership to come forward with some proposals on how to deal with it.

‘It cannot be left until the campaigning season i s well under way. We need clarity.’

Mr Salmond also suggested the SNP could form an alliance with Labour if hard-Left candidate Jeremy Corbyn wins the party’s leadership race.

When pressed over who he would prefer to win, the former SNP leader said it would be ‘easier’ to work with the Leftwinger in areas such as welfare, foreign affairs and defence.

The SNP’s opponents told Mr Salmond to stop disrespecting two million voters. Tory MSP Alex Johnstone said: ‘With Alex Salmond’s bullyboy tactics he’s determined to force independence on Scottish people.

‘However, the former First Minister can moan, haggle and make all the idle threats he wants, it won’t change the fact that the majority of Scots voted no last September.

‘Scotland has spoken. Voters rejected the break-up of the UK because they realised how bad it would be for our economy, defence and reputation abroad.’

Labour urged the SNP to focus on correcting failures in the police, health and education, instead of plotting another bid to break up britain.

Ian Murray, Shadow Scottish Secretary, said: ‘Alex Salmond’s priorities are all wrong.

‘Instead of obsessing about a re-run of a vote that took place less than a year ago, the SNP should focus on cleaning up the mess t hey have made of Scotland’s public services.’

MHAIRI Black, the 20year-old MP for Paisley and renfrewshire South, poster girl for the new generation of Nationalists, is perhaps the most prominent and intriguing new Member of Parliament.

She is, thanks to her youth, a worthy successor to Winnie Ewing and Margo MacDonald as the SNP’s torch-bearer. Her maiden speech in the Commons became a YouTube sensation and justifiably so.

She shows every sign of being more than just a one-hit wonder. She is, increasingly, the face of the new SNP. Good luck to her. That doesn’t mean she is right. For instance, her assertion that what’s been happening in Scotland ‘has nothing to do with nationalism’ seems to have been accepted by far too many people who should know better.

Granted, it is a mantra often trotted out by Yes voters who fear, with some reason, that nationalism carries any number of negative connotations.

Nevertheless it will not do. The clue, after all, is in the party’s name. It is the Scottish National Party.

But, sophists retort, it is not the Scottish Nationalist Party, is it?

This, like so much of the SNP’s rhetoric, is a piece of superficial, student union-style posturing.

Then you recall that the BNP – remember it? – stands for the British National Party and no one would argue, I think, that the BNP is not a nationalist party.

Nor would anyone claim Fianna Fail, those ‘Soldiers of Destiny’, is not a nationalist party in the republic of Ireland. This despite the fact that ‘nationalist’ does not appear anywhere in its formal name.

Disguise

Everything about the SNP is nationalist. That is the point of the party and no amount of obfuscation can disguise that reality.

A belief in independence is the only thing which holds the party together and so long as you believe in independence, you are welcome. Independence is the SNP’s only non-negotiable policy. You may disagree with policy on anything else so long as you sign up to the foundational creed.

This is fine and there is nothing inherently wrong, or even distasteful, about the idea of independence. But, please, can we at least have a modicum of honesty here and admit that, despite its protestations, the SNP is a nationalist movement?

A shared and fervent belief in independence is the only thing which allows a former investment banker such as Ian Blackford to be in the same party as a neo-Bennite like Mhairi Black.

Everything the SNP does is a means to an end. In the past 25 years the party has had three different policies on the currency that an independent Scotland should use.

First the party believed in an independent Scottish pound then, when the euro seemed a politically useful life-raft, the SNP advocated joining.

Events made the euro seem a disagreeable bet, however, and so the party pivoted to the notion of sharing sterling with the rump United Kingdom – even though, awkwardly, this would be something it would be in no position to deliver.

In each case, politics trumped economics. What mattered was what could be sold. The question was whether or not any given policy advanced the independence cause. If it did then fine; if not then it must be jettisoned.

All parties change their minds from time to time but most do so based on the merits of a policy not because it is now revealed as an awkward, disagreeable impediment on the road towards their ultimate goal.

But for the SNP everything and anything may be sacrificed if doing so moves Scotland closer to independence.

And the Nationalists have not gone away, you know. According to this newspaper’s opinion poll last week, 70 per cent of SNP voters want another referendum on independence before the end of this Parliament while 90 per cent want one within ten years. Officially, Nicola Sturgeon insists no referendum will be held until such time as she thinks it appropriate.

Until such time that she thinks the Nats are more likely to win than not. That time, she seems to think, is not now.

Officially, all her MPs and MSPs are supposed to be on board with this. Privately, however, they are not. Ask a new Nationalist MP if they want another referendum now and they will say no, of course not, the time is not yet right.

Ask them, though, if they fancy waiting more than a decade for another crack at independence and they will say certainly not. As Miss Black says: ‘I’d have another referendum tomorrow.’

This should not surprise anyone. Colin Keir, the party’s MSP for Edinburgh Western, made it clear in a leaflet seeking backing as a candidate for next year’s Holyrood elections. As he put it: ‘We need the maximum number of MSPs elected in 2016 to win a second independence referendum.’

Mr Keir is hardly alone. Alex Salmond – remember him? – yesterday told the BBC that he thinks ‘a second referendum is inevitable. The question is not the inevitability, it is the timing’.

Everything the SNP does should be understood in this context. Conveniently, this obsession with independence allows it to dodge all responsibility for any and every failure on its watch.

Wrong

Sure, the SNP will say, our schools are not as good as they should be and, sure, the NHS is creaking at the seams – but all these things will be solved after independence. Equally, everything that works now will work even better after independence.

If that means pursuing the ‘wrong’ policies then so be it. The SNP is happy to do so if that’s what it takes to inch the country closer to independence.

Kenny MacAskill, the former Justice Secretary, admitted recently that he was, on the issue of voting rights for prisoners, content to see ‘the wrong thing done, albeit for the right reasons’. That reason, you see, was to ‘avoid any needless distractions in the run-up to the referendum’.

There is no need to delude ourselves about the true nature of the SNP. Its constitution is clear. The first aim is ‘independence for Scotland’. The second is ‘the furtherance of all Scottish interests’.

But what if the second conflicts with the first? Well, the SNP is clear that independence comes first. That, my friends, is dogma and Nationalist dogma at that.

The SNP wraps itself in the Saltire and suggests there’s something almost treacherous about its opponents. Only the Nationalists ‘Stand for Scotland’ and, by implication, Unionists do not.

As civic nationalism goes this is pretty ethnic. It is the unavoidably ugly side of nationalism.