Unionism won the battle but it has certainly lost the peace

A year ago, Scotland said No to separation in what we were promised was a once in a lifetime decision. So how did it come to pass that the SNP now leads a virtual one-party state... and the UK is in as much peril as ever?

NEXT to a battle lost, as the Duke of Wellington observed, a battle won is the most melancholy thing on Earth. When the hue and cry is over, a kind of emotional exhaustion sets in. Politics is sometimes little other than war by other, mercifully peaceful, means – and nowhere has that been more evidently the case than Scotland in the past 12 months. Even victory comes at a dreadful price.

September 18, 2014 was a day like none other in our nation’s history. The independence referendum was a ‘once in a lifetime’ opportunity to determine Scotland’s course. It is impossible to write this without a sardonic chuckle, for we know better now.

We know that the referendum settled nothing. We know now that Scotland’s future remains unwon and unlost in equal measure. We are defined, now as never before, by our attitude to the National Question. This, not traditional measures of Left and Right, now dominates our politics.

Any joy Unionists felt when the first results came in a year ago – results which made it clear Scotland was minded to vote No to independence – proved fleeting. The overwhelming reaction to the referendum in Unionist circles was a deep sense of relief. This was followed, in many places, by a certain resentment of those who had dared to ask the question in the first place.

Bitterness trumped conciliation in the bloodied aftermath of the referendum and that festering sense of disgruntlement has not dissipated in the months since. If anything, it has increased.

For much of its history, the Union was largely an abstract concept for Scots. Indeed, for decades, Scotland was largely left to its own devices. The Union brought prosperity and security, and politics, on the whole, took a back seat. It was something that happened somewhere else.

That is no longer the case. Politics is now, in Scotland, inescapable. No wonder some find it suffocating. Everything – from the newspaper you read to whether you pay the television licence fee – is now viewed through a political and constitutional prism.

Paradoxically, defeat was easier for Nationalists to bear. The day was lost but the cause endured. The dream remains, just as for Unionists the nightmare continues. Indeed, for many Nationalists, the fires of ‘liberation’ burn more fiercely than ever. Defeat was a setback, but far from terminal. The SNP, after all, had known many bleaker days than this – and the Nationalist movement retains the consolation of suspecting that joy deferred might prove twice as sweet.

So no wonder it has become commonplace to observe that the losers have become winners and the winners losers. Unionism won the battle but lost the peace. Far from being weakened by the referendum defeat, the SNP has been strengthened in ways and to a degree that has astonished even the party’s keenest partisans.

Nearly 100,000 Scots raced to join the party in the immediate aftermath of the plebiscite and the party has scarcely looked back since. The SNP’s landslide victory in May’s General Election was not a surprise – though the scale of its triumph shocked even its l eadership. Even Labour, in the long years of its own tartan ascendancy, never won 56 of 59 seats.

The election did something else, however. It made a star of Nicola Sturgeon. Though she had served as Alex Salmond’s deputy for a decade and could not in all conscience be considered a fresh face, Miss Sturgeon’s ascent to the leadership seemed like the chance for a fresh start, one that would allow for a period of healing after the bruising experience of the referendum.

THOUGH the new First Minister’s tone offered a welcome contrast with her bumptious predecessor, the idea of a new beginning has proven illusory. Unionists, who came so close to losing their country last September, are not ready to move on. Nationalists are happy to do so if, that is, moving on means edging towards a second referendum.

A once in a lifetime opportunity does not mean what you think it means and a generation in Scotland is, these days, a mighty short thing.

The National Question still dominates. How could it not? The aftershocks of this great a nd s o metimes di zz y i ng national disputation continue to be felt. An SNP victory in May might have been predicted but few people truly thought Mhairi Black, still an under- graduate at Glasgow University, could topple Douglas Alexander in Paisley. Few foresaw that Michael Moore might lose his seat, not to the Tories, but to the SNP.

The SNP landslide, likely to be repeated at the Holyrood election next May, obscured an iron reality, however. Scotland no more speaks as one today than she did last September. The country has not yet made up its mind where its future lies.

Unionism has been so thoroughly battered since the referendum that it takes an effort to remember that Unionism did prevail only a year ago. The SNP’s dominance of the political landscape obscures the fact that half the country remains i mplacably opposed to the Nationalists’ greatest project.

This is the central paradox of modern Scotland: everything has changed and yet much remains the same. It is the Unionist retort to the Nationalists’ suggestion during the referendum that everything must change so many things could remain much the same.

The Yes campaign had promised Scots they could lose Britain but still retain everything about Britain – the Queen, the BBC, the pound – that they valued. Now it is Unionists who argue a different Scotland is possible without the need for an irreversible constitutional revolution.

For a few days last September, however, that revolution seemed a real possibility. The crowds that gathered in Glasgow’s George Square certainly thought it imminent and it was hard to avoid the thought, if only for a moment, that Scotland really might leap into the unknown.

The febrile atmosphere of those final days still sends shivers down Unionist spines. All across the country, it seemed as though once- solid No votes were melting a nd bei ng remoulded as Yes ballots. The future was, for a moment, infinite.

And yet, when the choosing time came, the No vote proved more stubborn than the Yes campaign suspected. All across Scotland, shy No voters trooped to the polls to do their duty, casting their votes in accordance with their analysis of the national interest, standing for their view of their own country. Standing by Britain in the hour Britain needed every friend she had.

These voters – from Lossiemouth to Castle Douglas, from North Berwick to Lochgilphead – were not conned or bribed or otherwise coerced into voting No. Their reasons for rejecting independence were as multiform as those their neighbours had for voting Yes. Above all, however, they rejected the idea that a Yes vote was the mark of decency or patriotism. They scorned – and rightly so – the

suggestion that good or true Scots must vote Yes.

The Yes campaign might have been a colourful carnival, giddy on high-octane optimism, but it had no monopoly on patriotism or moral value. Voting No was not ‘ talking Scotland down’; it could easily be ‘talking Britain up’.

Though both sides in the Referendum Wars presented the argument for Scotland’s future as though it was a dry and bloodless battle of accountancy, the real battleground was over identity. The surest predictor of your vote was your sense of yourself.

Scots who do not recognise a British component to their identity all but unanimously endorsed independence; those who were comfortable being Scottish and British overwhelmingly backed the Union.

Yet, inescapably, the referendum changed everything. The mere fact of the vote made independence seem more concrete than ever before. A different future was possible and may remain so.

So what does Scotland want now? At least for the time being, the probable answer seems to be a form of quasi-independence within t he United Kingdom.

The new Scotland Bill currently churning its way through the Westminster sausage factory cannot possibly satisfy Nationalists for whom it is independence or bust. But it is not supposed to satisfy them.

Rather, it i s an effort to respect Scottish desires and sensibilities, while keeping Scotland within the Union. As such it is an appeal to ‘Middle Scotland’, a country that dreams of bigger things and greater responsibility but still shies away from severing 300 years of history.

IT is a gamble, nonetheless. In essence, Nationalists assume a beefed-up parliament in Edinburgh will lead Scots to question why they should settle for two-thirds of a loaf when they could have the entire loaf. This, coupled with the inexorable march of time and demographic change, will ensure t hat t hey win a s econd referendum.

Scottish pensioners were Unionism’s Old Guard – but, inevitably, their ranks will thin as the years go by. In this analysis, independence is only a matter of time.

Perhaps it is. Yet the surest folly in politics is assuming current trends will continue indefinitely. Unionists hope a more muscular Holyrood can satisfy the people’s constitutional aspirations without the need t o dismantle t he United Kingdom.

Moreover, the collapse in North Sea oil prices has torpedoed the SNP’s financial calculations for life after independence. Far from being better off, Scotland would, every independent financial review has confirmed, be at least £8billion worse off every year after independence. That, Unionists now hope, will concentrate minds and create an unbridgeable f i rewall that will dissuade Scots from taking an unnecessary gamble on independence.

No one can say for sure which of these projections lies closer to our future reality. What does seem likely, however, is that the next independence ‘offer’ must be better than the last one presented to the Scottish people.

With the exception of a few grizzly old-timers such as Jim Sillars, the Nationalist movement has declined to analyse what went wrong. There has been no inquest into the Yes movement’s failure, no post mortem wondering what might have been done differently.

There is, however, little indication that Scotland has really changed its mind in the past year. Although Nationalist MSPs facing re-election to the Scottish parliament next year have been busy promising a renewed push for IndyRef 2: The Sequel, there is as yet no indication Nicola Sturgeon is minded to satisfy the dearest desires of her most devoted supporters. In any case, Miss Sturgeon is happy to play a long game. She believes time is on her side. If that means disappointing her party’s membership, so be it. To lose one indyref might be a misfortune; to lose two would amount to carelessness.

The first referendum was years in the making and so will any second plebiscite. From a Nationalist perspective, a second referendum must offer answers to some of the questions the first signally failed to. If ident ity was the underlying strategic battleground, the Yes campaign’s failure to address issues of major importance was the tactical field upon which it foundered. Its economic prospectus proved too good to be credible.

Nor were questions over currency and pensions ever satisfactorily addressed. As yet, there has been little attention paid to finding solutions to these practical difficulties. And with good reason: unravelling a 300year- old nation is no easy task. Sometimes there are no good answers. Perhaps that helps explain why Alex Salmond continues to insist, against all the available evidence, that it was ‘ The Vow’ that swung that day for Unionism.

In fact, post- referendum surveys have revealed only 3 per cent of No voters were swayed by the last-minute, cross-party agreement on new powers for Scotland. Identity and the holes in the Yes campaign’s prospectus mattered much more.

WE are t wo tribes now and this colours everything. Most of the time, they fail to understand one another. They speak past one another, not to each other. There is no common ground to be found.

Thus criticism of the Scottish Government’s record in office – including issues that have little to nothing to do with the constitution – is l argely reserved to No voters.

Yessers have, for the most part, closed ranks around the SNP. A Yes movement that was, it was often said, about much more than just the SNP has now, with only a few exceptions at the margin, identified itself lock, stock and barrel with the Nationalists.

Criticism of the SNP is seen as criticism of Scotland. Nationalist voters so identify with the party – wrapping themselves in the flag and in an idea – that 50 per cent of them take criticism of the SNP as a personal insult.

No other government in the devolution era has been so indulged by its supporters or so readily given the benefit of the doubt. Because the constitutional question trumps all else and because the political is now so personal to so many voters, the SNP is forgiven its mistakes in government. In more ordinary times, the failures of Police Scotland, the education system and the NHS would damage the party of government; but these are not, as a blind man can see, ordinary times.

In other jurisdictions and in other parties, zealots such as Paul Monaghan – the Nationalist MP who apparently believes enduring David Cameron’s government is akin to ‘ the early days of the Third Reich’ – would be considered persona non grata. But in Scotland, because his heart is ‘in the right place’ on the National Question, he is indulged. Dis--

sent is ‘talking Scotland down’ too. The SNP’s ‘big tent’ welcomes anyone and everyone.

Sceptics may despair of this but the truth is that certainty in Scotland is not confined to the SNP. Yes voters may remain convinced independence is the answer to every issue or policy dilemma but Unionists are equally sure they chose wisely last September. Very few voters, Yes or No, regret their vote.

The General Election confirmed as much. Scotland was then – and remains – divided between the SNP and the nonSNP. The voters’ logic was impeccable: if you voted Yes in the referendum, why would you vote for a Unionist party in the General Election? Equally, if you voted No, why would you endorse a Nationalist candidate eight months later?

If there has been a political realignment, there has also been a shift in the nation’s psychological axis. Scotland and England are more estranged than at any point in our lifetimes. There has been a mental distancing, evident on both sides of the Border.

Labour is broken in both jurisdictions; the Liberal Democrats have been rendered irrelevant; and the Tory Party is, quite evidently, more exercised by Britain’s future in the European Union than in the preservation of the British Union.

For its own part, Scottish Unionism has not yet discovered how to square greater demands for Caledonian autonomy with the nagging sense that satisfying these demands must necessarily cheer the Nationalists. Everything is political and Nationalism is our new religion.

Unionists may resent Nicola Sturgeon’s claim to ‘speak for Scotland’ but there is no gainsaying the fact many Scots not only admire her determination to do so but accept her right to claim that mantle. Scotland wants to express itself and the SNP, in the absence of credible and popular opposition, is happy to take on that mantle. This, as in the days of Labour’s hegemony, is an arrogant and unwarranted presumption but one that, inconveniently, appears irresistible.

Even so, and at least for now, Scottish politics remains defined by its contradictions. The status quo cannot endure, yet the status quo remains more popular than any current alternative. At the same time, whether Yes or No, all agree that there is no going back to the way things were.