STURGEON’S IMPOSSIBLE SALES PITCH
Forget the glad-handing and hollow words of EU second-raters. If the SNP does hold another referendum, the case for cutting ties with the UK to become a canton of Brussels may prove too toxic for Scots to swallow
VISUALS and stage management count for much in Brussels, that preening capital of Europe, as an ideal – the fabled Europe of Beethoven and Voltaire, Goethe and da Vinci and la bella figura. And the visuals, this week, spoke volumes.
Nicola Sturgeon and her retinue were, on Wednesday, ushered by beaming officials into a bright room with, prominent in the backdrop, an elegant Scottish flag; they took their seats at a great table laden with floral sprays, bottles of wine and exquisite dainties.
‘I think it is fair that the Scottish voice should be heard in Brussels,’ purred Scots-German MEP David McAllister to one newspaper, adding that Scotland’s First Minister had been ‘the most visible British politician on German TV’ over the weekend. ‘In Germany, there is now a new interest in the Scottish debate and in trying to understand the argument from both sides,’ he said.
McAllister, significantly, is an old, close ally of Angela Merkel – the European leader most distressed by Brexit and who grasps its dark implications for, for instance, the German motor industry.
On television, the night before, we saw David Cameron likewise received in a similar room. But the smiles were tighter. There were no flags; no refreshments made ready. There were but two small bowls of doleful white flowers.
Last Friday, as a stunned Britain woke to Brexit – you know a day is epochal, as someone cracked, when the Prime Minister’s resignation is the third item on the news – Sturgeon’s voluble activity seemed precipitate; cynical. By Monday, given the chaos down south, the First Minister did indeed look energised and in charge: the only politician anywhere in the United Kingdom of unflagging visibility and offering any kind of narrative.
Britain had voted, narrowly but decisively, to leave the European Union and on a 72 per cent turnout. Despite lunatic-fringe suggestions of a referendum re-run or even that the result be set aside by Parliament, it was clear by Thursday afternoon there will be no going back. The United Kingdom moves to a future outside Europe, in all its wonders and terrors. But Scotland voted still more decisively to remain, by 62 per cent to 38 per cent, and in every local authority region – the Scotland which, only two autumns ago, had chosen to stay in the United Kingdom. Not least on the insistent argument from Europe’s leaders as well as the sages and statesmen wheeled out by Better Together, that a vote to leave Britain was a vote to leave the EU.
The First Minister and the Nationalists have won an enormous game-changer, one that has shaken tens of thousands of people who, back in September 2014 and in good faith, had voted down Scotland’s independence. A total of 61.1 per cent of voters in Edinburgh, for instance, plumped for No. But, last Thursday, 74 per cent voted for Bremain.
Within hours, Nicola Sturgeon announced that she had instructed Scottish Government officials to draw up legislation for a second referendum bill; that it would be ‘inconceivable’ for Whitehall to veto such a vote, and coolly quoted the SNP’s recent manifesto.
‘The Scottish parliament should have the right to hold another referendum,’ she recited, ‘if there is a significant and material change in the circumstances that prevailed in 2014, such as Scotland being taken out of the EU against our will.’ She added: ‘Scotland does now face that prospect – it is a significant and material change in circumstances – and it is therefore a statement of the obvious that the option of a second referendum must be on the table. And it is on the table.’
The Scottish press were, in 2014, overwhelmingly hostile to Yes Scotland. Now they sniffed new air. As early as last Saturday, one traditional Labour daily called for another poll. Another, very traditional Sunday paper published a poll claiming, suddenly, a surging 59 per cent support for independence.
Even some hitherto hardline Unionist commentators have shifted position. And senior Scottish business figures are wondering.
‘While I would still find it hard to bring myself to vote to break up the UK,’ confessed Philip Rodney, chairman of law firm Burness Paull on Thursday, ‘I would not find it difficult to support moves by Scotland to remain in the EU… Call it cowardice or hypocrisy but my guess is that, given the results of the 2014 and 2016 referenda, most Scots would do the same thing. Such an outcome could put Scotland in an emphatically strong place,’ continued the chairman of one of Scotland’s biggest commercial law firms. ‘If, as a result of the City of London being denied full access to the single market, financial services companies were no longer able to “passport” their services to the rest of the EU from the City, where would they head?… probably Frankfurt.
‘But wouldn’t an Anglophone destination with an infrastructure effectively identical to London’s be more attractive? Edinburgh and Glasgow could see a renaissance as centres of the financial services sector. They have the expertise, the heritage and the capacity to do so, and from a cost base that is a fraction of the norm in the Golden Mile…’ Subsequent opinion polls show a majority, now, for independence, though not yet at the hard 60 per cent levels Sturgeon would like. Onlookers increasingly urge a referendum not after the conclusion of Brexit negotiations, but amidst them, perhaps as early as autumn next year.
Some EU sources acknowledge the absurdity of Scotland being forced out of the EU and then, over the course of years, having to re-apply. On Thursday afternoon, MSPs’ hopes were raised of a ‘holding-pen’ solution. Earlier in the week, Sturgeon had been able to leave for Europe with crossparty backing in Holyrood, only Scottish Tory MPs abstaining in the vote after an uneasy Ruth Davidson performance.
Given Labour’s disarray – on the top of its latest losses to the SNP juggernaut – Scotland now faces two renewed years of intense constitutional politics and, once more, an SNP administration with little effective
opposition. (Sensibly, Sturgeon continued visibly to govern, John Swinney on Tuesday revealing bold, even exciting plans for Scotland’s schools.)
But, amidst delicious Nationalist possibilities, Sturgeon knows there are grounds for profound caution. For one – as Holyrood new boy Oliver Mundell reminded us on Tuesday, nearly as many Scots voted in June for Brexit as voted SNP in May: 1,018,332 to 1,059,897.
A total of 29 per cent of the country’s Leave voters, reliable analysis suggests, habitually vote SNP and undoubtedly included many sotto voce members and activists.
One bright young man, frenetic two summers back for Yes Scotland and who worked hard last year for the SNP, was proud to confide last weekend he voted for Brexit – and from no dark Cybernat agenda: he could see no logic in voting to reclaim freedom from one union while choosing to remain in bondage for another. To him it was about democracy and, for two-thirds of Brexit voters across the UK, the central issue was sovereignty, not immigration. Others, though have drawn attention to the rather low Scottish turnout, just 67.2 per cent. (In South-West England, which voted heavily for Leave, it was 76.7 per cent.)
SCOTLAND was mentioned nowhere on last week’s ballot: we voted on the European future of the United Kingdom, and only the United Kingdom – that same polity endorsed by 55 per cent of Scots, on a huge turnout, just 20 months ago.
And does not an independence strategy pegged to ditching England for Brussels trade seem, on paper, perverse? Could it not be readily portrayed as the worst sort of Anglophobic, ethnic nationalism? It is not fair to denounce Sturgeon for grandstanding on the issue. She is under huge political pressure from the mass of Holyrood MSPs and weighty Scottish interests appalled by the referendum outcome.
She has also been granted considerable time and scope by the failure of both the Remain and Leave campaigns to prepare for its result – to say nothing of the ridiculous Tory leadership election rules that, at such a juncture, leave us all summer with a stalled, decapitated London government.
But the next Prime Minister, whoever she is, will emerge; and she will be determined to hold Scotland close in her Brexit negotiations with Brussels. Cameron will be damned for always, in history, as the Prime Minister whose insouciance wrenched us out of the European Union; his successor will have no desire to join him as the premier who broke up Britain. Sturgeon could take a pragmatic line and support these endeavours of the London government, accepting a degree of freedom of movement in exchange for a continued part in the single market. Immigration is not an issue in Scotland; given our aging population and the reluctance of young folk, for instance, to work in care homes, we need more of it.
The First Minister is, in any event, most aware that important as the EU and the single market are to Scotland’s economy, our trade with the rest of the United Kingdom is more important still. Excluding oil and gas, analysis of the 2010 figures showed Scotland selling £44.9billion of products and services to the wider UK – and barely more than a quarter of that, £11.6 billion, to the EU.
OR – as floated by sources close to Sturgeon in yesterday’s papers – she could hit the high road and hold an independence referendum as early as September next year, though of most curious character: ‘Do you believe that Scotland should remain in the European Union or leave with the rest of the United Kingdom?’ That would reflect, no doubt, legal advice and the political reality in Brussels, where six EU member states are set to veto an independent Scotland’s accession.
Scotland’s one chance, the Nats evidently reason, is somehow to stay in on a continuing basis, as endorsed firmly by the Scottish public in a new plebiscite. But this is thin ice indeed. What of the tens of thousands of Scots (like myself) who voted Yes in 2014 but Leave last week? Because we believe in selfdetermination, in sovereignty, and that if we do not have the power to elect or kick out those who lay down our laws we have no meaningful democracy?
Whither democracy, too, for the thousands more who voted to remain part of the UK in 2014 and saw last Thursday that same UK vote to leave the EU? The democratic circle for them cannot be squared by a blithe neutering of first the 2014 vote and then Thursday’s.
And there will be big changes from 2014. For one, the price of Scotland’s oil has tanked, and a renascent Better Together campaign would tirelessly remind voters of the hugely optimistic figures bandied about by Yes Scotland in 2014.
Scotland may well be about to tip into recession – not least from the uncertainty of Brexit – and, on the Nationalists’ chosen pitch this time, the new referendum will be against the backdrop of a ‘hard’ border with England, should Yes prevail, and a new Scottish currency – possibly the euro.
Good luck with that sell, First Minister. And it is far from clear the EU would let us in or sanction any ‘holding-pen’ arrangement. So far, Brussels will not even talk about talks until the new Prime Minister has triggered Article 50. And despite the flowers and mwah-mwah photo-opportunity with JeanClaude Juncker, Sturgeon was granted no audience with Donald Tusk, president of the European Council and the man who actually matters.
Would Europe, even 18 months ahead, be still a club worth joining? It could, by 2018, be disintegrating on many fronts.
And would Scots really, when it comes to the crunch, decline new and interesting British opportunities for life as a canton of Brussels, divided by currency and customs posts from the neighbour who buys two-thirds of our stuff?
It is much to gamble for a First Minister who knows that a second, lost independence referendum will bury the issue for a century.