Sturgeon the great illusionist has finally exhausted her box of tricks
ON the emblem of the Supreme Court a semi-circle arcs over a flower from each of the four nations. It represents both the scales of justice and Omega, the last letter of the Greek alphabet.
The message is not subtle: the Court is the final word in all matters of law in the United Kingdom.
That finality was driven home devastatingly for Nicola Sturgeon on Wednesday morning. Just shy of 10am, Lord Reed, President of the Supreme Court, delivered the judgment of a unanimous bench: ‘The Scottish parliament does not have the power to legislate for a referendum on Scottish independence.’
With that, Sturgeon’s legal gambit had a nasty collision with the Scotland Act. Few expected the Scottish Government to prevail. This was about kicking the can further down the road. Yet the judgment sketched out just how little road is left.
Barely had the ink dried on the judgment than Sturgeon held a press conference. The podium she stood behind was branded in the livery of the SNP, not the Scottish Government. The pretences were dropped. She meant to divide, not unite.
While she claimed to ‘respect’ the Court’s ruling, she declared that ‘any notion of the UK as a voluntary partnership’ had been exposed as a ‘myth’.
She spoke of ‘democracy denial’ on the part of the UK Government and pledged to launch a campaign ‘in defence of Scottish democracy’.
Change the location and change the flag and it could have been Nigel Farage or Donald Trump speaking. Sturgeon knows how despondent her followers would have been at the news, she knows how angry and extreme some of them already are.
To speak as she did could only feed their paranoid fantasies of Scotland and even democracy itself under attack. This was not the language of a First Minister, but of an irresponsible demagogue.
The next step in her strategy is to turn the 2024 general election into a de facto referendum. This would require winning more than 50 per cent of the votes. ‘If we can’t win, we don’t deserve to be independent,’ she said.
If this is the next step, it may also be Sturgeon’s last. A general election is not a referendum and cannot be transformed into one by a political party that fields candidates in less than one-tenth of constituencies.
The next general election will be about the usual mix of issues: the economy, public services, government competence.
However much the SNP talks about it in Scotland, the constitution will not dominate across the UK.
Sturgeon’s de facto referendum cannot be won, and so it raises the question: If she can’t win, does she deserve to be leader? After all, in explaining why she must follow the path of caution, she did remind her voters: ‘I am the temporary leader of a movement that is much bigger than I am.’
The SNP constitution makes plain that ‘the restoration of Scottish national sovereignty’ is the primary aim of the party. The Supreme Court has ruled out Holyrood as a potential pathway. The de facto referendum route will end in a similar impasse. The actual referendum in 2014 saw the independence project rejected by the voters.
The law says No. Parliament says No. The voters say No.
A party leader who can deliver election victory upon election victory would be the stuff of dreams for Labour or the Tories, but SNP members expect more.
Nationalist dominance of Holyrood is all well and good but when Scottish independence is what brought you into politics, why settle for anything less? Why settle for a leader for whom less is her very best?
While it would be foolhardy to issue ironclad predictions in such a febrile political atmosphere, it is probably the case that we are witnessing more than the foreclosure of one Sturgeon tactic. We are, in all probability, witnessing the beginning of the end of the Sturgeon era. She is not only running out of road but out of purpose.
True, there are other lawful routes open to her. She could continue to exert moral pressure on Westminster to agree to another 2014-type referendum.
She could withdraw her MPs from Westminster, mimicking Sinn Fein’s abstentionist tactics.
She could lead demonstrations demanding Scotland’s right to put independence to the voters in another referendum.
There are also legally murky routes, such as civil disobedience or a Rhodesia-style unilateral declaration of independence.
It is difficult to imagine a cautious Glasgow solicitor like Sturgeon having any truck with such intrigues. But the lawful options aren’t all that promising. For one, they have no guarantee of success. For another, they would arguably revert Scotland’s most formidable political party to the status of protest movement.
Sturgeon the illusionist has exhausted her box of magic tricks. She has raised her voice. No effect.
She has shaken her fist. Nothing. She has huffed and puffed and the house has stubbornly refused to be blown down. There is no more smoke and no more mirrors; no more rabbits in the hat.
It is not over for the First Minister — her Holyrood coalition is stable and she can continue in Bute House for a few more years — but the long drift into decline has begun.
That she would not, or could not, bring herself to appear in person to answer parliamentary questions about the judgment yesterday afternoon was telling.
There is no honour in gloating but there is one section of the judgment in which the SNP was deservedly slapped down.
In its submission to the Court, the party tried to exploit the UK’s support for Kosovo’s right to self-determination for its own ends. This is beneath contempt and then some.
Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia, a country which had committed war crimes including ethnic cleansing and mass rapes against the Kosovar Albanians.
It was particularly shameful to piggyback on this horrific suffering when the SNP opposed NATO’s military intervention to
‘Why settle for a leader for whom less is her very best?’ ‘No more smoke, no more mirrors and no more rabbits in the hat’
stop the slaughter, and even branded it ‘unpardonable folly’.
And Lord Reed gave short shrift to this argument, noting that the right to selfdetermination in international law was ‘normally limited to situations of a colonial type or those involving foreign occupation’. He added: ‘That’s not the position in Scotland.’
Next time Nicola Sturgeon proclaims herself an ally of oppressed people remember that her party sought to cheapen their experience with cold, ruthless cynicism.
The SNP deserved to lose yesterday because that was the outcome the law required. It was not the only reason.
It would be ill-advised for Unionists to grow complacent over this verdict. It is a humiliation for the SNP and a much-needed victory for those who want to keep our country together.
But while the judgment was the final word on legal matters, it was not the final word in the realm of politics. Almost half of all Scots, and a staunch majority of young Scots, still believes in breaking away. The political leadership of the UK must find a way to convince them to buy back into Britain.
The time for such considerations will come soon enough. After wasting yet more taxpayers’ money, putting Scotland’s priorities on the back burner, and turning the Scottish Government into an extension of the SNP, Nicola Sturgeon has failed to deliver the independence referendum she promised her party. She will never deliver that referendum.
Politics is a harsh business full of harsh truths and here’s one of them.
Nicola Sturgeon came into politics to break up the Union. She will leave politics a failure and when she goes the Union will still be here.