A history lesson we could all have learned from...

IHAVE always loved the House of Commons. It is a wonderful, exciting, aweinspiring place to work in – all that grandeur, history and power rolled into one building. But, given the times we are living through now, I can’t help but think back to one particular Commons occasion.

It was a debate I covered from the press gallery back in March 1998. It was on Labour’s plans for Scottish devolution, and two of the most experienced and respected parliamentarians of the day took to the floor to warn about the consequences.

First there was Labour’s Tam Dalyell, who warned: ‘We are on a motorway with no exits to an independent Scotland.’

Then there was John Major, the recently deposed Prime Minister, who told Labour politicians they would have to answer at the ‘bar of history’ for starting the process that would lead to the breakup of the United Kingdom.

On Labour’s devolution plan, he declared: ‘It brings change and it will create a demand for more change. It is a constitutional whirlwind and we will reap the harvest – not just in the House, where we can cope with our procedures, but in regard to something far more important and far more longstanding, the unity of the United Kingdom itself.’

Now I am not suggesting the Labour Government was wrong to bring in devolution. The public mood in Scotland demanded it and Tony Blair was right to create the Scottish parliament.

But what was obvious only to wise old heads such as Mr Major and Mr Dalyell at that time was that we were embarking on a process which would, inevitably, lead to the break-up of Britain. No one really believed them then – perhaps they will now.

It has taken only 17 years from that debate to reach the point where the SNP appears close to total dominance in Scottish politics. It has a majority at Holyrood, which was supposed to be impossible, and it is on the verge of annihilating Labour at the General Election, winning anything up to 50 seats.

Alex Salmond talked last week about winning a second referendum in the future. He argued that, because the Nats had managed to convert 30 per cent support before the referendum campaign into 45 per cent support on polling day, it shouldn’t be too much of an effort to get that right up to 60 per cent next time.

He also pointed out, rightly, that independence is much more strongly supported by the young – so independence will win over a majority of Scots over time.

But the key test for Scotland’s future actually came after the referendum, not on the day itself. Had the Yes movement disintegrated and imploded into factions, and had support for independence dropped off in the face of a No victory, then perhaps the Union would have been safe, at least for a generation or two.

That is not what happened. Instead, tens of thousands of people joined the SNP as soon as they could, to keep the fight going. As a result, the proindependence movement grew stronger and tighter and, unless something extraordinary happens to reverse this trend, it is difficult to see how it can be stopped. Labour has tried everything it can think of to turn these voters around, but nothing is working, mainly because these new converts to independence are refusing to tune in to the actual General Election debate.

YOU could bash most of these new converts over the head, again and again, with facts and figures about the collapse in oil prices, the dangers of a new Scottish currency or the inability of a new Scottish state to pay weekly pensions, and they wouldn’t change their minds. They have stopped listening to the arguments about who should be in No 10 because they no longer care.

But what has only really become obvious as the election has got closer is the shift in baseline support for independence. Over the past few decades, support for independence bounced along at around a third of the population and rarely got much above that.

Now that has changed and 45 per cent is the new 30. So Mr Salmond is right. It won’t take much of a push to get the Yes camp over the line now.

The big SNP surge was probably going to happen at some point but the timing of this year’s election played into the Nationalists’ hands. It allowed them to capitalise on the support they received in the referendum and keep everybody interested and active.

Despite all this, though, what we are seeing at the moment is much bigger than anyone, even the leaders of the SNP, ever expected. It is something seismic, something rare and something that will change the nature of politics in this country completely.

The SNP and pro-independence movements are now virtually the same thing and both appear unstoppable. They are both on the march and, although it may be unsettling for some of us to acknowledge it, it really does appear to be no longer a question of ‘if’ Scotland becomes independent.

It really now does simply appear to be a question of ‘when’ and ‘how’ Scotland becomes independent. Perhaps we should all have listened a little more closely to those warnings all those years ago.