Conservatives should embrace the lesson of Brexit to save the Union from Sturgeon
What are Unionists to do? Support for Scottish independence has been ahead in the polls for 12 months. The SNP has won every election since 2011, and is currently polling above 50 per cent. In Northern Ireland, nationalists have seized on delays in importing goods from Great Britain as a way to accelerate the long-term shift away from Unionism.
More seriously, what we might call the British brand – the sense that the United Kingdom has been a benign force, defeating tyranny, ending the slave trade, spreading liberty and law – has been tarnished.
Attacking statues, colonialism and dead white men has a knock-on effect on our sense of patriotism. In an age that values victimhood more than it values freedom, Britishness is less attractive.
Unionists face a choice. Do they face the separatists down or seek to meet them half way?
The first option is feasible. Broad support is not necessarily deep support. Voters might agree with a given proposition when pushed for an answer without caring much about it.
Unionists could plausibly argue that, given the challenges of Covid, Brexit and an epochal recession, another independence referendum would be an inexcusable indulgence.
“You promised in 2014 that would be it for a generation,” they might reasonably say. “Do you really think it’s responsible, what with everything going on, to plunge Scotland into years of bitterness over a question that we have already settled?”
That is, broadly speaking, the approach they are currently taking.
Unionists know that their last major compromise with separatists, the establishment of a Scottish parliament, was supposed (in the words of Labour’s George Robertson) to “kill nationalism stone dead”, but ended up creating a mechanism for permanent grievance-mongering and confrontation.
Saying “no” and moving the conversation on could work in theory. It worked, to my surprise, in Catalonia, where support both for separatist parties and for separatism itself declined after Madrid’s repression of the 2017 referendum.
But I can’t help feeling that Scots are not like Catalans. My mother’s people are gratifyingly bloody-minded. If London had treated the SNP as Madrid treated the independentistas, many Scottish Unionists would have switched sides – and rightly so. The UK must be a willing partnership.
I can’t help thinking back to the 2016 Brexit vote. In the run-up to the referendum, when it was my side pushing for change, we benefited immensely from Brussels’s intransigence.
Had David Cameron come back from the renegotiation with any extra powers, he would surely have won. But the EU refused to budge, and so convinced swing voters in Britain that it would never listen.
Unionists must avoid that error. What they might think of as concentrating on more pressing issues could easily come across as condescension. Brussels, in retrospect, should have made a great show of taking Eurosceptic concerns on board. Had British voters felt they were valued for what they brought to the table, the referendum might have gone differently.
How can Westminster demonstrate that it wants to address nationalist grievances? By offering a new and more decentralised settlement, one that would come into effect only following four separate referendums in the home nations.
Obviously, you can’t propose a new dispensation while simultaneously claiming that constitutional tinkering is a distraction from economic recovery. But the conversation about reform is already under way.
Last month, Sir Keir Starmer announced a constitutional convention, to be chaired by Gordon Brown, who wants a federal UK.
True, while Labour is in opposition, such an initiative would have no legal standing. But neither did the Scottish Constitutional Convention which, from 1989, drew together Labour, the Lib Dems, the Greens and the far Left, together with unions and churches, and which ended up producing the blueprint for devolution.
Conservatives could (again) sit the process out, and so (again) ensure that the eventual model is Leftleaning. Or they could draw up a new deal themselves. Rather than a constitutional convention – the sort of thing Bolivarian strongmen do – they should turn to the trusty, if staid, device of a Royal Commission.
Creating a looser and more devolved UK is easier in theory than in practice. The problem is that England accounts for 84 per cent of the population. A federal constitution, with four home parliaments and a UK-wide chamber replacing the House of Lords, might leave the English prime minister as the true power source, while the leader of the federal government controlled only trade, defence and foreign affairs.
Perhaps there might be equivalent devolution within England – not to synthetic regions, as Labour originally suggested, but to counties and cities. Northern Ireland, after all, has a population similar to Kent’s.
There would need to be representation for the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man and the overseas territories, since the new upper house would control the areas of policy currently decided for them in London.
Perhaps we could also address some other anomalies that have crept into our constitutional practice.
We might more clearly limit the powers of the Supreme Court. We might put the conduct of referendums on a proper footing. (It is extraordinary the franchise can currently be altered in pursuit of a given outcome, as when Scottish 16-year-olds were allowed to vote – though not to buy cigarettes.)
Then there is Northern Ireland. Here, Unionists have a card which they have not yet played. Any settlement will need to take account of the fact that there are two traditions in the province.
But whereas Unionism is rooted in the idea that you can be both Irish and British, there is no version of Irish nationalism that is not based on a rejection of Britishness. Recognising both identities will necessitate delicate talks with Dublin. Some policy areas will end up being all-island, some allislands.
These are deep waters, Watson, deep waters. But, as the Marquess of Salisbury likes to say, momentum is what counts in politics. Lord Salisbury, that embodiment of traditional Toryism, has established the Constitution Reform Group to promote British federalism in a measured, thoughtful and crossparty spirit. The notion, after all, is hardly revolutionary: federalism and Westminster democracy have come together hugely successfully in Australia and Canada.
Conservatism is not immobilist. Rather, it is a work of constant repair and improvement. When reform becomes inevitable – as it has in Scotland, and may have done in Northern Ireland – the right thing is to ensure that it is carried out temperately and judiciously.
As for Gordon Brown, perhaps the most useful contribution he could make to the Unionist cause is to take over the newly vacant leadership of Scottish Labour. Someone needs to revive that party.
Had British voters felt they were valued, the [EU] referendum might have gone differently