The SNP: pushing for Indyref2
While all eyes were on “yet another Tory sex scandal” in Westminster last week, momentous political events were unfolding 400 miles to the north, said Tim Shipman in The Sunday Times. Nicola Sturgeon set out plans to hold a second independence referendum on 19 October 2023. She also announced that she would seek approval from the Supreme Court to hold a new referendum without permission from the UK Government (since Boris Johnson and his ministers have no intention of allowing a second poll). If, as expected, the court rejects her application, Sturgeon said that the SNP would double down by treating the 2024 general election as a “de facto referendum”, with a manifesto offering only one policy: that Scotland should be an independent country. She argued that if the SNP won more than 50% of the vote it would give her a mandate to begin independence negotiations.
In 2014, Sturgeon declared that a referendum is a “once-in-a-generation” event. Now, said The Times, she seems to believe “that Scotland should keep having another referendum every few years from now on until she gets the answer she wants”. Most opinion polls show that a majority of Scots are against independence, and that many more are opposed to holding a new poll so soon. Alex Salmond fought the 2014 referendum “with the most elementary questions unanswered about defence, currency and pensions (to name a few policy areas)”, said Alastair Stewart in The Scotsman. “Calling for a second vote with no lessons learnt about why you lost the first one is flabbergasting arrogance.” Sturgeon’s plan for a “wildcat referendum” looks like a “desperate ploy” to appease SNP “hardliners”. It will stoke grievances and put Scotland on a course towards bitter political division.
Ultimately, though, the SNP is not going to “relinquish its quest”, said Andrew Rawnsley in The Observer. “Independence is its raison d’être.” As long as it keeps winning elections it has the right to keep pushing. “Simply telling the SNP to let it go is not only futile”; it may also “prove counterproductive for those who want to preserve the Union”. Particularly since Brexit, the issue won’t be settled without a second vote. The people of Quebec had two votes on whether to secede from Canada, one in 1980 and another in 1995. After the second defeat, “that was that”: the issue was finally put to bed. Either way, Sturgeon’s plan for Indyref2 is a huge gamble, said Chris Deerin in The New Statesman. The cause of independence could be resuscitated; or it could be “blown to smithereens”.