[ad_1]
LLike an arthritic old tree in autumn, the Scottish National Party is losing its voters. It does so almost seasonally, a contraction followed years later by a new spring. Yet the soul and cause of the SNP, independence, has not lost its supporters. Support for it remains roughly where it has been for a decade, just under half (sometimes just over half) of poll samples. How does that make sense?
Scotland can seem like an unshakable land. Every year the hills change color from brown to green as the geese stop their noisy argument, take off and head north. Yet tremendous things have suddenly happened here. Ten thousand years ago the climate rose sharply by 9C in just over a century. Glaciers melted, trees appeared; deer, men, wolves and bears ventured back to cold but habitable Caledonia. Two thousand years later, the coast of Norway collapsed into the sea (the “Storegga Slide”), sending a mountainous tsunami roaring to sweep eastern Scotland and its terrified hunter-gatherers. Scottish politics in our time it can seem dark, petty nit-picking. But when they change, it’s sediment. The old landscape has been cleared of its previous ecology.
Over the past century, the Liberal, Tory and then Labor monopolies have disappeared due to Storergan’s changes in the minds of the Scottish electorate. Now the flood is rushing to the SNP – but not to the faithful Scotland must once again be a sovereign European nation. Sociologists always report that independence is a ‘low priority’, way down the list behind NHS reform, the cost of living, bad roads and bad ferries. But this is a misunderstanding. The idea of independence lives in a different place than what the BBC (in its most English accent) calls “bread and butter issues”.
An incalculable number of Scots who would never vote SNP have moments when they find themselves thinking: “Wouldn’t it be nice if we were a normal little nation again, alongside everyone else?” Only to dismiss the thought as absurd, “divisive” or “crazy in times like these”. It’s like a little blue-white ball stuck in the back of the brain. It is normally inert, but when it lights up, Scotland’s history changes.
The SNP, a neurotically law-abiding and “civic” nationalist party, also embraced some well-dressed illusions. For example, that by managing a devolved Scotland well, they will convince the electorate to take the next step towards independence. But even if the SNP passed this test (which the Scottish public does not recognize), where is there an example of a ‘provincial’ administration whose success has convinced its people to risk another step towards secession? So what nation has ever chosen independence because a careful weighing of its potential impact on pensions, interest rates and the price of imported duck soup has paid off? Things just don’t happen in that logical way. Instead, independence usually falls from the sky. It was dropped by some external crisis: war, revolution, or imperial exhaustion.
Poles fought for 123 years to regain their free nation – but won it in 1918 only because three splintering empires folded almost simultaneously. The same applies to other countries after Versailles. Some, like Czechoslovakia, were almost dismayed to learn that the Habsburg Empire had abandoned them. Ireland became free through miserable bloodshed and then civil war, while civil war and revolution ravaged the newborn sovereignties of Finland and Hungary.
The collapse of the British Empire is now cleverly presented as a visionary mission of Westminster, a plan to lead all these backward natives to a civilized parliamentary democracy. The truth is that violent protests in most of these ‘possessions’, sometimes leading to years of brutal repression, convinced a cash-strapped and increasingly weakened Britain unwilling to withdraw from the empire. Decency was preserved, of course. There would be Independence Day with cheering crowds, fireworks, a feathered governor or perhaps royalty and the Union Jack swinging slowly down the mast at midnight…
I hold in my hand a postcard, almost 30 years old. It shows a Scotsmanfront page of ‘Independence Day’. Fireworks burst over Edinburgh; an expectant searchlight aimed at the flagpole of the battlements of Edinburgh Castle. The card proclaims: “Now is the time: As 300 years of the Union pass, ‘one nation takes its place again in the world.’ But this is just publicity material designed for STV to come out with a documentary about the 1996 ‘independence’ of George Rowsey and Les Wilson, which was followed by a televised debate.
Since then, devolution, the return of the Scottish Parliament and the 2014 independence referendum have shaped a new constitutional landscape. The No side narrowly won the referendum in 2014. But the Yes campaign, despite losing, proved to be blowing a transformative wind among Scotland’s natives; excited thousands gathered to hope, argue and demand (“Scotland Yes! But what Scotland?”). One result was to elevate independence from dream status to a practical, serious option for Scotland’s future. Another, after the Yes defeat, was an unexpected flight to join the SNP. By 2019, the party had 125,000 members. Today the leaves are falling; that total is about 70,000. Some have just given up on “politicians” and the “failure of the SNP to deliver”. Many others defected to Scottish Labour, but often took their belief in independence with them. They form a growing, unreliable crowd of nationalist squatters in a cracked union building.
It is very possible that the next Holyrood election (in 2026, if not sooner) will end the SNP’s 17-year hegemony. The Scottish Parliament could have a narrow unionist majority. Even if Humza Yusuf’s successor survives in government, his or her prospects will be bleak. SNP leaders still believe the Scottish public want them to play by the rules. So they will continue to seek London’s permission for another referendum, while every foreseeable British government will continue to refuse that permission. So deadlocked…unless a far more impatient and radical nationalist formation emerges to push the SNP aside like Sinn Féin pushed the old Irish Home Rulers aside in 1918.
No sign of that yet. Nevertheless, if a hard-line SNP leadership emerges with a strong majority in the future, there are several ways in which it could provoke a head-on clash with London, one that could garner public sympathy. Let’s call these strategies “As if” and (in parliamo Glesca) “Gonny no dae that!”.
“As if” means to act as if Scotland were already independent. This means continuing with legislation officially reserved for Westminster under the Scotland Acts and challenging the UK Government to intervene. The second strategy – Glaswegian disobedience – would mean simply refusing to comply with UK laws or orders that Holyrood deemed morally or practically wrong for Scotland. Examples: refusal of police protection for Home Office vans traveling from England to pick up asylum seekers for deportation (see previous mass action in Glasgow and Edinburgh to block the vans and release their prisoners).
Other: to refuse the application of anti-union measures by the UK Government, such as strike Minimum Service Levels Act. Both are now popular causes. A flat and prolonged confrontation with the UK government over such laws could end in sanctions against Holyrood or even a suspension of the Scottish Parliament; a provoked crisis, but one which could turn Scottish opinion irrevocably towards an end to the union. In the SNP, however, there is not the slightest sign of the fearlessness that such “illegal” behavior would require. So the desire for independence will survive even though the vehicle that carries it sits on the hard shoulder with flat tires.
Why would we even want it? There is a sustained pull and a sustained push. The attraction is that only with full powers to legislate, negotiate and borrow can Scotland do the hard work needed to address a legacy of chronic ill health and a century of staggering underinvestment in all kinds of infrastructure. Independence within the EU could lead to a Scottish state blocking the flow of economic control to London or to American hedge funds. This Government might even dare to tear down the crumbling piles of sleazy, often pointless quangos and “authorities” that now stifle effective decision-making in Scotland.
And the push? It is the UK’s steady drift away – Tory or Labor – from the standards valued in Scotland. Above all, the integrity of the public sector, whether it’s health, care, water or transport, is what matters to this ‘state’ nation. This is the mounting damage from Brexit, punishing a country that voted against it and that desperately needs European immigration to help with labor shortages and an aging demographic. There is also a democratic problem. Ironically, by introducing democracy to the ancient union of 1707, decentralization showed why it no longer worked. “Partnership” in a democratized union where 85% of citizens belong to one member, England, can only be a fiction.
Then comes the question of England. The London media imagine that the Scots are embracing their hatred of the English. The truth hurts more. Concerned Scots seldom think of the English at all. But should. Whatever happens when independence is back on the agenda, Scotland’s leaders must accept one basic fact: the relationship with England has, and will always have, a special and supreme intimacy. This will overshadow the Scottish election even if Scotland becomes a free republic in the EU with a UN seat.
It is true that England has its own identity crisis, now a spreading contagion of authoritarian nativism and performative xenophobia. But English policy could be stabilized by the shock and example of Scotland’s withdrawal from the union. It is a narrow road. But a truer partnership awaits at its end.
[ad_2]
