Well, that was encouraging then. An opinion poll published last week showing that a de facto referendum at the next Westminster election would be decisively won. There will of course be other opinion polls. Some will show us being behind and some will show us even further ahead. That is the nature of snapshots on public thinking. What we can reasonably conclude at this point is that this is all to play for, and there is no reason why we cannot win this and win it well if properly organised and structured.
In my last article I gave my thoughts on how that could be designed and what we need to do in order to win. What I want to turn my attention to now is what we do when we win, as I am increasingly confident we will.
First of all I very much doubt that the UK will turn round and say “well done chaps, now what part of the UK assets do you want as we wish you well in your independent future”? There will be much talk about this not being a proper referendum. That independence cannot be secured at a General Election. Every reason will be found, even invented, to judge any victory illegitimate. The thing is, we can not be responsible for the way the UK responds and how they respond will be exclusively a matter for them.
The one thing that they can not do is to take away our victory. They can no longer claim that Scotland does not desire to be an independent nation when over 50% just voted for parties standing on an exclusive manifesto to deliver independence for our nation. All of the UK will have seen that, as will all of the international community.
How hard the UK will dig in to dismiss the result is something we will not know until the referendum is won. After observing their recent behaviour, it would be reasonable to conclude that they have a significant capacity to deny the Scottish people their democracy and ignore democratic outcomes.
But before we get into that we have to consider what the post election environment at Westminster might look like. Standing from where we are right now it seems highly unlikely we will be seeing the successful return of a Conservative Government. Governments don’t usually come back from such a catastrophic position and Sunak has made absolutely no progress in eating into Labour’s lead.
It is therefore more than likely that this will be a Labour Government, possibly on a bad day for Labour, a minority Labour Government. There will then be a new approach to Scotland and I’m not entirely sure that Labour have the same determination to deny democracy especially when this will be a new Government with a whole series of inherited problems to deal with.
The ideal situation for us would be a hung Parliament where our votes would be required for legislation to get through. Labour simply assume that no deal would be required with us as we would never vote with the Tories, and on that they are probably correct.
But voting with Labour would only extend to reserved legislation where decisions made at Westminster directly impact on the Scottish people. This does not apply to English only legislation, and without any deal we would not be obliged to help them get legislation through that does not apply in Scotland. If Labour don’t offer some sort of arrangement in recognition of Scottish democracy they are on their own, and should receive no support from us in getting legislation through on English education, health and justice.
However, we must be prepared for a Labour majority and with Labour being a deeply unionist party we have to look at what we would do to ensure that Scottish democracy is respected.
If Labour seem determined to deny Scottish democracy and ignore the clearly demonstrated desire of the Scottish people we should initiate a series of measures where we incrementally withdraw consent and bit by bit leave the institutions designed to manage the integrity of the UK state. If they are to deny us our democracy we should not be prepared to serve fully in theirs.
Before that we must give the UK Government every opportunity to engage. We must burst every sinew to have them sit round the table to discuss the democratic choice of the Scottish people. They can draw up any agenda they want (as long as there is an acknowledgement of the result) and we can say to them we are prepared to meet any day, anytime, anywhere. We have to demonstrate to the international community and the EU that we have done absolutely everything possible to get them to the table.
The most obvious first point would be to withdraw from the inter governmental machinery and institutions that manage relations across the UK. The joint committees and the inter government fora should be where we should start.
Another example could be Westminster MPs no longer serving on public bill committees or participating in legislation designed for the UK. In the Scottish Parliament we could do more to assertively challenge the UK with legislation on the edge of devolved powers. Things like introducing much needed drugs consumption rooms would be a good example.
We should also start to behave like the independent nation the Scottish people voted for. This would most obviously be done in international missions. These would be concurrently utilised to put our democratic case and build international support capacity. These are just a few of the options open to us. There are many, many more.
Nothing should be ruled out and the Scottish people must have the independence they have just voted to secure.
We will have to be honest about this too. Winning a de facto referendum is unlikely to immediately lead to Scotland becoming independent nation. We may be heading to London to negotiate our independence but there might not even be a table never mind a negotiating team from the UK to get round. A de facto referendum will be by its nature uncontested and has no legal standing. What it represents, though, is a very clear result to the UK, and the wider international community that Scotland has voted for its independence.
Everything must be done legally and constitutionally mainly because there is no other way to independence. There is no route to independence that does not come with the agreement of the UK. There can be no talk of unilateral declarations and illegal confrontations simply because they do not and can not work.
After losing an agreed referendum this was always going to be hard work and there are no other options that will get us there quickly. There are no silver bullets (and don’t believe those who try to pretend that there is) no magic solutions or ‘we only need to do this’ panaceas. We lost a referendum only 8 years ago and that has made everything so much harder in designing a way forward.
What we have done is retained the support of around half of the Scottish people and we can now secure the consent of a majority that Scotland should be an independent nation. In the absence of an agreed referendum this is perhaps our last best chance to do this.
I opened this series of articles by saying that this is just about the worst possible way to settle Scotland’s constitutional future, but until the UK comes to the table with an agreed process, it remains the best.