What a strange leadership contest we seem to be having. After this week’s unedifying spectacle our candidates need to remember that the nation is watching these exchanges with great interest. Leadership contests are meant to be robust, with candidates rightly challenged and policy positions properly debated. What should not happen is the trashing of our own Government’s policies and the dismissal of important government partners. It should come as absolutely no surprise that our political opponents will be all over this and we should expect to hear this quoted back at us, ad nauseam.
I think the party are looking for new thinking on the way forward. New ideas about how we should govern now that we are approaching the end of our second decade in power, and, more than anything, some fresh strategising about how we secure independence for our nation.
Instead what we have had are bitter personal exchanges and an extended debate about religious beliefs. New ideas, when they have appeared, are almost like scenarios for future episodes of the Thick Of It, with talk of ‘readiness thermometers’ and ‘voter empowerment mechanisms’. Some of this would be funny if it wasn’t so serious. There are also candidates concocting weird conspiracies about a ‘party machine’ that apparently exists to favour one candidate over others. All of this needs to stop and leadership candidates now have to rein it in.
I am a veteran of the last two leadership contests and remember them as being robust but relatively collegiate. The last one won by Alex Salmond was even an extended exercise in party engagement and it could be said that it helped prepare the way to our 2007 victory. I
But it is the debate about independence that most concerns me. I think we are getting to the stage where it is highly likely that there will be no means to test public opinion in this Scottish Parliamentary term. The only feasible option is to use the next Westminster election as a de facto referendum as proposed by Nicola Sturgeon. This now seems to have fallen out of favour with the two candidates most likely to succeed her.
For all the acknowledged problems with a de facto referendum, there is frankly no other way to show the UK and the international community that Scotland wants to be an independent nation. If this is to be abandoned we have to be honest with the party and acknowledge that independence is more or less off the table in the short term future.
It is what is put in its place that is more problematic and something pretty substantial will have to be found. Just now there is the familiar and much rehearsed talk of ‘growing support’ of ‘refreshing the case’ and ‘consulting the membership”; talk of taking a referendum off the table until support for independence reaches 60%. I don’t think I need to highlight the obvious tensions and pitfalls around this. Without a campaign it is difficult to grow support and without some sort of clear independence offer support for the party might become demotivated. In the next couple of weeks the candidates must offer firm proposals in how a ‘long game’ strategy could work and how a campaign can be designed to accommodate it.
The only way I can see a long game strategy working is if we make the short term about protecting and defending our parliament. There will be a constitutional review if Labour, as seems likely, forms the next government and we could use that as an opportunity to put the case to expand and entrench the powers of the Scottish Parliament. We could campaign to have full home rule with all fiscal powers devolved on top of Labour’s pledge to allow Scotland to sign international agreements.
We could use this to put the case for a ‘Scottish Protocol’ that finally acknowledges our EU vote and grants Scotland the same single market access as Northern Ireland. Maybe it should be an opportunity to argue for an ‘almost independence’ or the now forgotten ‘independence in the UK’ as a staging post to a longer term strategy of securing full independence. A ‘long game’ independence strategy could maybe just about work if we use the short term to make advances for our Parliament and its powers.
But it is a huge risk. The last 8 years have been built around a referendum strategy and taking away the opportunity to test Scottish opinion on independence for an indeterminate period of time could see significant fall out in the party and the movement.
The next General Election may well be only a year away and we will be taking on a reinvigorated Labour Party who for the first time since we became a Government look likely to be returned to power. They will have a simple and clear message that it is only they who can rid us of the Tories. We now need to hear from the leading leadership candidates as to how they will respond to that challenge. How they will motivate out independence support. They now need to spell out exactly what is their plan for independence and how exactly they are going to secure it.