A Scot Goes Pop reader emailed me last night asking for my view on Kenny MacAskill’s comments on Home Rule, because he feared they had damaged the credibility of Alba. I disagree – I think this episode tells us far more about the SNP, or at least about the people within the party who have jumped on Mr MacAskill’s words. We’ve been told for weeks that Alba are crazed extremists who are pushing too hard and too fast for independence, and now we’re suddenly expected to believe that they’re just pretending to support independence and that the SNP are the true radicals? Come on now – a touch of congruity and consistency is needed if these attack lines are going to stick. Certainly if the SNP want to outflank Alba on the indy fundamentalist end of the spectrum (which would be a thoroughly welcome development) some action is going to be needed, rather than forever saying “in due course, in the fullness of time, at the appropriate juncture…”
Now Johnny he’s a nationalist, but Johnny he’s no fool, says all our problems will be solved when England gets Home Rule
My reading of what Mr MacAskill said is that he was, at least in part, calling out the fiction of the Scottish Government’s position – ie. they demand a referendum, the answer is no, and then they demand it some more. Somehow we have to break out of that endless cycle of futility – one way is via a Plan B on securing an independence mandate, and another is via a ‘grand compromise’ between the pro-independence and anti-independence camps, which is what Mr MasAskill was getting at. But that would require willingness on the part of the Westminster government, which is totally lacking.
There’s a challenge for both sides here. If the SNP want to sneer at Mr MacAskill’s mention of Home Rule and say that full independence is superior, that’s fine, but they have to demonstrate that their support for full independence isn’t just nominal. One thing’s for sure – Home Rule would be preferable to pretending to push for independence while tacitly accepting the status quo (or something worse than the status quo).
By the same token, if the Tories mean what they say about having had enough of constitutional division, they have to explain in a plausible way how that division is going to be brought to an end. There are only really three possible outcomes from here – a) Scotland will become independent and the division will end due to former unionists accepting that the process is irreversible, b) there will be a ‘grand compromise’ involving the devolution of sweeping powers, or c) we’ll just go on as we are with the division entrenched. The Tories say that c) is what they don’t want, but that’s what they’re perpetuating with their intransigence. In practice, it suits them down to the ground, because the constant threat (but non-delivery) of a referendum keeps their core vote motivated.
I seem to recall Derek Bateman saying before the 2014 indyref that he’d have welcomed a compromise between Alex Salmond and David Cameron that delivered Devo Max in return for an agreement not to hold an indyref for ten or fifteen years. There’s something to be said for that on a “bird in the hand” basis…but it’s an academic point at the moment given that Scotland simply doesn’t have a willing negotiating partner. Plan B on an independence mandate is the only game in town, and to a large extent that’s what Alba is all about.
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