I’ve just watched Nicola Sturgeon’s statement in response to the Supreme Court verdict. I was waiting to be either outraged or extremely heartened, but in the end I was neither. It was the quintessential curate’s egg of a statement – very good in parts, but with some puzzling and worrying elements. The good in it was that she reiterated that she planned using an election as a “de facto referendum” with the “intent of achieving independence” – that’s actually a much, much stronger form of words than Angus Robertson’s virtually meaningless “independence will be the key issue in the election”. (Obviously I have no idea what is going on at the top of the SNP, but one possible explanation is that there’s a rift between Ms Sturgeon and Mr Robertson on the issue of a plebiscite election, with Mr Robertson not being sold on the plan – that would be consistent with him bizarrely negating the entire concept in his remarks to France 24 a few weeks ago.)
I was a bit troubled by Ms Sturgeon’s announcement that there would now be an intensive campaign on the issue of democracy rather than independence itself. It’s not that I don’t think the issue of democracy is vitally important or that I’m not outraged that the Supreme Court have admitted that the UK is not a voluntary union – it’s just that I worry that ‘a campaign for democracy’ potentially sounds very much like the tired, failed old strategy of saying “this is totally unsustainable, of course Theresa May/Boris Johnson/Liz Truss/Rishi Sunak will have to give us a Section 30 if we get yet another mandate – this time (for no immediately apparent reason) it’s going to be completely different”. But in fairness to her she went on to make clear that Scotland needed independence because it’s now been established that we can’t have democracy as part of the UK. So if she’s just talking about a campaign for democracy as a component part of a campaign to win a majority for independence in a plebiscite election, I have no great objection to that.
But of course the real problem with what she said is that she’s sticking to her insistence that the next Westminster election, rather than an early Holyrood election, has to be the plebiscite election – in spite of all the obvious disadvantages of doing it that way (16 and 17 year olds can’t vote, EU citizens can’t vote, photo ID rules will disenfranchise pro-indy voters disproportionately, pro-independence voices will be totally excluded from TV leaders’ debates, etc, etc). There was a key exchange with the BBC’s James Cook in which he put to her that some of her own supporters are concerned that 50%+ of the vote will not to be attainable at the election because voters will not perceive it as a real vote on independence, and her response was that if you recognise political reality, you have to understand that you can’t have independence without a majority of people voting for it.
Now, I actually agree with her on that. And it’s not a statement of the obvious for me to say so, because it means I disagree with the official position of my own party (Alba), which insists – for reasons I greatly struggle with – that a majority of seats won on a minority of the vote should be sufficient. But it was still rather disingenuous of her to make that point in response to Cook’s question, because the concern of her internal critics is not that 50%+ for independence is not achievable in itself, but instead that it may not be achievable in the specific arena of a Westminster election, where the independence issue will be totally swamped by media coverage of the Tory v Labour battle for power in London. The point that the critics are making is that we should be seeking a mandate in the home fixture of an early Holyrood election, not the away fixture of a Westminster election.
I can only think of three possible reasons why she is so hellbent on using a Westminster election, and none of them are great. Firstly, she emphasised that she wanted to use the earliest “scheduled election”, so it may simply be that her notorious over-caution is preventing her from even considering the obvious option of a non-scheduled Holyrood election. Secondly, she could be worried about the danger of losing the pro-independence majority at Holyrood if a plebiscite election goes particularly badly – but, if so, that’s an obvious nonsense, because there’s no point in having a pro-independence majority in the Scottish Parliament if we don’t use it to maximise the chances of achieving independence itself. And thirdly, she could have in mind that the next Westminster election is shaping up to be particularly tricky for the SNP, and that galvanising the independence movement behind her in a plebiscite election is the best way of holding SNP seats against the Labour tide. If it’s party advantage rather than the independence cause she has in mind, that really would be unforgivable. But I hope that’s not the case, and I hope to be reassured it’s not the case as this process unfolds.
One thing we did learn is that there will be a special SNP conference early next year to discuss the precise terms of the plebiscite election, and I very much hope thoughtful delegates will at least try to put a switch to using a snap Holyrood election on the agenda. This has to be about what’s best for Scotland and the cause of independence, not about party interest.
