What puzzles me about Stewart McDonald’s call for the SNP to back down yet again, and totally abandon its plans to try to win independence in the foreseeable future, is not so much that he’s done it (we all know exactly where he’s coming from on this) but that The National decided to make it a front page splash and prominently place the entire text of his “report” (ie. extended opinion piece) on their website. As the saying goes, “retweets are not necessarily endorsements”, and by the same token “front page splashes are not necessarily endorsements”, but the unspoken words that follow in both cases are “but more often than not, they are”. It must be hoped that this is one of the exceptions – perhaps The National’s plan is to encourage and facilitate the widest possible debate in the run-up to the special conference in March, and we can look forward to equivalent front page splashes about the release of “reports” strongly making the case for the de facto referendum to be moved ahead to an early Holyrood election in October of this year, which a growing consensus within the independence movement recognises to be the option with by far the greatest chance of delivering a successful outcome.
McDonald’s piece contains an enormous number of words but it boils down to the following: “A de facto referendum cannot deliver independence because the UK Government will not respect the result. We should therefore instead use the next election to seek a mandate to hold a referendum, and start a campaign to increase support for independence.” It really is as thin as that, when you strip away the frills. The fundamental contradiction in it is that McDonald is arguing that any plan that cannot deliver independence must by definition be rejected, and yet the evidence that his own plan cannot deliver independence is considerably stronger than the equivalent evidence that a de facto referendum cannot do the trick. Why? Because his own plan has already been tried, and it has failed. Indeed it has been tried multiple times, and it has failed on each and every occasion. McDonald tacitly acknowledges this himself in a passage that unwittingly borders on the comical –
“By reinforcing such an unambiguous mandate with the issue front and centre of our campaign – even putting the commitment into a form of words on the ballot paper itself – coupled with existing support for a second independence referendum, we will have steeled the mandate to such an unprecedented level that no Prime Minister can misinterpret, delay, or ignore it. It would be the fifth parliamentary election across two parliaments with such a commitment [to a referendum in our manifesto], but there must be a noticeable difference in the prominence that the issue is given compared to previous elections.”
In other words, we’ve tried this four times before and it’s had zero effect, but the fifth time, yeah baby, the fifth time it’ll work for sure, as long as we’re a wee bit more enthusiastic about it than we previously were. As my old American gun nut buddy Kevin Baker used to say, “Do it again, only HARDER!!!!” Stewart, mate, if you think your wholly untested assumption that victory in a de facto referendum will not result in independence negotiations is a fatal flaw, then I’m afraid it’s a massive problem for you that we already have such overwhelming evidence that a mandate for an independence referendum does not, and never will, result in an independence referendum.
Aha, Stewart will say, you’re overlooking my cunning plan for an independence campaign to take place at the same time, and that will ingeniously tip the balance and ensure the UK Government cannot possibly ignore the fifth mandate for a referendum in the way they have the previous four! Well, this begs the obvious question of why the hell the SNP have not been campaigning for independence thus far (if Stewart thinks they haven’t). But more importantly, there are sound reasons for thinking that the UK Government would become even less likely to agree to a referendum if a campaign successfully pushed Yes support higher than it currently is. From London’s point of view, there is only strategic sense in facilitating a referendum if they believe they at least have a realistic chance of winning it.
I don’t think Stewart has quite thought through the psychological impact of the SNP putting an outright commitment to independence in its manifesto, campaigning seriously on that commitment, and then winning more than 50% of the vote on it. For the first time, the 2014 mandate to remain in the United Kingdom will no longer be uncontested – and indeed the mandate for independence will be seen to be of superior quality to the 2014 result because it’ll be much more up to date. I don’t know whether independence negotiations will follow thereafter – perhaps they won’t, but what I do think is that there would be a recognition that there is a constitutional crisis that needs to be resolved by negotiations of some sort, especially if the mandate is followed up by either disruption at Westminster or a deadline for withdrawing Scottish MPs from the Commons, thus seriously calling into question the legitimacy of continued London rule. It’s certainly far more likely to move us on from the current deadlock than the magical thinking of “the fifth mandate for a referendum will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back in the way the fourth wasn’t”.
Stewart claims that the whole idea of a de facto referendum is bogus because only one side of the argument will be fighting the election on that basis. Well, the 1918 election in Ireland is generally regarded as the mandate for an independent Ireland, even though only Sinn Féin fought that election as a de facto independence referendum. Exactly the same point could be made about any other mandate sought via a manifesto commitment – including, for example, a fifth mandate for a referendum. Is Stewart saying that such a mandate would only be valid if unionist parties agree that the election is about whether a referendum should be held? And if so, why on earth should they conveniently play along? What Stewart is actually arguing for is a losers’ veto – a sentiment that Alister Jack would thoroughly approve of, but it’s nonetheless nothing short of an anti-democratic outrage.
To delegates at the forthcoming conference, let me say this. The de facto referendum was an indispensable part of Nicola Sturgeon’s strategy for going to the Supreme Court. It had to be there, because it was the only way of ensuring that no matter what the judges’ verdict was, it would not be a defeat for the independence cause, and there would still be a way for Scotland to make its choice. What Stewart McDonald wants to do is turn the Supreme Court’s decision into a real defeat – one that bestowed London with a permanent veto over Scotland’s right to democratic self-determination. Moreover, it’s a veto that McDonald has utterly failed to show he has any even remotely credible plan for overcoming or circumventing. Don’t waste even five seconds’ thought on his craven plea that we should haul up the white flag at this moment of all moments.
