If The National are reporting this development accurately, the new specified function of the conference is –
“will be solely focused on how Scotland is able to hold a legally binding independence referendum”
That should be an incredibly short discussion, because the Supreme Court has ruled that Scotland is not able to hold a referendum of any sort, either legally binding or non-binding. A referendum is entirely in the gift of the UK Government, who have definitely ruled it out. End of story.
For the avoidance of doubt, the purpose of the special conference is now the total opposite of the one intended by Nicola Sturgeon when she announced it. It was supposed to be an event at which SNP members thrashed out the details and timings of a vote on independence that would be neither a referendum (because such a thing is no longer possible) nor legally binding, and members were to be given the final say because Ms Sturgeon did not “have a monopoly on wisdom”. Now it’s a conference in which you can choose any option you like, just so long as it buries the Sturgeon plan of using a scheduled election as a de facto referendum. That is required of members because apparently Yousaf DOES have a monopoly on wisdom. The manner in which Yousaf is persevering with the conference is a bit like the leaders of a coup announcing that elections will go ahead as planned, but with the minor difference that there’ll only be one legal party and one approved list of candidates that everyone will be required to vote for.
Let me confront Yousaf loyalists with two inconvenient points of reality. Firstly, there are literally no options for SNP members to choose between at this conference if it has already been predetermined by the leadership that a legally-binding referendum is the only legitimate way of winning independence. There are no variations or flavours to that method – the only way you can get a referendum is by saying “please, Mr Jack, can we have a Section 30?” and then to go on repeating that question into infinity when the answer is always no. The conference is therefore by definition a sham and a rubber-stamp of a decision that has already been taken.
Secondly, the SNP’s conditions for a process that qualifies as “gold standard” now seem to significantly exceed the ones that applied even under the Edinburgh Agreement in 2014, because the 2014 referendum was categorically NOT legally-binding. The UK Government made a political declaration that they would accept the outcome of the vote, but that declaration had no legal force or effect. There would have been no legal automaticity to independence in the event of a Yes majority vote. The Yousaf leadership seem intent on putting as many barriers in the way of independence as humanly possible, including ones that are self-evidently unnecessary, and it’s reasonable to infer that they are doing so because they are a de facto devolutionist leadership. The SNP have ceased to be a party actively seeking to win independence for the first time since at least 1942, and the purpose of the special conference is now to formally endorse the shelving of independence – a grotesque perversion of the reason Nicola Sturgeon called it.
The fact that the SNP under Yousaf are to all intents and purposes opposed to winning independence in any conditions that might ever exist in the real world does not put the independence movement in an impossible position by any means, but it puts us in a bloody awkward position. It means independence can only happen if Yousaf is either replaced as leader or forced into reversing course entirely, and the only way in which either of those events will occur is if the SNP are shocked into taking drastic action as a result of voters abandoning them. That’s not something I find myself remotely comfortable wishing for, and indeed I’m not going to wish for it. I’m sure I’m not alone in that. The least worst outcome from here would be if poor opinion poll results prove a sufficient shock to bring Yousaf down before the general election, but I have a horrible feeling that only actual seat losses in an actual election would bring enough pressure to bear.
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