Both The Times and The National are reporting that Humza Yousaf appears to be reverting to Nicola Sturgeon’s policy of a de facto independence referendum, based on language he used in an email to SNP members trying to sell the remaining tickets for the special independence conference. I would be only too delighted if that was true, but my strong sense is that it’s a fundamental misreading of what he’s said, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if The National are invited to publish a “clarification” before the day is out. The language about a vote for the SNP being a vote for independence is pretty much identical to what he was saying a week ago when both he and Jamie Hepburn were being scathing about any route to independence that doesn’t involve a Section 30 order, so I can’t detect much sign (or any sign at all) of a change of heart. Probably the idea is that SNP votes will be interpreted as evidence of public backing for independence, in the same way that Tory votes can be interpreted as general support for conservatism, and Labour votes under Starmer can be interpreted as general support for some kind of Frankenstein’s monster of syncretic authoritarianism. But the sole purpose of demonstrating that support for independence will just be to continue with the endless futility of begging for a Section 30 order.
A true de facto referendum is an election in which the manifesto states “if we and our allies secure an absolute majority of the popular vote, Scotland will have decided to become an independent country and we will then invite the UK government to negotiate an independence settlement with us”. There’s no mention of a Section 30 order or a referendum, because the election *is* the referendum and no further vote is required. Now, it’s true that the unprecedented leverage that we would accrue from Scotland having voted for the first time to become an independent country might well force the UK government into a negotiation that results in a referendum as a compromise. That’s fine, we live in the real world and sometimes political obstacles can only be removed by means of dialogue and imperfect trade-offs. But at the point at which you actually seek the mandate, it’s important to be crystal-clear about what the intended purpose of the mandate is. If all anyone hears is “what we really want is a Section 30 order”, no-one – not the UK Government, not the media, not the voters, no-one – will actually treat a successful outcome as a genuine mandate for independence, and you’ll never have the leverage in the first place. You’ll also have a much harder job persuading independence supporters to vote for you if they’re not convinced they’re really voting for independence.
When Nicola Sturgeon first committed the SNP to the de facto referendum policy, it was widely reported that many SNP parliamentarians at Westminster were furious about it. I’m not sure it was ever clearly explained what their problem with it was, but there are two logical explanations. The most charitable one is that they were worried about the effect on the independence cause itself, ie. they thought the 50% + 1 target wouldn’t be achieved and that as a result independence would be off the agenda for decades. We can put that worry to rest now, because the penny has dropped even for the formerly arch-plebiscite-election-sceptic Pete Wishart, who now realises that the beauty of using elections to seek an independence mandate is that there’s no such thing as a generational defeat. If you fall a few percentage points short in any given election, you can just try again at the next election. There can be as many de facto referendums as there are scheduled elections.
The less charitable explanation is that they were worried for their own careers and were stuck in a scared-of-their-own-shadows 2017-style mindset of thinking that the way to shore up the SNP vote is to talk about independence as little as possible and to make independence seem as distant as possible. Well, if that made any sense at all last year when Nicola Sturgeon first adopted the de facto referendum plan, it certainly doesn’t make any sense now. The SNP vote has since dropped sharply while support for independence has held up or possibly even increased. In the Savanta poll yesterday, independence support was at 49% while the SNP were only on 38% in Westminster voting intentions – a gap of eleven points. There are clearly substantial numbers of pro-Yes, ex-SNP votes out there, mostly in the Labour column, which can be won back by giving people the chance to vote directly for independence, and that frankly won’t be won back in any other way. The clarity of Labour’s message of “vote Labour on Thursday, get rid of the Tory government by Friday afternoon” means that the SNP will only be able to compete if their offer is just as clear and captures people’s imaginations even more. “Vote SNP and we’ll negotiate independence” will cut it, but “send a message to Westminster”, “stronger for Scotland”, “standing up for Scotland”, “elect a local champion”, or any of the other meaningless formulations that have been tried, will not.
And if a de facto referendum only boosts the SNP vote to 43% and not to 51%, so what? We go again at the following election, and in the meantime scores of pro-independence seats have been saved. Even from the most hard-headed, cynical, self-interested, careerist point of view, a de facto referendum is undoubtedly the smart strategic choice for the SNP at this stage.
