I have previously blogged about my view that the UK is entering a terminal phase crisis which it is unlikely to survive in its current form. The pro-independence campaign group Believe in Scotland is of a similar opinion and believes that this crisis provides Scotland and Wales with a unique opportunity to seize independence and finally put an end to the constitutional dysfunction which pleases itself to call itself a union.
We are close to a UK in which the Scottish and Welsh governments are both led by pro-independence parties and in Northern Ireland the devolved government is led by the pro-reunification Sinn Féin. Meanwhile in England the nakedly English nationalist hard right party of Nigel Farage is on current polling set to form the next Westminster government.
Despite calling itself Reform UK, Farage’s party has little interest in those parts of the UK which are not England as evidenced by the fact that the party failed to mention Scotland in its manifesto for the 2024 Westminster general election, and just seven months out from the Holyrood election it still has no clearly articulated Scottish policies. Many in Reform UK are known to be overtly hostile to the devolution settlement and some – such as former Reform MP Rupert Lowe – who left Reform in a huff after the party did not prove capable of containing both his and Farage’s massive egos, have openly called for the abolition of the Scottish and Welsh parliaments and a return to the situation as it was pre 1997.
Farage has not made his own position on devolution clear, but it’s a safe bet that his English nationalist instincts make him antipathetic to any elected body which competes with Westminster for national power. He is however intelligent enough to avoid saying out loud that he’d like to see the powers of Holyrood and the Senedd curtailed or the devolved parliaments abolished. He knows that would be electoral kryptonite in the hands of his opponents in the run up to Scottish and Welsh elections for his party to be seen to espouse the abolition of the Scottish Parliament or the rolling back of devolution. Outright abolition might play well with the staunch flute band brigade and some of the far right frothers who infest the comments sections of the anti-independence press but it repels most in Scotland.
It is certainly the case that Reform is first and foremost an English party without the same ideological commitment to the Union found in the Tories, the Lib Dems or Starmer’s Labour party. Reform members see Scotland as nothing more than a historic region of a unitary British state, a greater England in all but name in which Scotland has no more political relevance than Mercia or Wessex.
A Reform government in Westminster would be openly hostile to Edinburgh and Cardiff but a new opposition in England is coalescing around the English and Welsh Greens and the as yet unknown quantity of Corbyn and Sultana’s Your Party. Zack Polanski, the social media savvy new leader of the English and Welsh Greens has voiced his personal support for Scottish and Welsh independence while Corbyn’s party will at worst be neutral on independence and may even overtly support it.
The tipping point will come in May 2027 if Sinn Féin wins the Northern Irish election and sets in train the process for a reunification referendum. With Reform surging in England, the clamour for referendums from Scotland and Wales will be politically difficult for Starmer to ignore. I suspect he will try and ignore it which means the 2029 Westminster general election will consist of three de facto independence referendums running in parallel, one each in Scotland, Wales, and England. Northern Ireland will already be on a path to reunification with the rest of Ireland.
This all heralds a perfect storm for the UK as it is presently constituted. Farage will try to press English dominance and run roughshod over Edinburgh and Cardiff in a similar manner to the Tories, but on steroids. The opposition in Westminster will be far more sympathetic to Scottish and Welsh institutional resistance and disobedience than hitherto.
But between now and the next Westminster election there is work to be done.
Believe in Scotland has already agreed to collaborate with the SNP. Together they will start the process of bringing the whole independence movement together in an inclusive Scottish Independence Congress.
This month, they plan to set up the Scottish Constitutional Convention, a coalition of civic Scotland, trade unions, charities, other stakeholder bodies and political parties who believe in Scotland’s democratic right to decide its own constitutional future. This will be open to groups who do not necessarily support independence or have a position on it, but who agree that the choice should be made by the people of Scotland alone.
The best thing is for you to read Believe in Scotland’s proposal for yourselves. The link is here. The proposals are detailed and well thought through.
https://www.believeinscotland.org/the_road_to_independence_mapped_out
What all this will require as a vital condition of success is a Scottish Parliament with a pro-independence majority which is willing and able to disobey Farage and refuse to acquiesce to Westminster power . It will be aided and abetted by a strong contingent of SNP MPs, who after the next Westminster general election should make up a strong majority of Scotland’s MPs holding a mandate for independence. These MPs must be prepared to deploy every arcane rule in the Westminster rulebook to gum up the workings of the Commons and together with Holyrood make Scotland effectively ungovernable until the Westminster government recognises the mandates of Holyrood and Scotland’s MPs and facilitates a recognised and binding referendum. There is currently a majority for independence in Scotland but with the groundwork having been laid as per Believe in Scotland’s proposal and its well-being manifesto for Scotland and the alternative to independence being subordination to Farage’s ugly hard right English nationalism, a handsome victory for independence in the referendum is all but assured.
It is famously said that it is darkest before the dawn. Right now things look pretty dark, but there is a dawn coming, and it’s coming sooner than many of us have dared to allow ourselves to hope.
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