Speaking to The National this week after Andy Burnham – perhaps inadvertently – set out the conditions for Scotland to hold an independence referendum, polling expert Professor John Curtice acknowledged that if an independence referendum were to be held tomorrow, Scotland would most likely vote Yes. He stated that a vote is going to be difficult to avoid, although avoiding another referendum has been the tactic of the anti-independence parties for the past decade. Burnham’s admission at PMQs signalled that the previous stance of refusing to acknowledge there is a demand for a referendum is now unsustainable. Curtice also noted that we are in the current position because the referendum of 2014 failed to settle the issue of Scotland’s constitutional status.
This raises the question that the anti-independence parties and their allies in the media can never ask. Why did 2014’s referendum fail to definitively settle the matter of Scotland’s constitutional status? After all, on the morning after the referendum, did the BBC not tell us that the 55.3% No vote was decisive?
The vote in 2014 was clearly neither definitive nor decisive, yet the parties opposed to independence are vehement in their refusal to concede that there should be another independence referendum, although they are incapable of giving a coherent answer to the question of why the issue of independence is still the single most important topic in Scottish politics twelve years on from that supposedly definitive referendum which the heirs to Better Together continue to insist, in the face of all the evidence, settled the matter for a generation.
Independence remains the defining fault line in Scottish politics, all other issues are refracted through it, whether parties support it or oppose it. Scotland has voted for Scottish Parliaments with a majority in favour of independence at every Holyrood election since the referendum. The SNP is now in its fifth term as the Scottish Government while the Scottish Greens are the third largest party in Holyrood, outnumbering the Tories. For any politician or pundit to continue to insist that the independence issue was settled in 2014 is frankly delusional.
On the rare occasions when opponents of independence are pressed to explain why independence remains very much a live political issue in Scotland, they resort to simplistic and facile attempts to blame the SNP for refusing to accept the result of the 2014 referendum or for “grievance mongering”. With global experience of Trump’s election denialism we all know now what refusing to accept the result of a democratic vote looks like. Trumpian denial of the validity of the 2014 vote is categorically not what the SNP, the Scottish Greens, and the other mainstream independence parties have been doing since 2014. All mainstream independence parties accept the outcome of the 2014 referendum.
As for “grievance mongering”, it is an objective fact that the promises made to the people of Scotland by the Better Together campaign in 2014 have not been kept. Scotland is not securely a part of the European Union, the UK is not a federal or even quasi federal state, the powers of the Scottish Parliament have not been legally enshrined in a way which prevents a Westminster government from changing them without the consent of Holyrood, devolution has not proven to be a continuing process.
Successive Westminster governments have used the Brexit which Scotland rejected by a large margin as an excuse to sideline the Scottish Parliament and to give Westminster the power to intervene in devolved matters. Westminster used a unilateral veto by the then Scotland Secretary to override Scotland’s Gender Recognition Reform bill despite it being a bill within the competence of Holyrood which was passed with cross party support in the Scottish Parliament. Even opponents of the bill like Joanna Cherry accepted that this was an instance of Westminster overreach and acting like a colonial power.
The continuing refusal of Westminster to devolve energy policy means that energy rich Scotland continues to have some of the highest fuel bills in Europe even as the electricity produced by Scotland’s vast renewable energy resources is siphoned off to keep energy prices lower elsewhere in the UK. If Scotland had control of its own energy production and resources it would be truly transformative for the Scottish economy and domestic energy bills.
For all these reasons and many more, independence remains very much a live issue in Scotland. Had the Better Together parties kept all the promises they made to the people of Scotland in 2014, support for Scottish independence would most likely have returned to the levels it was at in opinion polling prior to the 2014 independence referendum campaign.
For the Better Together parties facing up to the question of why independence remains very much a live issue in Scotland means acknowledging that they have – to put it mildly – fallen very far short of fulfilling the promises and commitments which they made in 2014 in order to secure the No vote they so craved. That in turn means acknowledging there is a moral and political justification for a second referendum. That’s something they have tried to sidestep by dint of pretending that independence is not really a live issue after all. After yet another Scottish election which returned a record pro-independence majority to Holyrood and a Labour party in Scotland which looks moribund, simple denialism is no longer a viable political strategy. Andy Burnham let the independence cat out of the bag at PMQs this week, even though he may not have truly appreciated the significance of his admission. Simply denying or ignoring the demand for independence is no longer an option, the UK Government and the anti-independence parties must now be hounded until a mechanism for triggering a referendum has been agreed.
First Minister John Swinney has now written to Burnham asking for a meeting to discuss how to put the principle which the Prime Minister conceded to at PMQs onto a firm legal footing. In his letter, the First Minister said Burnham’s admission the same rules should apply to Scotland as they do to Northern Ireland is “a long-overdue acceptance of the reality that the people of Scotland will decide their own future, not the UK Government”, adding that it is “a clear endorsement of the fact that the UK must be a voluntary Union”.
Plaid Cymru’s Westminster leader Liz Saville Roberts has said that the same principles must also apply to Wales. A special event organised by the campaign group Yes for EU which will look at how the Celtic Alliance can help boost Scottish and Welsh independence efforts is due to take place this weekend in Edinburgh. The event will explore the impact of the Celtic Alliance on aspirations for Scottish and Welsh independence, Irish unification, and EU membership.
Details of the event are here: Will the Celtic Alliance help Scottish independence & EU membership?
After wrestling for hours with PayPal, I have finally compiled a list of the emails of almost everyone who makes a regular monthly donation to the blog and will soon launch the weekly bonus premium email article for those who make a monthly contribution to the blog. I had hoped to launch this in June but unfortunately it will be delayed for a while. There are a number of people whose emails I am unable to find. Some people donate monthly by Ko-Fi, one makes a monthly donation to last year’s GoFundMe fundraiser, a few people make monthly payments directly by bank transfer. I cannot access the email addresses of any of these people and so cannot add them to the new mailing list. If you are one of these folk, please email me at weegingerbook@yahoo.com and I’ll add you to the mailing list.
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