Let us not be ungracious about the use of the term “leading figures” here.
But equally, let’s not waste too much attention.
The University Of Glasgow’s Centre For Public Policy yesterday put out a 56-page report discussing Scotland’s constitutional future.
It purports, reasonably enough, to address the glaring democratic weakness in the Unionist policy position regarding Scottish independence.
Because of course, the Union as it stands is NOT voluntary. Scotland is a prisoner – or as John Smith, the Speaker of the Commons, put it at the time of the Act Of Union: “We have catch’d Scotland and we will bind her fast”.
Regardless of whether or not a majority of its people are currently happy with their imprisonment, prisoners is still what they are. There are no officially-sanctioned means, other than by the grace of the UK government, by which they can extricate themselves from the Union should their desires shift in that direction.
(People may be happily – or at least tolerably happily – married, but feelings change over time and 42% of all UK marriages end in couples wishing to divorce, a situation recognised by the law providing a mechanism for those people to do so.)
And to cut a long story short, here’s the conclusion of the 56 pages:
Those two paragraphs are the entire substantive content of the document. The rest of the 56 pages are waffle and padding and a recap of the last 10 years. All it actually says is “There should be a mechanism, and it should resemble the Northern Irish one” – points that some of us have been making for most of that decade.
(To be absolutely fair to them, “The Centre for Public Policy today released a Post-It note” probably wouldn’t have garnered much press coverage.)
The paper does not elaborate, or even offer suggested options, on just what the “set of criteria” should be. Surprisingly, perhaps, it doesn’t express a view on whether – for example – the extended period of consistent Yes leads in 2020/21 would have been sufficient to trigger the mechanism.
And our previous reluctance to be ungracious notwithstanding, it must be noted that the authors are people of no political significance or influence whatever – sinecured quangocrats who needed something to do with their day, and they have no more say in the matter, or power, than you or we do.
A succession of the main UK party leaders (and Ed Davey) have made it abundantly and repeatedly clear that they have no intention of granting a second referendum in the foreseeable future under any circumstances.
Nor do they have any reason to change that stance. The refusal of democracy to Scotland post-2014 has not proven particularly electorally damaging to them for the last 10 years and there are no signs that it’s about to start doing so. The international community is not especially exercised by the issue, particularly as Scotland did have a vote on the matter in fairly recent history.
We welcome the subject being given exposure, and we don’t disagree with the paper’s findings. But it’s a dead end in terms of actually progressing independence, and since it would certainly set a higher barrier than 50%+1, the effect would be to make victory – by that route, at least – harder to achieve.
A 50%+1 vote in a plebiscitary election, on the other hand, would not GUARANTEE the compliance of the UK government or the meaningful support of the international community, but it would be an unmistakeable, undeniable, unspinnable assertion of the Scottish people’s will in a way that no collection of opinion polls ever could. It remains the only method that puts the matter entirely in Scotland’s hands.
So in the unlikely event that Sir Keir Starmer takes up the proposals, that’s all well and good. The existence or otherwise of such an agreement would not negate or reduce the force of the plebiscitary route. It would do no harm, other than perhaps giving the SNP a further excuse for inaction (although we should have learned by now that they don’t need excuses for that).
But it’s no cause for excitement, or even really a raised eyebrow. There’s nothing here we didn’t know. By all means give it a read if you’re bored, but it will alleviate neither your boredom nor Scotland’s democratic deficit. We’ve taken the bullet for you, and the three paragraphs we’ve quoted above are all you need to know.
