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Edinburgh Festival veterans and purists have long lamented that the Fringe is a cuckoo which has taken over the nest so that, to mix zoological metaphors, the tail is now wagging the dog. The Fringe was a seminal influence in promoting stand-up comedy – i.e. the alternative to comedy – as humour was replaced by didacticism a generation ago, when comedians simply came on stage, said “Richard Milhous Nixon” and a roomful of proto-snowflakes erupted into forced laughter.
Every year one performer emerges as “acclaimed” comedy kingpin and this year is conforming to the pattern, except that the latest comic laureate is genuinely funny. John McDonnell, who in his offstage moments moonlights in the undemanding job of shadow chancellor, has created a sensation. His explosive one-liner – “We would not block something like that [a second Scottish independence referendum]. We would let the Scottish people decide” – brought the house down. Specifically, the house of cards that is Scottish Labour.
McDonnell later insisted he spoke also for Jeremy Corbyn in voicing this new permissive policy towards Indyref2. It is unlikely he consulted Corbyn (why would he bother?) since the Labour leader’s preferences on any given policy fluctuate, depending whether there is an ‘r’ in the day of the week. McDonnell certainly did not consult the Scottish Labour leader, Richard Leonard, who reacted angrily.
In fairness, McDonnell may not have been aware of the existence of Richard Leonard – not many people are. Fewer Scots have heard of Leonard than have heard of McDonnell. But the shadow chancellor’s casual breaching of the unionist front against separatism provoked chaos within Scottish Labour.
Richard Leonard fired back: “I made clear to him that a second independence referendum is unwanted by the people of Scotland and it is unnecessary. The 2014 referendum was a once-in-a-generation vote. There is no economic case for independence, especially with the SNP’s new position of ditching the pound and new policy of turbo-charged austerity to bear down on the deficit.”
While there are a few contradictions and hostages to fortune among those comments, the “once-in-a-generation vote” is a direct reference to Alex Salmond’s pledge in 2014 that the outcome of that year’s independence referendum would remove the separatist question from politics for a generation.
Even Wee Krankie, as her less respectful subjects call the First Minister on the grounds of her alleged resemblance to a diminutive Scottish comedienne, in the aftermath of the SNP’s referendum defeat, subjected herself to a self-denying ordinance whereby she would not seek to hold a second plebiscite until support for independence had consistently stood at 60 per cent in the opinion polls for at least a year.
In fact that rule made a lot of sense, from the separatist standpoint, since a second referendum loss would bury independence as an issue for more than a generation. Frustration, however, has by now supplanted discipline, so that bad-tempered table thumping and attention-seeking ejection of toys from the pram in demanding an immediate “Indyref2” has become Nicola Sturgeon’s routine activity, to the dismay of Scots who feel it would be more helpful if she occasionally addressed the day job by repairing the thatch on school roofs and delivering increased supplies of leeches to the hard-pressed NHS Scotland.
What has fired up Krankie and reduced Scottish Labour to a sackful of fighting stoats is the fact that McDonnell’s unexpected U-turn on an independence referendum coincided with a recent opinion poll from Lord Ashcroft showing support for independence at 46 per cent, compared with 43 per cent support for the Union.
Such maverick polls occur occasionally, generally at a time when leftist Scottish prejudices have been ruffled by some imagined affront from the English Tory-fascist occupation forces. The arrival of Boris Johnson in Number 10 is, to the point of caricature, precisely such a provocation. The poll result is a knee-jerk reaction by progressive, internationalist, climate-conscious (Zzz…) Scots to an Etonian toff committed to delivering a hard Brexit. Such emotional spasms bear no relation to how canny Scots would actually vote in an independence plebiscite.
The three preceding opinion polls, taken during the period when Boris Johnson’s coronation was becoming patently inevitable, recorded narrow majorities for No to separatism varying from 1 per cent to 4 per cent. But as recently as April of this year, in a Survation survey, the No majority was a thumping 20 per cent. Back in March 2017, an isolated Ipsos Mori poll gave Yes a 1 per cent majority. In late June 2016, in the immediate aftermath of the EU referendum, a record three opinion polls showed a majority for independence.
That emotional reaction soon fizzled out. In the 41 opinion surveys carried out between the maverick Ipsos Mori result in March 2017 and Lord Ashcroft’s latest poll, the No vote prevailed by margins ranging erratically between 1 per cent and 20 per cent. Scottish opinion is extremely volatile – except that it almost invariably rejects independence, in a consistent pattern.
If the SNP were to hold a second independence referendum, on a programme of re-entering the European Union post-Brexit, with the complicity of Westminster Labour and following the brutal treatment of Britain – a nuclear power and the sixth largest world economy with a permanent seat at the UN Security Council – by the Brussels hoods, the clever money is not on canny Scots who supposedly feel smothered in a Union of 60 million people opting for oblivion in a fast-integrating mega-state of 500 million and a dodgy euro currency they would be forced to adopt.
The meltdown of Scottish Labour might be thought to offer opportunities for the Conservatives. Not under the overrated Ruth Davidson, whose stock stands higher in Surrey than in Sutherland. Earlier this year that astute politician excluded from the Scottish Conservative conference the man who is now Tory prime minister. Will he be allowed to attend the next conference? Would he wish to?
The great delusion of Scottish Conservatives post-devolution has been that there is advantage in going native. The spectacle of “Ruth” giving the sacked David Mundell the “Oh, Parnell, my dead king!” treatment reflects her kneejerk antipathy to Brexit. Yet 38 per cent of Scots voted for Brexit at the referendum, compared with the 28 per cent vote for the Conservatives at the last general election, their peak performance. Why not pursue that extra 10 per cent, rather than appease irreconcilable Remainers?
For the moment, though, the armchair-and-popcorn audience fest will be provided by infighting within Labour: Scottish and Westminster, SNP-indulgent and hardline Unionist, Corbynite and social democratic, Leave and Remain, London and northern, Stalinist and Trotskyite… Just wait until the next time some cerebrally challenged Labour MP denounces Brexiteers for endangering the Union.
And why did McDonnell hurl this grenade into the ranks of his own party? Call it conspiracy theory if you wish, but an independent Scotland would expel Trident from Scottish waters and there is no harbour in England deep enough to accommodate it. For the Lenin of Hayes and Harlington, that might make Scottish independence an acceptable Brest-Litovsk-style sacrifice to advance the projects in the Leninist playbook. Just sayin’.
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Iain Martin and the team make sense of the news, providing commentary and analysis on the stories that matter in politics, geopolitics, economics and culture.