SNP Indyref2 is an unregretted casualty of Covid-19

Nothing restores a sense of proportion like a lethal pandemic: against so harsh a backdrop, the pretensions of the political agenda are exposed in all their triviality. Just as the pronouncements of anti-Brexit Remainers, so solemnly articulated a year ago, are now disregarded as so much partisan chaff dispersed by the winds of history, the even less substantial claims of those promoting a second referendum on Scottish independence today seem as relevant and persuasive as Soviet statistics for tractor production circa 1958.

The world has moved on. Reality, so long obscured by a fog of modish media preoccupations, has reasserted itself. Survival is now a universal priority. When it comes to the petty ambitions of a clique of obsessive Scottish separatists, people – including most Scots – have more important matters to concern them. If there is one thing to which the Scottish public is passionately indifferent it is Nicola Sturgeon’s pathetic attempts to orchestrate a we-was-robbed re-run of a “once in a generation” independence plebiscite to which the electorate gave a decisive response just six years ago.

The last opinion poll held before the epidemic impinged properly on the public consciousness showed only 17 per cent of voters supported holding a second referendum in the near future. Today that finding seems to belong to a remote past. Last month the SNP government “paused” its preparations for a referendum in deference to the coronavirus crisis. The nationalists must secretly have been relieved. In a letter to Michael Gove, the Scottish cabinet secretary for constitutional relations Michael Russell said ministers had halted work in preparation for a referendum, in response to the crisis.

Even the most delusional Nats must now realise a second referendum is not only unfeasible this year but also in the coming decade. What will the Scottish economy look like post-lockdown? Back in 2013, in advance of the independence referendum, the SNP government published a “white paper” setting out the case for separatism, entitled “Scotland’s Future”. It might more accurately have been termed Alex Braveheart’s Book of Porkies, so extravagant were the claims it advanced.

Oil has always been central to the separatist argument: it was its discovery in the North Sea in the 1960s that brought the SNP into mainstream politics. The Scottish government’s bogus prospectus in 2013 forecast oil revenues of nearly £8bn for 2016-17; in the event they totalled £226m. For the period from financial year 2016-17 to 2018-19 the SNP creative accountants overestimated oil revenues by £30bn more than the actual figures. In 2013, the year this fantasy forecast was fabricated, the average closing price for Brent Crude was $108.56; today the price stands (at the time of writing) at $27.30.

Even in the heady days of oil prosperity, sensible commentators agreed that oil was too unstable a resource on which to base a sovereign economy. Today it is not even a remote option. What other staple resource does Scotland possess? Scotch whisky?  In 2018 whisky exports earned a record £4.7bn, hardly adequate to sustain independence. Scotland’s deficit before the pandemic was £12.6bn, or 7 per cent of GDP, compared with the UK’s 1.1 per cent. Under Westminster tyranny state spending in Scotland is a grudging £1,661 more per person than the UK average.

After the pandemic it remains to be seen whether such fiscal imbalances can be sustained. The more pessimistic estimates of UK and global economic prospects predict a lunar landscape of economic ruin; it seems fair to predict that recovery will take at least a decade. The notion that, in such dire straits, Scottish voters would embrace the insanity of detaching themselves from the United Kingdom is simply not credible.

Independence in Europe? What Europe? Not only the Eurozone but the EU itself will face an existential crisis in which its survival is far from guaranteed. In the event that a greatly impoverished EU continues to exist, would it welcome with open arms a Scotland whose economy had reverted to the conditions prevailing circa the reign of Alexander III? Debt mutualisation, anyone?

For once, the comparisons being made in the media with post-nuclear conflict survival films and our likely prospects are not entirely exaggerated. Only after release from lockdown will people detect the many thousands of unforeseen social and economic consequences of total economic paralysis. Does anyone seriously believe – even Nicola Sturgeon in her inner heart – that Scots struggling for economic survival would entertain the extravagant notion of holding a referendum with a view to separating from the United Kingdom?

It simply is not going to happen: not in the next ten years, not in the lifetimes of any senior politicians active today – probably not in the current cycle of history. It’s over, Nicola. Indyref2 belongs to the Toytown politics of the years of plenty, when people had so few real concerns that they ignored real perils such as the wholly predictable crisis that has now overwhelmed us.

The SNP’s platform is no longer sustainable; as a manifesto for Rockall it might be credible, but as a blueprint for the future of beleaguered Scots and their families it is as irrelevant as the Solemn League and Covenant.