Why I’m staying put in Scotland, even if the Nationalists win independence

Nicola Sturgeon will still be Scotland’s First Minister after Thursday’s election. The SNP may have a slim majority in the Holyrood parliament, or she may lead a minority government, dependent on the support of her party’s Green allies. Either way her Government will be legitimate, but its moral authority may depend to some extent on the turn-out in the election. If that is below 60 per cent, Sturgeon’s mandate will not be impressive. Winning half the vote in an election ignored by four voters in every ten is hardly a resounding endorsement, even if it is as convincing as Boris Johnson’s occupation of Number 10 Downing Street on less than 44 percent of the vote in the December 2019 General Election.

Sturgeon will claim that she has a renewed mandate for a referendum on independence. This is not however a fence she is likely to try to leap quickly. She has always been a canny politician, averse from risk-taking, and in the past she has prudently said that she would like to see opinion polls regularly showing 60 per cent in favour of Independence before she jumps. In any case she has also – rightly – said that the immediate priority must be post-Covid recovery. Moreover she knows that if the 2014 referendum wasn’t (as it seems to have turned out) a “once in a generation” chance for independence, another held within ten years of that one would certainly be that.

Of course there is one obvious reason to risk pushing for a referendum soon. That reason is Boris Johnson. The SNP may never find a defender of the Union as unpopular in Scotland as Johnson. Yet this is a risible argument for independence. Johnson is a here today, gone tomorrow, next week or in a couple of years, politician. Scottish independence is for life. Independence is a road once taken with no quick way back.

We don’t know when there will be a referendum. It may be that Sturgeon’s characteristic caution will yield to the angry impatience of the strident wing of Nationalism. This is indeed possible. She is already under pressure. The Unionist parties are merely her opponents. The strident Nationalists are her enemies. She may come to feel the need to appease them.

But if we don’t know when there will be a referendum, still less do we know what the result might be. Referendums are kittle cattle that may deliver surprising results

However, some natural Unionists are already disturbed. The NatWest bank has threatened to move the headquarters of the Royal Bank of Scotland south of the border. Perhaps it would do so. Why not? The Royal was founded in 1727 as a Unionist bank by men who suspected the Bank of Scotland (founded 1694) of Jacobite sympathies.

Writing on Reaction a couple of days ago, Jenny Hjul declared that an independent Scotland would be no place for her and so she would be on the first helicopter out. “If the SNP dominates the next parliament,” she wrote, “there will be no escape except to England”. She has had enough of the “separatist supremacy.

Well, I sympathise with her irritation, and dislike, even resent, the SNP’s assumption of superior virtue, a sort of neo-Calvinist belief that they are the “Elect”, but I wouldn’t be taking the train to London or even a bus to Carlisle. This is partly because I am too old to shift, partly because I have a stake in the country (though no property ) and partly because of sheer cussedness. Leaving would seem like accepting that the SNP are Scotland and Scotland is the SNP. But they aren’t and it ain’t.

Yes, the prospect of Independence is unattractive. I am Scottish, nevertheless also British. I’ve argued against independence for years and voted against it in 2014. But then I thought Brexit just as unattractive and, like a majority of Scots, voted against it in 2016.

The Conservative government’s disregard for the clear majority in favour of remaining in the EU has dismayed and angered me. It made Theresa May’s talk of “our precious, precious Union” seem rank hypocrisy, even while I recognized that comparable disregard of the majority in England who voted for Brexit would have been not only politically impossible but wrong.

The question of the EU complicates any argument. In short, it’s a buggery. In 2014, the coalition government in London told Scots that only by voting “No” to Independence could we be sure of remaining in the EU. This argument made sense, for it was far from certain that a breakaway Scotland’s application for EU membership would be accepted. It was likely that Spain, itself threatened by a breakaway Catalonia , would veto it. It is probable that some were persuaded by the argument and voted accordingly.

Now the wheel has turned. An independent Scotland seeking to join the EU would no longer be an applicant breaking away from a member state, for the state that was a member in 2014 has itself now broken away. So there would probably be a “welcome” mat in Brussels and the capitals of EU member states. 

But here’s the rub. Scotland in the EU single market and customs union would be out of the UK single market and it follows as ineluctably as night follows day that there would be customs posts on the border between England and Scotland.

Another buggery.

Who, except those on the wilder fringe of Scottish Nationalism, could possibly want this? Even middle of the road Nationalists might be deterred by the prospect.

Nevertheless, it is as certain as anything can be that we will still have a SNP government next week and probable that sometime in the next few years Nicola Sturgeon will move for a referendum which the UK government would be foolish to deny her. Given that four out of ten Scots are probably firm for independence and four out of ten as resolutely opposed to it, the outcome will depend on the other two out of ten who are at present undecided. Reason and sentiment will both play a part in determining how they vote, and the result may go either way.

There’s no call for Unionists to despair, and in any case if we lose most of us will stay put and make the best of things. Why walk away from places and people we love? An independent Scotland would still be a parliamentary democracy, neither an earthly heaven nor hell, but a place were all governments are temporary and all politicians have their sell-by date. Even those who seem dominant in their years in office end up diminished. Some wither, others deflate like pricked balloons. But private life goes on and most of us make the best of it we can, cultivating our garden, caring for our family, friends and work.