Union on the line as breakaway Scots head to the polls

The election for the Scottish parliament on May 6 is looming as a potential crisis for Boris Johnson’s Westminster government.

Scotland has been for some time effectively a one-party state under the rule of the Scottish National Party, and at the May election its leader, Nicola Sturgeon, will base her campaign on a demand that a referendum on Scottish independence be granted by the British government. Sturgeon will argue that independence would give Scotland the opportunity to join the EU, which a ­majority of Scottish voters chose to stay with when the overall 2016 Brexit vote in the UK was to leave.

Even if Sturgeon loses some votes to the Greens and the new Alba Party set up by former chief minister Alex Salmond, any members elected by these two groups will be supporters of independence. But a legal referendum can take place only with the consent of the British government, and there are four reasons Westminster should refuse this agreement.

The first is that there was a referendum on independence a short time ago in 2014 and it was lost. How many votes does the SNP want — best of three, best of five?

The second and perhaps most important reason is the SNP wants a vote, as occurred on the last ­occasion, confined to residents of Scotland. Scotland has approximately 8 per cent of the UK population. So what is the rationale for saying the rest of the UK should have no say in whether it should be broken up after more than 300 years of union? In 2014, the poll proceeded on the bizarre basis that Bulgarians living in Scotland could vote but the remaining 92 per cent of the UK could not.

Nations seldom dissolve themselves, and secession by one region or province has been the source of some major conflicts in modern history, most strikingly in the attempt by the Confederate states of the US in 1861 that resulted in a civil war and cost 600,000 lives. It might be said the Confederate states should have been allowed to go their own way, but consider this in the Australian context. Should Western Australia be able to ­secede because it considers its mineral wealth unfairly shared with the rest of the country?

The third reason Westminster should not countenance a second referendum is that Scotland would not be a viable economic entity outside of the UK, and it must be doubted whether the EU would welcome a new member that required substantial financial support, given the fact the EU, which means in reality Germany, is already heavily subsidising some of its members. As might be expected from the author of The Wealth of Nations and himself a Scot, Adam Smith recognised the importance of Scotland’s ties with Britain, ­saying: “The union was a measure from which infinite good has been derived to this country.”

The fourth reason is that a referendum would set a precedent for a vote in Northern Ireland on the question of its joining the Republic of Ireland. It is a century since ­Ireland was ­partitioned and the reason this occurred in 1921 was a majority of the population in Northern Ireland did not want to be part of the new republic. But demographic changes in the north over recent years have made that position much less certain. This still leaves the question of why the voters of Northern Ireland, with less than 3 per cent of the UK population, should be able to break up the UK in the absence of any expression of opinion by the remaining 97 per cent.

But even if the British government refuses to consent to a referendum, one option for Sturgeon, if the SNP retains its dominance in the Scottish parliament, is to go ahead and hold a referendum in any event. This is what happened in Catalonia in 2017 and the Spanish government reacted by putting leading members of the Catalonian administration on trial, after which they were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment.

This is hardly an option for Boris Johnson, but it underlines the high stakes both sides are playing for at the May election.

Michael Sexton’s latest book is Dissenting Opinions.