Nicola Sturgeon’s gamble helps Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer
It has been a momentous week in the Scottish independence debate with the Supreme Court confirming that only Westminster can ratify a referendum that could break up the UK. This was explicitly stated in the Scotland Act, so the decision is no big surprise. But nationalist MPs still fumed. They complained about an erosion of democracy. But all Sunak and Alister Jack, the Scottish secretary, would say is that the UK government wanted to work constructively with the Scottish government.
This strategy is driven by Scottish public opinion. A poll last year found that almost three quarters want Edinburgh and London to co-operate better. Boris Johnson internalised this argument. He shifted from saying devolution had been a “disaster north of the border” to emphasising his desire to work with Nicola Sturgeon. But, as one veteran of his No 10 recalls, getting him to stick with this strategy required regularly reassuring him that it was infuriating Sturgeon and the Nats.
Under Liz Truss, the government took a dramatically different approach. During the leadership campaign she derided the first minister as an “attention seeker” and said “the best thing to do with Nicola Sturgeon is ignore her”. As prime minister, Truss stuck to this: she never once, in her 44 days in office, had a formal conversation with Sturgeon.
This, had it continued, would have played right into Sturgeon’s hands. She would have argued that Downing Street’s intransigence meant devolution could never work, making independence the only option. But if the mood music from down south is emollient, if Whitehall is insisting it wants to work with Holyrood and not against it, Sturgeon will struggle to make her grievance at being disrespected look plausible.
Sunak made a point of speaking to Sturgeon on his first day in the job and he argues that the two governments must work together at every opportunity, as Scottish voters want them to. Sunak’s approach is strategic but also sits easily with his character. He will always opt for co-operation over confrontation if he can.
At the same time, Sunak is nowhere near willing to authorise a referendum. Scottish Tories ran for office vowing to protect Scots from the “neverendums” and the prime minister will keep this promise. His emphasis on co-operation, though, means that if the Scottish government pulls out of all intergovernmental bodies in protest at London’s refusal to agree to another referendum, it will be Edinburgh that looks like the aggressor.
So, with the UK government not budging and the Supreme Court unequivocal, Sturgeon has little choice but to fall back on her plan to try to turn the 2024 general election into a de facto referendum on independence. This is a risky strategy. Even in 2015, when the SNP won 56 out of 59 Scottish seats in Westminster, the party did not exceed 50 per cent of the vote. If the nationalists can’t get over this high bar, they will be in trouble. They will have had, by their claim, two votes in a generation and lost both. They could not hope for another for 20-odd years at least.
Angus Robertson, the Scottish government’s constitution secretary, has declared that votes for all pro-independence parties should count towards the 50 per cent mark. This does makes things slightly easier. Taken together the SNP and the Greens did exceed 50 per cent in 2015. But this puts Sturgeon in an effective electoral pact with Alba, Alex Salmond’s vehicle, as well as the Greens. She will not relish that.
The unionist parties in Scotland – the Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats – won’t accept the general election is a de facto referendum. But privately, both Labour and the Tories north of the border think the SNP’s framing will help them. If Sir Keir Starmer looks to have a real chance of forming the next government, Labour could be boosted by social democrat-inclined voters in Scotland whose priority is kicking the Tories out of power. Likewise, Tories hope unionist turnout and tactical voting will help them keep their six Scottish seats.
Another politician might have tried to back away from this risky plan but Sturgeon, out of options, is doubling down. Many in Edinburgh think she is quite happy to gamble her future, either bringing independence closer than ever or ending the career of the most able politician Scottish nationalism has produced.
Even if she fails, unionists will have questions to answer, including how to reduce support for independence in the medium term and in what circumstances they would accept another referendum.
Ruling one out would be a mistake. A vote within the next five years is a relatively popular proposition: a poll this summer suggests that a plurality of Scots would like one, even if the proposal suggests a rolling five years. Tomorrow, in this case, never comes: five years is always on the horizon.
Better for unionists to strike a reasonable tone, make clear they are not saying never and channel the US Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart’s line about obscenity – “I know it when I see it” – when it comes to the circumstances in which the UK government would agree to a referendum.
Right now, it is not credible to claim Scotland is being held in the Union against its will, as the polls suggest that “no” to independence has a slight lead. But if public opinion changes – senior SNP figures used to use the benchmark of support for independence being at 60 per cent for a year – there would be a clear and pragmatic case for another vote.
Sturgeon is trying to equate the cause of Scottish independence with democracy, which would be easier to swallow if her side respected the result of the 2014 referendum. It’s absurd to suggest Scotland is being held captive. The best way for the British government to show that is to be calm, ignore nationalist rhetoric or rallies, and carry on showing that it wants to make devolution work.
(James Forsyth is political editor of The Spectator)
The Times
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The Scottish National Party wants a fight, but Rishi Sunak won’t give them one. Nicola Sturgeon badly needs a constant war with “Tory Westminster”, thereby asking Scots to choose their side: pro-independence or pro-Tory? But Downing Street is determined not to take the bait.