When you’re ready to talk, Nicola, we’re ready to listen
A Tory MP was asked this week how long it would be before Brexit could be judged either a success or a failure. ‘We won’t know that for about 50 years, I think,’ was the unsmiling reply. A modern-day Zhou Enlai.
In a way, the Brexiters can afford to wait. They waited long enough in the first place. My friend Dan Hannan, the Tory MEP credited — if that’s the right word — as one of the fathers of this historic rupture, has campaigned with unswerving certainty and no small eloquence for Britain to leave the EU for 25 years, since he was a stroppy 19-year-old student and Prime Minister John Major was signing the Maastricht Treaty. Quarter-centuries, half-centuries… as Hannan’s nemesis Major put it, ‘the first requirement of politics is not intellect or stamina, but patience. Politics is a very long-run game and the tortoise will usually beat the hare.’
Whatever I or anyone else might think about it, Dan and his testudineous allies succeeded: Britain, with a resolute Tory government and a pathetically irrelevant opposition, is leaving the EU, and it ain’t ever going back. Will it be a success? They can wait; the rest of us just have to. What will be, will be.
For all their political differences, there must be a part of the calloused and battleworn SNP leadership that views the Brexiters with a mixture of respect and jealousy. After all, Sturgeon, Swinney and Salmond can similarly count their long march in decades, but fell short where the Brexiters breasted the tape. Despite their current national eminence and undimmed passion for independence, it remains unclear whether the Nats’ span in government at Holyrood is a stepping stone to their heart’s desire or merely a gilded cage.
If the Brexit campaign has presented Scotland’s separatists with an object lesson in how to do it — and they will be devouring its molecular details like flesh-eating ants — it has also gifted them the opportunity to have a second bash at securing independence rather sooner than they might have expected, or perhaps wanted. The divergence in the political cultures north and south of the Border has been visible for many years, and has only been exacerbated by devolution and the subsequent inward focus of the Scottish debate. But the EU referendum confronts Scots with the starkest possible evidence of this drift apart — in England, 53.4 per cent voted to leave, compared to 38 per cent in Scotland. By the standards of modern British democracy that is a massive difference of opinion, a matter for emergency marriage counselling if not outright divorce. It is what the SNP said it needed: ‘a significant and material change in circumstances.’ Or, as John Swinney put it this week: ‘Brexit has changed the dynamics of the UK and it’s reasonable to consider a second referendum.’
It won’t please my more devoutly unionist friends that I say this, but he’s right. On a central constitutional matter of existential import, English bulk has prevailed. Sheer force of numbers in one of the UK’s composite parts now commands the others to do its bidding, against their democratically expressed will. Meanwhile, the new unelected government that is driving us towards a hard Brexit seems to be taking the opportunity to pursue a slasher-flick Conservatism that leaves our own Ruth Davidson resembling a bowl of hand-knitted Liberal Democrat muesli. England is entitled to vote as it chooses, of course, but the curious physics that has sustained the United Kingdom for so long is being rewritten in front of our eyes. From the Scottish perspective, the equations look a bit off.
Ms Sturgeon is in the fortunate and unfortunate position of leading a party that has a vibrant, engaged membership and significant momentum behind it. When it comes to winning elections and filling halls, the Nats have a machine of unparalleled scale and quality. But the downside is that the First Minister must constrain an impassioned mob, most of whom have joined up since the 2014 referendum. When it comes to a second referendum they are like pitbulls straining against the lead - they want to go at it again tomorrow in a mad Braveheartian dash to the finish line that would inevitably end in the same grim failure as last time.
That the leadership sees things differently is obvious. Ms Sturgeon may have announced plans for a second referendum bill, but that is not the same thing as committing to a referendum. She may say it is ‘highly likely’ that a second vote will be held within two years, but this commits her to nothing. Her opening remarks to the conference on Thursday were a sober warning to the members dressed up as a hug: ‘There’s not a day that passes just now without someone advising me to hurry up with a referendum, and there’s not a day that passes without someone advising me to slow down. Welcome to my world. But the responsibility of leadership is to act in the best interests of our country as a whole. That’s the principle that I will continue to be guided by — and I know I can on your support every step of the way.’ In short: we’ll go when I’m good and ready.
There’s nothing unreasonable or ignoble about the First Minister’s attempts to work with other parties in the Commons to steer the UK away from the hardest of Brexits. Equally, her proposal that Scotland be allowed to stay in the single market even if the rest of the UK leaves may be doomed, but she’s entitled to advance it. ‘If all of that fails then I think Scotland would have the right to consider again whether it wanted to stay part of the UK coming out of the EU and the single market, or if it wanted to be an independent country able to preserve its position in the single market and provide a better future for the economy.’ There’s a refreshing frankness to this that many Remain voters in England would love to see echoed in the behaviour of their own cowed representatives.
‘The right to consider again…’ Ms Sturgeon knows that Scottish independence is not a historic inevitability so much as a political choice. There are no short cuts: the Nats must win the argument in what continues to be a healthily sceptical nation. Though, in its exposure of cultural difference, Brexit helps them, any subsequent economic turmoil will be a double-edged sword, given its likely impact on voter confidence and appetite for further risk-taking.
Between today and whenever a second vote is held, Ms Sturgeon must find ways to answer the unanswered questions and plug the gaps that put off so many of us last time. She needs to apply that ‘honesty and straight-talking’ she boasts about when it comes to Brexit on the home front too. Currently, an independent Scotland would enter the world with a £15 billion deficit, not the dowry any blushing debutante would wish for. Shamefully trying to spin away figures that are compiled by the Scottish government’s own economists is not the act of a grown-up government. Leaving the EU has given the currency question a profound new depth — does Scotland want to quit the UK Treasury and the Bank of England and its monetary arrangements for what is in effect a German-run equivalent? Does it want to shadow a weak pound that for all its benefits to exporters will soon have a major negative impact on the living standards of households throughout the country? Is either option remotely attractive to a majority of Scots? If not, what?
Do we want to throw ourselves on the mercy of international markets currently looking askance at the Brexit gamble — heaping gamble upon gamble? What would be the impact of independence on our relationship with our biggest trading partner — the rest of the UK — if we re-entered the EU while it remained outside?
Will the SNP growth commission set up under former MSP and economist Andrew Wilson be allowed to confront the facts and report back in a spirit of genuine frankness, or will it be hijacked and stymied by base Nat politics? How can the anaemic performance of all Scottish governments so far give us confidence that our politicians have the capacity for the brave, unpopular decisions and hard graft it would take to make a new state work? What of real substance is the SNP doing now to tackle the inequality that led many Brits — including one million Scots — to roll the dice on leaving the EU? Why not pursue a maximalist devolution policy that further empowers Holyrood while keeping us within the relatively safe space of the British state?
These are big challenges, and it’s by no means clear the separatists can find convincing solutions. But in demanding they try, it seems fair that the rest of us be willing to engage with open minds. So: go away and do the hard work, First Minister, and come back when you’ve got some answers. We’ll be waiting, patiently.
This article appeared in the Scottish Daily Mail on October 15, 2016
