The Cedar Lounge Revolution

Got to enjoy the comment by Alex Salmond with regard to the Glasgow East byelection, which will be on Thursday, where polls still seem to indicate that Labour will win the seat. As it happens I quite like the SNP and wish them well. Sure they’re bourgeois nationalists (!),  and they’ll sell the pass sooner or later - no doubt. But in the meantime they’re playing a good game. That said… this doesn’t seem like the by-election for them to do particularly well.

Anyhow, Salmond argued that:

“Our support is strong, motivated, and it’s going to turn out. The poll shows a lot of undecideds - but the only reason those people are undecided is they are moving from the Labour Party to the SNP.”

Er… okay, Alex. I think I understand what you’re getting at. Maybe. Perhaps. Let’s hope you’re right.

The poll wasn’t exactly the most scientific…

Local commentators were inclined to dismiss Saturday’s survey for the Scottish Daily Mail giving Labour a 17-point lead over Scottish National Party candidate John Mason as a likely “rogue poll”, given a sample size of 509 voters.

I’d still think it’s likely to see Labour return. Not that that will particularly help Gordon Brown, because while it is true that…

…defeat in Labour’s 25th safest seat would spell a fresh crisis of confidence in prime minister Gordon Brown’s leadership - with yet another national opinion poll yesterday showing the Conservatives with a 21-point lead and on course for a three-figure majority in a new House of Commons.

Somehow victory will, probably be spun as merely a consolidation in Labour heartlands. And that offers thin respite from national UK polls which on Sunday saw:

…ComRes survey for the Independent on Sunday put the Conservatives nationally on 45 per cent, one point up on a similar poll last month, with Labour two points down on 24 per cent and the Liberal Democrats down one point at 16 per cent.

Not good, not good at all. Now the English electorate can happily trek towards a ‘three figure’ Conservative majority in the House of Commons, but elsewhere around the UK perhaps people are a little less sanguine.

So, what better time than now to consider briefly the options for independence. And it has to be said, an article in Prospect this month doesn’t exactly gladden the heart as it lists off the various hurdles already in front of precisely that.

Robert Hazell, director of the constitution unit at the school of social policy at UCL, argues that:

Alex Salmond’s plan is to hold a referendum on Scottish independence soon after 2010, when the Conservatives have won the general election but with (probably) only five seats in Scotland. The Scottish backlash could propel the vote to independence. The media assume that if the Scots were to vote yes, Scotland would automatically become independent.

Worth noting briefly how the commentariat is largely of one mind that the Conservatives will win in 2010. What it must be like to be Gordon Brown these days. Still, single minded doesn’t equate with inevitable. Anyhow, fascinating too to see how the proposed path is one energised by that supposed Conservative victory. Makes one wonder what would be the circumstance if Labour, or some sort of Labour/Liberal Democrat government squeaked into power.

Anyhow, Hazell continues:

But this would be only the beginning of the process. There are five stepping stones on the road to independence, any of which could become a roadblock. Salmond needs to negotiate each one successfully before Scotland can go it alone.

And these are that it requires the approval of the Scottish parliament to allow a referendum to go forward. Currently there are 50 MSPs in favour of independence with 79 against. However, Wendy Alexanders quixotic call in May last to ‘bring it on’ will, as Hazell notes, make it much more difficult for Labour to drag its feet on supporting just such a proposal. In any case, if one follows Hazell’s line the likelihood is that in the environment following a Conservative national election victory the attitudes on the ground might well be more charged and more positively supportive of a referendum.

That said he makes a good point when he notes that support for independence remains at or about 30%. This isn’t propitious if your political project is independence. Quite the opposite really. And the rupture, political, economic, cultural that independence would bring, even the rather ameliorative and gradual form envisaged by the SNP is, I’d suspect, the sort of thing to give pause for thought as the pencil hovers over the ballot paper.

It gets more complicated because even in the event of a Yes vote, as Hazell continues: ...the referendum proposed by the SNP would simply authorise the Scottish government to start negotiations with the British government about the terms of independence.

Now, to some extent that mitigates the point raised as regards the second step. If independence is going to be a long drawn out and negotiated divorce this might offer some comfort for those not quite certain they want to go all they way, but fairly sure they’d like to see what is on offer. Still. While Hazell offers some potential negatives ‘The Scots would no longer receive transfers from the British taxpayer, which currently enable them to enjoy levels of per capita public expenditure some 20 per cent higher than in England’, it’s difficult to know if that would tilt the balance. Indigenous resources might help retilt the balance somewhat…

A broader problem is evident.

…then there is the EU. Although the position is not certain under international and EU law, the better view is that in the event of Scottish independence, the rest of Britain would be deemed the successor state which would remain in membership, and Scotland would have to reapply.

Adventurist tendencies in Kosovo apart the EU has on the whole been respectful of national state boundaries. Whether that is a good or a bad thing is worth discussing but it does point to an implicit inertia as regards experimentation. Not least as regards:

Other member states, like Spain, [who] might block the negotiations for fear of encouraging the independence claims of their own national minorities, in the same way that they signalled their unhappiness at the prospect of independence for Kosovo. There are half a dozen EU states in this position.

And while we’re talking about Kosovo the Spanish government is one amongst a number that has yet to recognise this newest breaklet (too cute? Sure, but I kind of like it). Even if everyone sits down at the negotiating table and things proceed apace that would still necessitate an enormous volume of work. Hazell points to the Czech-Slovak “velvet divorce” requiring ‘31 treaties and over 2,000 separate agreements”. Again, not beyond the beyond, but significant nonetheless.

And then, step number four, a second referendum which would legitimise the negotiations. As Hazell recognises, the SNP doesn’t see the necessity for one, but he argues that ‘the principle of informed consent’ would make it all but inevitable.

Finally, and one presumes that this would be forthcoming, Westminster is required to pass legislation granting independence. Hazell accepts this would be essentially a de facto situation once the preceding steps had been passed through, but… who is to know? In a way this makes the possibility and potential for a United Ireland seem, well, fairly straightforward.

That said uneasy echoes of Northern Ireland are apparent, as when Hazell, who it is clear is sceptical about significant progress being achievable suggests that:

If the unionist parties keep their cool, the SNP may not manage to progress far down the long road towards independence. It will have to settle instead for the prize of governing Scotland. That is not necessarily to be spurned; it is what the Catalan and Basque nationalist parties have been doing for the last 25 years. But Catalonia and the Basque region are still part of Spain.

“Settle instead for the prize of governing Scotland”. Replace that last name with another and one can see a comparison with the North. On the other looking at the Catalan and Basque situations may - paradoxically - give some hope to those who look forward to an independent Scotland. It is true that after a quarter of a century a sort of limited ‘home rule’ is what is on offer there. But the nature of that rule has deepened and deepened across that period of time. It may take another quarter century or even longer, but the autonomy continues to increase. That dynamic seems to me to have but one eventual destination. And in that sense perhaps the SNP could take heart because as they become a legitimate and effective governing political force in Scotland they can contribute to that sort of dynamic there. Problem is, it’s a long road. And it requires patience. Salmond has it, but does the SNP?