Nicola Sturgeon will never deliver independence
Scottish nationalists need to face facts about their leader.
‘I'm going to be around a lot longer.’
With these words, Nicola Sturgeon seemingly struck a blow to Unionist hopes that the SNP’s election-winner extraordinaire might not see out this current term of parliament. There has been speculation for a number of years that the First Minister would be gone in six or twelve months, typically to a never fully explained job at the United Nations, but nothing ever materialised. Stubbornly, she persists.
It doesn't say much about the quality of the Holyrood opposition that their best hope of beating Nicola Sturgeon in seven years has been the off-chance that the UN Secretary General might hypothetically recruit her to help save the world.
But is it really Unionists who have the most to fear from many more years of Sturgeon in Bute House? As the SNP's lacklustre virtual conference has illustrated, the Nationalists are in an odd position. They are the government at Holyrood and far and away the biggest Scottish party at Westminster. But the SNP isn't like other parties; it doesn't exist merely to win elections. The primary purpose, as stated in the party constitution, is 'the restoration of Scottish national sovereignty'.
How is that going? In the thirteen polls conducted since May's election — specifically those asking the 2014 question, 'Should Scotland be an independent country?' — the No side has been ahead in eleven. When Scots are asked instead whether they want to remain in or leave the UK, the Union is even further ahead — 16 percentage points in the most recent survey.
The bigger problem is that, even if these numbers were reversed, the UK Government still refuses to grant a second referendum, which was the centrepiece of Sturgeon's appeal to nationalists to come out and vote SNP once again in May. Since the question of whether or not to hold another vote is thought to lie exclusively with the UK Parliament, the nationalist movement is at the same impasse it's been stuck at since 2016. Sturgeon gives plenty of speeches about 'democratic mandates' and how they 'cannot be denied', but the plain fact is that, despite Brexit, despite Boris Johnson, despite the Internal Market Act, nothing she has done in the last five years has moved Scotland one inch closer to independence. When she talks about staying 'a lot longer', nationalists might reasonably ask: to what end?
The pandemic has suspended political gravity for 18 months and given Sturgeon an excuse for her failure to make progress. However, every booster in every arm hastens the transition out of the pandemic, or at least into a more manageable way of living with Covid-19. When that time comes, the SNP grassroots will come clamouring for action on indyref2. Yet, it is not clear what Sturgeon can do to give them what they want.
There are three plausible ways to achieve Scottish independence. One, the UK Government can be convinced, either by demonstrations of popular demand through the ballot box, protest or civil disobedience, to grant a referendum, give Holyrood the power to decide, or enter into negotiations for formal separation. Two, the largest party in a hung parliament at Westminster agrees to a referendum in exchange for confidence and supply from the SNP group. Three, the Supreme Court decides that the UK Parliament must permit a referendum.
All three of those options are fraught with difficulty. Option One would seem the most likely because, for all that it would be fatal folly for a Labour or Tory government to allow another referendum, both those parties have an extensive record of folly when it comes to the Union. Option Two carries huge political and logistical challenges. Option Three is the most remote, though the Supreme Court is not the bulwark against separatism that Unionists believe it is. Professor Adam Tomkins, for instance, has argued that the 12 justices likely would not stand in the way of a ‘wildcat’ referendum provided it had no legal effect.
As the above suggests, the chances of securing a binding independence referendum in this Holyrood term are up there with winning Squid Game. That is a difficult message for some to hear. Nationalists still drunk on hope will dismiss it because of who it comes from and because their belief is greater than their preparedness to handle the truth. The truth is that politics isn’t about who’s right or what’s right, it’s about who has the power and what they do with it. On a second referendum, Westminster has the power and will have to be convinced to part with it. On independence strategy, Sturgeon has the power and shows no sign of ceding decisions to her excitable grassroots.
Proponents of independence need to confront the possibility that, however long she stays on as SNP leader, Nicola Sturgeon may never deliver a legally-binding referendum. If that is the case, a central dynamic in Scottish politics changes. The transaction is no longer voting SNP in exchange for a referendum but voting SNP to keep the Unionists out and to maintain momentum beyond the Sturgeon era and into the leadership of her eventual successor. For some, that will be enough. For others, it will be a betrayal too far.
The great unknown is what happens next. Some SNP voters motivated by or sympathetic to independence may find another repository for their vote (though where isn't immediately obvious) or stop voting altogether. Those who thole their way through it will have to adjust to a new way of thinking about the SNP. #WheeshtForIndy, the Twitter-originated plea not to rock the boat lest the good ship Independence veer off course, would no longer apply. Now it would be #WheeshtForNicola: nationalists would be expected to limit their in-house criticism in order to protect a leader who was not going to take them to victory on the constitution.
Remove the prospect of a second referendum in the near future and maybe lengthy waiting lists and missed health targets are no longer quite so tolerable. Take independence out of the equation and the attainment gap and mishandling of exams start to look more and more like systemic failures. Business leaders who reproach the Scottish Government for its suspicion of enterprise and scepticism about growth might suddenly seem like they have a point. If independence isn't coming yet for a' that, then why should the rank and file put up with their party being hijacked by twenty-something ideologues who want to dump 100,000 north east workers on the dole and define women out of existence?
Fair enough tolerating endless, wound-poking wokery if it's all going to get swept aside soon by practical questions of fighting and winning a referendum. But go along with all this in exchange for standing still on sovereignty? That's a lot to ask, too much for some.
Facing up to the reality of an independence-lite SNP, an SNP of poor delivery and progressive posturing, means facing up to the real Nicola Sturgeon. She is not the warrior woman with the common touch that has been spun by her PR people and lapped up by SNP true believers. She is a triangulating politician with a skill for strategy and absolutely no clue how to use the levers of government to bring about change. A talker like no other but not much of a doer.
It is this Sturgeon that SNP supporters would be expected to fall in line behind, this Sturgeon that party activists would have to defend on the doorstep without even a glimmer of hope that their toil will be rewarded by another referendum. A Sturgeon who cannot deliver on the constitution or the day-to-day running of government in Scotland is one at risk of undermining support for the SNP on both fronts.
This is why the fiction must be maintained that independence is around the corner. It is not, but once that realisation sets in, Nicola Sturgeon changes as a political quantity. If she is not the bringer of independence, the symbol of competent government or the social democratic transformer of Scotland, then she is just another politician. And few politicians get to decide how long they stay around.
Originally published in the Scottish Daily Mail on November 29, 2021.
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