Scotland

The Scottish election may be a done deal but the move towards indyref2 is the next big thing. And on that rocky road Scots independence supporters may have some unusual allies: English public opinion and much of the London-based press. Curiously enough, these forces may be ready to apply powerful pressure on a beleaguered Boris Johnson to do the right thing by Scots if a majority of independence-supporting MSPs are elected on May 6 as expected. Indeed, if Nicola Sturgeon takes her time demanding the Section 30 powers that let her hold a lawful referendum, mad-for-it London hacks may hold Nicola's feet to the fire more effectively than a SNP/Green/Alba supermajority at Holyrood.

Whatever happens in the Scottish Parliament elections on May 6, Westminster should apply new thinking to all future referendums in the United Kingdom. Central to this new thinking should be the principle of 'informed consent'. Electorates should be as well informed as possible about the likely consequences of their vote.  The Australian constitution (a British Act of Parliament of 1900) supplies the model. It requires that the constitution may only be modified by a referendum on a detailed proposal which has already been agreed by the Australian parliament. Thus in the 1999 Australian referendum on the monarchy, the voters did not vote on the bare principle of monarchy, leaving the politicians to sort out the details afterwards.

Will Anas Sarwar lead Scottish Labour back into second place at Holyrood? On the strength of the campaign he has fought, he deserves to, for he has run the most positive, energetic and ideas-based offering in a dreary and rancorous election. Sarwar has been almost alone in trying to make the May 6 poll about something other than arid constitutionalism.  His proposals are all sound, social democratic measures: a jobs guarantee for young Scots; investing in cancer and mental health treatment; and extra funding for schools to recover from the educational setbacks of Covid-19. Against an increasingly stale-sounding Nicola Sturgeon and the Scottish Tories' angry-robot leader Douglas Ross, Sarwar has been a breath of fresh air.

The Holyrood election has been characterised as relentlessly negative, with the SNP and the Conservatives sticking rigidly to their respective attacks on the Prime Minister and calls for a second referendum on independence. Both Nicola Sturgeon and Tory leader Douglas Ross look like they desperately want the whole thing to be over. Not so, Anas Sarwar. The Scottish Labour leader appears to be living his best life with an energetic campaign emphasising his opposition both to indyref2 and banging on about opposition to indyref2. This has led to him being accused by Sturgeon of sitting on the fence.  https://twitter.com/GordonMcKee_/status/1385935122038415360?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw Sarwar can be seen gyrating enthusiastically to 'Uptown Funk' by Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars.

What has happened to the SNP's usually slick media handling during this election campaign? In several recent interviews the famously sure-footed Nicola Sturgeon has struggled to sound credible when asked tricky questions. The bluff and bluster, learned from her mentor Alex Salmond, is still there, but at the same time there is a sense of a previously grounded authenticity slipping away. In a revealing interview with Channel 4 News last week, Sturgeon was asked if she has conducted any economic analysis on the consequences of independence. Given the UK is now outside the EU (and hence we have clarity on the EU-UK trading relationship) and that Sturgeon wants to use this election as a gateway to independence, you would think this would be of some importance. But apparently not.

Adam Tomkins’ suggestion that the UK should morph from a consent-based union of equals into a constitutional forced marriage contains all the classic elements of modern Unionist thought. Guaranteed to infuriate Yessers by suggesting a treaty between two independent states can be retrospectively replaced by a Hotel California-style unquittable union — check. Guaranteed to cement the Tories’ reputation as the slightly-crazed, hardball members of the Better Together team for current electoral purposes — check. Guaranteed to fall apart as a proposition after five minutes of serious examination — check.

Presented for whatever is the opposite of your edification, an exchange between the leaders of Scotland’s main political parties. The setting is Tuesday night’s Holyrood election hustings, hosted via Zoom by the National Union of Students. We begin with Nicola Sturgeon accusing Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross of being inconsistent on who gets credit for the Covid vaccination programme in Scotland. Nicola Sturgeon: Make your mind up. Douglas Ross: No, I was saying your rollout was poor. Your rollout was poor. NS: But the point is, the UK chose to— DR: But answer the question— It’s like watching a very dressed-down remake of Mean Girls. Totally not fetch.

For the last century the United Kingdom has regarded itself as a voluntary union of four home nations. Consent, rather than the force of law, has been the glue that has held us together. This is not normal. Most countries hold themselves together with something rather more robust. In Spain, the courts, applying the constitution, ruled that it was unlawful for Catalan separatists even to hold a vote on Catalan independence. In the United States the position would be even stricter. Its leading case on the law of secession was admittedly decided in the immediate aftermath of the US Civil War, but the US Supreme Court’s authoritative decision on the matter was unequivocal.

When a commentator first referred to the ‘Ulsterisation’ of Scottish politics, he was jumped on by people keen to take offence at the parallel. But whilst Scotland does not stand on the brink of civil war – and the coiner of the phrase did not claim otherwise – there is no disputing that Northern Ireland offers an insight into what politics looks like when it gets polarised around the constitutional question.

When Scottish Green Party co-leader Lorna Slater urges people to vote as if ‘their future depends on it’, she’s not warning the electorate about the planet’s climate crisis. Independence is what Ms Slater, a Canadian-born engineer and trapeze artist, really craves. Scotland’s Greens may brand themselves as guardians of the environment, but observers could be forgiven for thinking their primary political purpose is to act as the Waitrose wing of the SNP. The Scottish Greens exist to allow middle-class revolutionaries to reconcile their belief in solidarity with their conviction that it stops at Gretna Green and their deeply-held egalitarianism with their concern that the average SNP voter is a bit council scheme.