Clear the cookies ?
WHEN SCOTLAND held its referendum on independence in 2014, Alex Salmond, the country’s first minister, called it a “once-in-a-generation opportunity” to leave the United Kingdom. Scots, however, voted by a margin of 55% to 45% to stay in the union. Now the Scottish National Party (SNP), which runs Scotland as a minority government, wants to give them another chance. The polls suggest the SNP will win a landslide in the election for the Scottish Parliament due in May, and that a majority of Scots would vote for independence given the chance. How likely is a second referendum?
Brexit partly explains why Scottish public opinion has shifted. In the run-up to the independence referendum in 2014, unionists claimed that an independent Scotland would be booted out of the European Union. Spain, eager not to legitimise the separatist aspirations of Catalonia, said Scotland would not have automatic membership and would have to re-apply from outside the bloc. Only a vote for British unity, the “No” campaign argued, would keep Scotland in the EU. Yet Britain voted to leave the bloc in a separate referendum in 2016, and withdrew last year, taking Scotland with it. With just 38% of Scots supporting Brexit, against 52% across the United Kingdom as a whole, the SNP has claimed that Scots were dragged out against their will. The election in 2019 of Boris Johnson, a rumbustious English politician who has never been popular north of the border, as Conservative leader and British prime minister, rubbed salt into the wound.
Nicola Sturgeon, Mr Salmond’s successor as SNP leader and first minister, wants Westminster to grant the Scottish Parliament powers to hold another referendum, as the law requires if the result is to be considered legally binding. But Mr Johnson has said he will give no such permission, recalling that the vote of 2014 was meant to be a “once-in-a-generation” affair. Elsewhere, such stand-offs between regional and central governments have not ended well. In Spain, after the prime minister refused permission for Catalonia’s government to hold a vote on independence, it went ahead with an advisory referendum in 2017 that Spain’s highest courts then declared unconstitutional.
Although Ms Sturgeon has ruled out a Catalan-style unilateral referendum, not all her party agrees with this position. A case brought by grassroots independence campaigners will this month test in the country’s highest civil court whether Scotland can unilaterally hold an advisory referendum. But even if a ballot without Westminster’s permission is legal, it may not be practical, notes Alison McHarg of Durham University. Scotland’s 32 councils, whose responsibilities include organising elections, might refuse to co-operate. The SNP does not have majority control of any of them, thanks to the proportional-representation voting system used in local elections. Unionists might boycott the referendum, which would lead to low turnout and make the result less persuasive. And if voters backed independence the Scottish government would still need to negotiate a separation agreement with its British counterpart. Better, perhaps, to have agreement with the government in London from the beginning.
A future Labour government in London might be more sympathetic than Mr Johnson’s. Sir Keir Starmer, Labour’s leader, has said that the SNP will have a mandate to hold another vote if it wins a majority in the Scottish Parliament this May. But he opposes a referendum, preferring more devolution. The SNP’s best chance of securing a referendum probably lies with a minority Labour government at Westminster that relies on the nationalists’ co-operation. But raising this possibility could jeopardise it: the Conservatives won a surprise majority in the general election of 2015 after warning of just such an eventuality.
Even so, pressure on Mr Johnson’s government is growing. If Scottish support for independence remains high in opinion polls, calls for a second referendum will become harder to resist. “I think in the end Westminster will have to grasp the nettle and make the case for the union,” says Akash Paun of the Institute for Government, a think-tank in London. In 2014 the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats co-operated in the campaign against Scottish independence. But the three parties are now more divided, not least because of Brexit. Whether the effort to save the union can bring them together again remains in doubt.
Scoxit ?
I will never understand the thinking behind posters simply cutting and pasting news stories as if they are their own words, and - worse - not even bothering to comment on them.
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guest doesn't realise that V12 was posting it on request from logos.Guest wrote: ↑Wed Jan 27, 2021 12:54 amI will never understand the thinking behind posters simply cutting and pasting news stories as if they are their own words, and - worse - not even bothering to comment on them.
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- spitthedog
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Investment and stock exchanges rule.
If the sweaties leave the UK I would imagine the cost of using these will go up for Scotland.
London is where it's at.
If the sweaties leave the UK I would imagine the cost of using these will go up for Scotland.
London is where it's at.
"I don't care what the people are thinking, i ain't drunk i'm just drinking"