A former civil servant who played a pivotal role in Whitehall’s campaign against Scottish independence has said Scotland should be offered “home rule” within the UK, to kill off continuing calls for another referendum.
Alun Evans, who recently left his post as director of the Scotland Office to become chief executive at the British Academy, told the Guardian he believes the UK government needs to make a “big, bold offer” in response to the surge in Scottish National party support since the referendum.
“If the pro-UK parties and the UK government put on the table, ‘yes, we will enter into discussions around home rule’, that would straight away seize the initiative from the SNP and the Scottish government. They would be on the back foot,” he said.
A plan for home rule, otherwise known as devo max or full fiscal autonomy, would be supported by some 80% of the Scottish electorate, Evans said. “And it would put an end to the plans for independence for many years. I’m quite sure that would be the outcome if we put it on the table.”
Evans will set out that proposal in London later on Wednesday in his first speech since taking over at the British Academy, to mark the first anniversary on Friday of last September’s referendum.
The SNP and yes campaign lost the referendum by 55% to 45%, but immediately seized the initiative after Labour imploded and David Cameron unveiled UK government plans to cut Scottish voting power at Westminster in return for extra powers for the Scottish parliament.
Under Nicola Sturgeon’s leadership as first minister, the SNP won a remarkable 56 out of Scotland’s 59 seats at the general election, leading Sturgeon and her predecessor Alex Salmond to drop their pledge before the referendum that it was a “once in a generation” event.
Scottish ministers will argue in Holyrood on Wednesday that the further powers on offer are still too weak, but SNP demands for full fiscal autonomy and the quest for independence have lost substantial force after North Sea oil prices plunged to below $50 a barrel, weakening Scotland’s finances.
Sturgeon told STV on Monday she had no intention of staging another referendum which the yes campaign was destined to lose. “I don’t ever want to feel what I felt in the early hours of 19 September,” she said. “Immediately afterwards, the mood was one of utter devastation and I felt that personally. We were all grief-stricken.
“If we are going to have another independence referendum I want to know there is support in Scotland for independence that means that referendum is going to be successful.”
There will be no debate on staging a new referendum at next month’s SNP annual conference: Sturgeon has instead promised to set out the likely triggers for a second vote in the party’s manifesto for the Holyrood elections next May, signalling it might happen during the next five years.
Evans, who oversaw the Edinburgh agreement to hold last year’s referendum, and helped craft the UK government’s referendum campaign and its input into last winter’s Smith commission on further powers for Holyrood, said he now believed the political challenge facing the UK has changed.
He thought the UK government was wrong to veto a third option at the referendum, which would offer Scottish voters home rule rather than full independence.
“With the benefit of hindsight, if a third option had been on the ballot paper it would’ve won a crushing victory and we wouldn’t be in the position we are at the moment,” Evans said.
While the falling oil price was hugely important, “the point I’m making is that the terms have changed since the referendum, if only because you’ve now got 56 SNP MPs down here in London whereas before we had six. The idea that everything will remain the same because the oil price is down to $50 seems to me rather fanciful.”
“Since I have become chief executive of the British Academy, and looked back at some of these things, it has struck me that the UK and [the] UK parties tend to be playing catch-up,” he said. “The SNP is always setting the agenda and sometimes we have to put things on the table and get ahead of the curve.”
Evans added: “I think the circumstances have changed, so the options need to change.” The UK, “can continue with the incremental approach or make a bigger, bolder offer and say yes, there’s a case to see full fiscal autonomy”.
His British Academy speech is expected to impose conditions on Scottish home rule – a concept backed by the Liberal Democrats and campaigners such as Reform Scotland – to ensure it is a final, lasting settlement: Scotland’s representation in the Commons should be cut, perhaps by half; a deal would lead to an end to further independence referendums; and home rule would be honoured by the UK, perhaps in the form of a new treaty of union.
