To those of us who think politics is fundamentally about winning power and governing, there are only two interesting political parties in Britain today. One is the Conservatives. The other is the Scottish National party. Both are winners. The others have gone awol.
But the Tories and the SNP have another thing in common. They share a genuine capacity to demolish the political foundations of modern Britain: the Conservatives by bringing the country out of Europe, perhaps by accident; the SNP by breaking the country up, very deliberately. These are imminent destructive realities that cannot be overlooked, however much one may admire Nicola Sturgeon’s brilliance as a leader, which is beyond dispute.
Sturgeon may have appeared to park the independence question in her speech to the SNP conference in Aberdeen today. Instead she spoke most of the time about housing, health, education and inequality. She did what she often does, attempting to root the SNP’s appeal to voters in next year’s Scottish parliament elections on its commitment to social democracy.
But there was a double sleight of hand here. Sturgeon focuses on her social democratic agenda not because she isn’t really a nationalist but because she thinks she would not have such massive poll support if she was to put independence front and centre so soon after the 2014 referendum. She is surely right about that.
But in addition she didn’t actually park the independence question anyway. What she said in Aberdeen is that it would be wrong to have a second referendum until there is “strong evidence that a significant number” of last year’s no voters have changed their minds. That means in practice that it’s all down to the opinion polls. It certainly does not mean there will be no second referendum if the SNP sniffs an opportunity.
On one level that is absolutely fair. The SNP is what it says on the tin. It is a nationalist party whose essential aim is independence. While it is indisputable that the SNP has managed to co-opt social democratic aspirations in a very effective way, it is a mistake to imagine the SNP’s appeal is “really” about social democracy and not nationalism, as some in the Labour party still do.
The reality is that Scottish voters like the promiscuous mix the SNP offers – both the social democracy and the nationalism. They don’t like Labour’s claim to be better social democrats, partly because they don’t really believe it but also because they don’t think Labour offers enough to them as Scots.
That’s not going to change any time soon. Jeremy Corbyn – and perhaps even the new Scottish Labour leader, Kezia Dugdale – may hope that a more leftwing Labour offer will win back the lost Labour voters from the SNP. Some in the SNP may fear the same thing too. But as a YouGov poll today confirms, there is absolutely no evidence of a Corbyn effect in Scotland. Right now, most Scottish voters want a fairer society with the flag on it.
So here’s the big question that needs addressing in Scotland. Is it simply a matter of waiting for YouGov to tell Sturgeon when the time is right? Is the die already cast?
Not necessarily. If Sturgeon really thought the voters have buyer’s remorse about staying in the United Kingdom, she would have said so today. She would be saying so throughout the Holyrood election campaign. She would be demanding a second vote if the SNP wins again in May, which it looks like doing by a distance.
But she isn’t doing that. Maybe there will be a second independence vote if the UK votes to leave Europe. But apart from that? Sturgeon understands that the worst of all things for the SNP would be a second referendum that went the same way as the first. But you would be a fool to pretend as a result that the game is up for independence, or that Sturgeon thinks this.
Yet if the die is to be uncast – if the SNP’s grip on Scottish politics is gradually to wane – how might this happen? As coincidence would have it, there is a general election taking place in Canada on Monday that may offer some clues.
Canada is not Britain, and Quebec nationalism and Scottish nationalism are certainly not identical. The one is rooted in language and French history in North America; the other in political and cultural separation from England. But the trajectory of Québécois nationalism over more than a generation has been towards compromise with Ottawa and extensive self-government rather than separation.
The question for Scots is whether, in the fullness of time, they make a similar choice. If so it will take many years. But this is what has happened since the second – and wafer-thin – vote by Quebec to stay in Canada in 1995. Back then, the separatist Bloc Québécois was, as the SNP likes to claim it is here, the main opposition party nationally.
Twenty years on, the dominant political forces in Quebec are not separatist. Instead, Quebec voters seem to be opting overwhelmingly for the centre-left Liberals under Justin Trudeau, the likely winner on Monday, and the leftwing New Democrats. Canada’s election is volatile, but current projections suggest that the nationalist Bloc may take just three of Quebec’s 78 seats.
If that happens, Britain can draw several lessons from it. First, that defeating a second independence referendum is critical. Second, that a new constitutional and political settlement between Scotland and the rest of the UK is a priority. Third, that the parties of the centre-left and left have the best chance to regain the initiative from nationalists, but only if they have a serious strategy. Fourth, it could all take a generation or more. But, fifth, there is absolutely no law that says the nationalists are bound to win in the end.
In the Aberdeen conference hall today, as Sturgeon addressed her buoyant and much-enhanced party, the eclipse of nationalism seemed a very long way away. Today belongs to them; probably tomorrow too. Yet if the parties that support the UK – and particularly those of the centre-left – think strategically, the SNP’s ultimate triumph, the separation they exist to achieve is not inevitable.
