What now for Scottish nationalists?

The Scottish parliament does not have the power to legislate for a referendum on independence. The Supreme Court has made that clear and it is a rare piece of good news for Scotland’s embattled Unionists. What, though, of the other side? Not Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP; Iain Macwhirter has written insightfully about that elsewhere on Coffee House. I mean the voters, the roughly half of Scots who consistently tell pollsters they favour independence. What do they do now?

It’s important to note, first off, that believing in independence does not equate to wanting another referendum any time soon. An October YouGov poll found 51 per cent of Scots would vote No in a second referendum while 49 per cent would vote Yes. However, the same poll asked whether, should the Supreme Court give the green light, respondents would back another referendum in October 2023, Sturgeon’s preferred timing. Fifty per cent were against but only 41 per cent in favour. Half of Scots want independence but significantly less than half want the referendum that might deliver it. 

Let’s say these two indicators change. Let’s say support for independence returns to the majority position, where it has previously been for sustained periods, plus clear majorities want a referendum promptly. Right now, it would be effectively impossible. Holyrood doesn’t have the power and Westminster won’t agree to transfer it. Is Scottish independence simply not achievable by lawful, democratic means? What do we think of that?

As I’ve written extensively for Coffee House over the years, I’m relaxed about this in constitutional terms. Under the UK constitution, sovereignty resides in the crown-in-parliament under God. If parliament wants to permit another referendum, it will. If it doesn’t, it won’t. Popular clamour no more dictates parliament’s legislative agenda than it does for a referendum on withdrawing from the ECHR, bringing back hanging or abolishing the monarchy. It may or may not be wise to keep certain issues outside the democratic arena but if this is the practice with other matters, including constitutional questions, there is no reason why the same shouldn’t apply to Scottish independence. 

Even so, parliament might want to look to the lesson of Brexit. Refusing Eurosceptics a referendum only strengthened their hand with voters who felt this arbitrary, out-of-touch and undemocratic. One way to resolve this, as I’ve suggested, is to introduce legislation explicitly defining the UK, at least as regards Great Britain, as indivisible or indissoluble. A 2019 study found that 82 per cent of countries have an indivisibility clause in their constitutions or statutes, either inhibiting secession or prohibiting it outright. In the wake of the 2014 independence referendum, former constitutional affairs secretary Jack Straw advocated a hard indivisibility clause, rendering Scottish secession impossible, while others have floated the possibility of something softer, merely erecting constitutional hurdles to separation. 

Legislating for an explicit constitutional rule of indivisibility would give parliament a legal instrument in which to anchor its position on independence. It would also give a dying government a chance at a tangibly conservative legacy, or a legacy of any kind. Most importantly, it would secure the future existence of the United Kingdom by enshrining national unity not only in law but as a priority for parliament and the executive. The United Kingdom would no longer be a country forever on the verge of a constitutional nervous breakdown. 

This still doesn’t answer the question of the half of Scots that support a split. Maybe their number will dwindle, or maybe it will swell in response to the Supreme Court’s judgment. Even if Westminster resolves never to hold another referendum, and somehow manages to maintain this position through more than one news cycle, it is hardly conducive to national unity to have so many citizens wishing to be citizens of a separate country. This problem is only likely to grow. There is a generational gulf over independence. If only under-50s voted, Yes would win a second referendum handily. 

There are all sorts of reasons why the young are so intensely pro-independence but the most difficult to overcome is the culture-values-identity trio. Crudely put, the younger you are, the less likely you are to feel British. A June poll from ComRes found that, while only 23 per cent of over-55s identify as ‘Scottish, not British’, the figure among 16-to-34 year olds is 47 per cent. Young people are driving an overall rejection of British identity by people living in Scotland. Polling for the New Statesman shows the percentage of Scots of all ages describing themselves as ‘Scottish, not British’ has surged from 31 to 44 per cent in the space of a decade. This is hardly surprising given the introduction of devolution, the election of the SNP, the 2014 referendum, Brexit and the fading of British institutions and symbols from daily Scottish life. 

You can’t make people feel an identity they don’t feel and where a strong sense of Scottishness wasn’t previously controlling on constitutional preference, there is some evidence to suggest that ‘this link between identity and support for independence has grown stronger over the last decade’. This poses a significant challenge for Westminster: how do you govern a Britain where not just one but possibly two nations no longer feel or want to be British? This isn’t the sort of challenge you can bat aside with blithe, think-tanker answers like more powers or federalism. This is an existential question about whether and why and how the UK should continue to exist. It’s not going to be solved by another report from Gordon Brown or ministers briefing about their ‘constructive’ meetings with devolved ‘colleagues’. 

The challenge is not insurmountable. But addressing it will require leadership, time, resources, interest, imagination, stamina and self-belief. It is not obvious that the Westminster political class, on either side of the Commons, is aware of – let alone equal to – this challenge.