I’ve been trying to discern why. Not, of course, that my say so or nay so
matters a jot, but it’d be nice to see clearly through the constitutional fog,
for my own sake. The polls are obviously
part of the calculation. On the best
evidence we have before us, most Scots do not currently favour independence, being
partial instead to a reformed Union which nobody is offering, and a Scottish
Parliament with extensive new powers over taxation and welfare which hitherto, all
of the UK parties have stridently resisted devolving. As someone with
democratic sensibilities, it would be churlish to ignore those demands,
whatever your political persuasion. As Duncan Hamilton recently wrote in the Scotland on Sunday, in a significant piece from the former MSP and Salmond aide:
“The campaign is clearly for independence but, as gradualists, most independence supporters (like me) also see the merit in working with the majority opinion, which is currently overwhelmingly in favour of a second question on the maximum devolution short of independence. We want Scotland to move forward united, and if that means accepting a slower pace towards independence, so be it.”
On the other hand, the polls show that
we’ll be accepting “a slower pace towards independence” by significantly diminishing support for
independence in the process. Of course,
the polls may yet change before 2014 – upward or downward for either side – but
we’re in the process of framing this referendum now. Its legal basis will have to be in place at
the very latest in the first quarter of 2013.
While it is a fond thought that come 2014, Cameron may find himself
pitched into panic as YesScotland succeed in aligning mistrust of Westminster and
political suspicion of Tories into support for independence, no late changes to
the number of questions posed in the referendum will follow. This just wouldn’t be practicable. No, we’ve
got to decide on the final formal shape of the poll over the next few months,
on the current best evidence about the state of public opinion. So what’s to do and why to do it?
The calculating nationalist might consider
recent political parallels. Take the abortive reform of the electoral
system. In 2011, the Alternative Vote
referendum was defeated by a margin of 32.1% to 67.9%. While we may debate whether the whole process
represented a set-back or a knee-up for the causes of electoral reform in the
longer run, in the short and the medium, it has largely been construed as a
triumphant reaffirmation of the first past the post system, a fillip for
comforting Britannic narratives of parliamentary sovereignty, “strong”
government, and the solidity of Westminster’s creaking edifice. The idea that the referendum presages a shift
towards a more proportional electoral system deserves a black laugh.
Now consider the national question. Imagine you are a nationalist who is
pessimistic about the likelihood that Scots will embrace independence by
2014. You are understandably keen to
secure the best outcome possible in terms of Scottish self government, and the
greatest reign of power for Scots institutions.
What do you do? A hefty “yes” vote in the referendum might do the trick,
but if the dominant story is “independence defeated”, with no alternative tale
to tell about Scots’ dissatisfaction with the status quo, why should one expect
that the Unionist parties will be minded to make concessions to a defeated
Scottish Nationalist party?
For those who favour a single question, and
who are pessimistic about the consequences of a “no” vote, the vista is simply
bleak. No obvious route to more
devolution. No independence. Nowt. For folk like Gerry Hassan, we’re putting it
all to the touch, to win or lose it all.
He’s written supportively of a single, crisp referendum question. In a recent discussion on twitter, Gerry was
also critical about unilateral federation in these islands. Can it be
legitimate for Scotland to try to use concepts of national self-determination to enforce a
more federal structure on the rest of the United Kingdom? Surely you cannot unilaterally seize federation, but have to come
together, all of your constituent parts, properly to constitute one?
Constitutional buccaneers are likely to be impatient with this, and to dismiss
it as an unnecessarily abstract council of woe or an excess of political
scrupulousness, whose upshot is nothing less than self-denying political
paralysis.
If unilateral Scottish action – through a
devo-something question in a referendum, for example – seems the only way to
secure what the majority of Scots seem to want, and a powerful pan-UK campaign
for federalism cannot be expected and will not materialise, then damn the
niceties and confound the cavils! Press on with a campaign to secure devolution
by employing nationalist language and arguments. The outcome will crown the work, and if some
folk find that conceptually messy, I’m sure they’ll get over it come the day
Holyrood takes over its taxing and welfare powers. That’s the argument, anyway.
For the Devo-Buccaneer, a second question
is absolutely necessary. For him, it
won’t answer that Holyrood hasn’t the power unilaterally to deliver a
much-enhanced devolutionary package of powers: this is politics, the stuff of
persuasion – and putting the fear of God into your enemies. If this is the only conceivable way to make
the slack British political establishment snap to, and deliver further,
substantive powers – so be it.
Critically, these picaresque devolutionary adventurers are likely to be
sceptical about Westminster’s reaction to a “no” vote in Holyrood, absent a strongly-endorsed
alternative answer to the question of Scotland’s
powers. If independence is posed alone,
loses, and loses big – say the order of defeat the AV vote went down under –
the political impetus will be away from more devolution, not towards it without
another question. It is not in Britain’s
nature to reform its centre. In the
absence of a clear, noisy, democratic endorsement of change, its servants and
politicians may be expected to kick against the pricks, advance at best at a
brisk Calman dawdle, and do everything in its power to compromise and
equivocate, to avoid change.
For my part, I suspect my ambivalence and equivocation
on the second question is partly due to my ‘federal nationalist’
inclinations. Biographically, there are
plenty of reasons why the concept of sovereignty and even independence isn’t
one which particularly fires my imagination. I am a Scottish nationalist,
currently live and work in England,
and study the greater Europe encompassed by the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human
Rights. For nationalists, it seems to me
essential that the independence debate focuses not on question of national
identities, Scottish-and-or-equally-British, but instead on political powers.
Who do you wish to make decisions affecting your lives, on taxation, on
welfare, on war? By including a
devo-something option on the ballot, we tilt the debate more in that
direction. Against this, folk tend to
argue that devolution and independence are fundamentally different, and to
suggest that the two are on some sort of spectrum of Scottish self-government
is bunkum, a category error. As the
polls show, that is simply not how most Scots currently see the constitutional
debate. As a nationalist who will on some level regret Britain’s
failure to save itself come independence, I sympathise.
Most of my friends are flown here from
every corner of the earth, but many are locals. I do not see myself as a
“narrow nationalist” of any persuasion. As
someone with a background in critical sociology, I cannot but approach ideas of
ethnicity, of nation and nationality gingerly, with a hefty dose of suspicion. Even hailing from what has been a
nationalist-leaning family for some generations now, and not identifying as
British at all, I’m not immune to the sort of feelings of cross-border
connection and solidarity which I’d hazard many of those opposed to
independence feel, albeit unburdened with the idea that these are “British”
connections, and imply views on Westminster’s jurisdiction to make political
decisions effecting Scotland.
I’ve recently completed a long-term theatre
project with a brilliant, cheerful, personable group of folk, most of them Oxford natives:
decidedly town not gown. It was a
marvellous experience for a range of reasons which I needn’t go into here – but
as we all sat down together after much work and laughter shared, with food,
drink and convivial chatter – a familiar question formed, though not one which
regularly suggests itself to me.
Wouldn’t we lose something between us if we split, an ineffable tie,
difficult to articulate, but indubitably there? The thought hastily qualified
itself: we counted an Australian chap and an Irishman amongst the glad company,
and the separate statehood of the lands from which they hailed interceded not a
jot, to exclude them from the rest of the troupe. Interesting, though, how such thoughts can
steal up on you, even when your position on the constitutional question is
clear and decisive. A timely reminder –
and we often need reminding – that the hard binaries of Unionist and nationalist
fail to capture the much more nuanced and compromised spectrum of feelings this
debate stirs.
If the UK adopted a radical scheme to
de-centre the British state, re-coining a vision of a stable, federal United
Kingdom, empowering Scottish institutions, excising its worm-eaten political
core, and exorcised the bloody imperial ghosts which haunt its imagination, I
can easily envision myself abandoning the independence project altogether. Yet survey Westminster. Note its dominant spirits, their political preoccupations
and their rhetoric. Only a fantasist could
inspect those green and scarlet benches and see the germinal seeds of an
imminent revolution in the way UK
politics is imagined and conducted.
Mine is a nationalism more in sorrow than
in anger. If I thought it practicable to
reform the British constitution better to accommodate Scottish demands for
self-government, I’d cheerful adopt it. Hence,
I think, Scottish Labour’s rhetoric is essentially “form up for another forlorn
hope”. I say it sympathetically, but how many more of the glorious dead must
choke the ditches of the Union before we recognise that this is a failed political strategy? I’d
rather be cracking on with creating a more just republic for our people, than
singing constant requiems for departed hopes, distracting us from the
hopelessness of our situation. There is nothing inevitable about independence,
but if it transpires, I firmly believe it will be attributable in large part to
the unbending sclerosis which paralyses the British political imagination. My feeling is that independence shouldn’t be
necessary, but has become so. In some
sense, ironic though it is, devolution-max isn’t just a lifebelt cannily packed
by the vanquished nationalist to keep them afloat during the coming squall, but
can be seen too as raft flung to a floundering, waterlogged Britannia. It appeals to the undecided, and to
nationalist folk like me, who cannot but seriously entertain the idea of independence with a pang of
regret. Not for the end of Westminster
rule, mind you, or abandoning the dismal British political consensus, but for
the alternative, unrealised possibility of a better British polity that never
materialised, and brought us to this pass.
I began swithering. I hoped by scribbling this up, I’d have
hacked my way through this intertwining thicket of sensibilities – and cleared some
space in my head – but I swither still. Does
it come to this, that in some corner of my mind, I’ve not entirely given up on
finding a way out of our predicament without resorting to the radical measure
of independence? For a nationalist, this is an uncomfortable, niggling
thought. And yet, you don’t throw a
life-belt to a drowned man, do you?
