Scotland's future? Brexit on Brexiteers' terms. Unless...

Consider the following scenario. The United Kingdom votes narrowly to crash out of the European Union, 52% to 48%.  In Scotland, by contrast, a substantial majority - from coast to coast - votes to remain. Invoking the popular will of the Scottish people, the First Minister gives a press conference. Distilled down to its essence, she says that unless Scotland's EU membership can be secured, we're on course for #indyref2 as the last viable route to secure a European future for this country. 

Merry hell ensues. It soon becomes apparent that none of the alternatives to keep Scotland in the EU fly. In erecting the legal infrastructure for the referendum, Westminster refused a home-nations Euro lock, which would have required all four parts of the UK to vote in favour of Brexit. The Scotland Act gives Holyrood no constitutional power to veto the departure from the Union which the majority of Britons demanded. For all the well-intentioned creativity of the ideas produced by desperate Remain campaigners and academics in the frenetic wash following the vote, all of their solutions are quickly revealed as far-fetched and politically inoperative; intolerable either to European governments, to the United Kingdom, or both. 

Scotland can't invert Greenland's experience. The autonomous island is part of Denmark, but sits outside the EU.  Why - some folk have asked - couldn't England and Wales fall beyond the frontiers of European law and the four European freedoms, of goods, services, capital and people, while Scotland is left in? But the two cases are completely different. Greenland has a population the size of Livingston, compared to the 5.6 million Danes on Europe's doorstep, who accept EU rules and participate in the bloc's decision-making. If we "reversed" this in the UK, over 80% of the UK population would fall outside the EU. To put it mildly, this would be an unwieldy, cumbersome, unsustainable solution, even if it was politically acceptable, which it isn't.

But beyond that -- Britain voted to leave the European Union. Without independence, Scotland cannot step up and occupy the seat which the UK will vacate. Even if this lop-sided, unstable compromise was acceptable to European governments, the UK isn't going to remain even a paper member in Brussels, for the sake of five million Scots in a country of more than sixty four million. Particularly, if the consequence of such a decision would be to asset-strip the English economy, as companies relocate north of the border to secure their access to the single market. It is a fond fantasy. It soon becomes clear that there is no viable route for Scotland to remain within the EU while it remains a junior and overruled partner the United Kingdom. Thus far, I'd argue, we have already come in the manic progress of the last week. 

This is not to say that Nicola Sturgeon's unprecedented embassy to Brussels was cynical or calculated gesture, as some of the First Minister's more embittered critics argue. But Sturgeon's remarkably gutsy response to the result immediately established a trajectory which made a second independence referendum seem nigh unavoidable. "Highly likely" but not her "first option", is how the First Minister has characterised it. I agree.

But a key variable is and remains missing from these calculations: what kind of deal will Britain do with the EU? Here, to my mind, there is only one master question: will David Cameron's successor accept the principle of free movement or not? Whether under Prime Minister Theresa May, or Michael Gove, is this to be a Brexit which turns the lock in the door, or which leaves it ajar to the European nations Britain has decided to distance itself from? The past couple of days have brought a little bleak clarity to that.

But there is - at least in theory - considerable wiggle room for British political actors here. Many pointed to the solution devised by the EFTA states, including Norway, which permits Norwegian goods and persons to circulate freely in the single European market, without fully incorporating the Norway into the EU proper. But the price of this kind of privileged access to the single market? Free movement of persons and no internal borders. You can't say we weren't warned. European Council President, Donald Tusk, has repeatedly underscored this. The view has been reiterated several times, before and after the referendum, by key actors within the EU, from Chancellor Merkel to Jean-Claude Juncker: "no single market a la carte."

(I'd merely note, when he isn't getting standing ovations in the European Parliament, that Alyn Smith MEP was bang on about this back in 2014, when he wrote that the "unreality" of David Cameron's renegotiation proposals made Brexit odds on. How sadly prescient.)

There was - briefly - a window in which this might have been fought for from within the major UK parties. If they had seized the initiative, remain campaigners and more liberal minded Tory and Labour Brexiteers might have made a coordinated push to define the terms of which Britain would have negotiated its departure from Europe, emphasising the narrowness of the margin of victory, and seeing something like EFTA status for Britain as the next-best or least-worst alternative, keeping the channels of trade, work and travel open.  If Mr Cameron had remained in post, this might have been possible, and Britain might have secured this kind of looser connection with the European Union

But there would be an obvious political cost to this which your average calculating Tory politician would be unprepared to pay. With its ugly emphasis on "taking back control" over our borders, it was always going to be tremendously difficult for any post-Brexit PM to avoid committing to ending free movement of persons from the Europe Union. Any Tory PM who failed to do so would leave themselves vulnerable to a massive and emboldened UKIP campaign against immigration. After all, why vote for the lesser evil? 

But if this became a serious option -- it would have put Nicola Sturgeon in a deuced difficult spot.  If an EFTA type deal was struck, which meant that Britons could work, travel and trade freely within the European Union, how many Scots would really be prepared to die in the ditch for the European rights, freedoms and regulations we had lost? There are, perhaps, a handful of people in this country for whom full participation in the EU is a red line. 

Even so, the Brexit result has almost certainly done lasting damage to liberal, cosmopolitan and professional Scotland's confidence in the UK, its stability, competence, and the mutual faith and credit in these islands which many No voters felt so keenly in 2014. (As a perceptive friend of mine noted, weeks out from the poll, the levels of complacency you encountered in Scotland about the referendum were startling. This is, perhaps, understandable. If you live in those parts of Edinburgh and Glasgow, for example, in which more than 75% of the population voted to Remain, it is understandable that the outcome seems a sure fire thing. Friday was a grisly morning, but all the more so, because it caught big parts of the electorate completely by surprise).

But offered an EFTA deal, I suspect most Scots would be prepared to endure the compromise, and count themselves lucky, even if Nigel Farage and his honking compatriots belched and gurgled about it. What would Nicola Sturgeon do? On these terms, would Brexit really represent a "material change" in most Scots attitudes to independence? I hae ma doots. 

I suspect that for many, many Scots, the perceived necessity and temporary appeal of independence would recede. The First Minister has given herself considerable wriggle room, in her public remarks. She has never, to my knowledge, made a categorical statement about whether or not an EFTA style deal would satisfy her, or not, representing an almost adequate reflection of the popular will. But at the very least, it might leave Nicola exposed, having given the prospect of a second independence referendum such powerful momentum, in the immediate aftermath of the EU referendum results. Such things have the habit of running out of control. 

But hidden beneath the incessant Game of Thrones metaphors, lost-sight of in the explosive Shakespearean game of political personalities -- Gove bursting out of Johnson's belly, like an alien hatchling -- the past two days have confirmed that the brief window of opportunity for a more open European deal has been slammed unceremoniously shut by the ascendant forces within our Tory government. Now the rout begins. 

Both Michael Gove and Theresa May have effectively confirmed that they will not countenance the more cosmopolitan option of EFTA. The implications for the UK's access to the single market remain fully to be charted. But we shouldn't kid ourselves on. We can't pretend we've been hoodwinked. At the weekend, in a common statement, the European heads of government set out their position perfectly categorically.

"In the future, we hope to have the UK as a close partner of the EU and we look forward to the UK stating its intentions in this respect. Any agreement, which will be concluded with the UK as a third country, will have to be based on a balance of rights and obligations. Access to the Single Market requires acceptance of all four freedoms."

That's freedom of goods, services, capital -- and yes, persons too. Yesterday and today, both  leading contenders to be Prime Minister have confirmed that under their leadership, the Tories will put the principle of free movement to the sword -- however devastatingly this position undermines their wider ambition to crack open the single European market to British firms, capital and workers.

This will be a Brexit, on Brexiteers' terms. There can be no illusions left now, about the emerging character of this United Kingdom and the priorities of its new government, whoever the victor in the Tory party leadership election may be. There must be a snowball's chance in hell of any kind of compromised Norway inspired EEA/EFTA deal now.

Thus, Sturgeon has dodged one bullet, but contemplates another. A second independence referendum now becomes increasingly unavoidable. Much which will be critical to the fortunes of such a poll remains unknown. Europe - clearly - has conflicting currents within it, more and less helpful to the Scottish Government, if they are forced to embrace a second independence poll. Depending on your optimism or your pessimism - I'm currently veering between the two, as the hours tend - the prospect may make you sing with lively anticipation, or shoogle with anxiety.

I still do not have a clear sense about just how far this referendum result has restructured Scottish opinion, and whether - tested under the renewed glare of a serious campaign - a second Yes campaign would carry the day. We all have anecdotes. Individual converts, and changed minds. But the room is still spinning. When things come back into some kind of focus, what then? 

As I wrote in the Times yesterday and in the National last Saturday, the First Minister has been on majestic form. Gutsy. Poised. Reasoned and reasonable. Clear and humane. But Andy Maciver must be right to conclude, in the Herald this morning, that "this is a career-defining gamble by Nicola Sturgeon, and therefore a defining moment for the nationalist movement." This is multi-dimensional chess, played with exploding pieces.

Only time will tell,