By Gerry Hassan

This is a fascinating and fast moving period of politics, at a global, European, British and Scottish level, challenging many of the most deep-seated and unexamined assumptions held across the political spectrum.

In the last week we have seen the euphoric SNP conference at Inverness showing a party on the crest of a wave which seems to think that the future is within its grasp.

Then we have at Westminster the return of the popular bogeyman – Eurosceptism – and its capture of the mainstream of the Conservative Party with the biggest ever backbench Tory rebellion on Europe.

What is seldom explored is the interconnection of these two issues: Scottish independence and Euroscepticism. Both illustrate the multi-dimensional nature of the crisis of the British state, and tensions and faultlines in the existing order with its mantras and folktales of parliamentary sovereignty. And in both, the centre of gravity has shifted significantly in recent times; towards an environment favourable to Scottish self-government, and a Eurosceptic agenda. In the first, the debate is now between full fiscal autonomy and independence, and in the second, the Tory mainstream debate is between repatriation of powers from Europe and complete withdrawal. These two dimensions could in the future influence each other in ways seldom stated or explored.

The National Party of Scotland

The recent SNP Annual Conference was a major watershed for the party: its first gathering since it became the majority government in the Scottish Parliament in the May 2011 elections. The conference captured the SNP in transition, heading from their traditional role as the outsiders and anti-establishment of Scotland, to being embraced by large swathes of institutional Scotland to such an extent that they could foreseeably become the new establishment.

The SNP has managed in four years of office to be a competent, relatively successful administration, much to the surprise of its opponents. It has acted and sounded like Scotland’s Government unlike the minimalist political aspirations of the previous Labour-Lib Dem Scottish Executives. It has shown in Alex Salmond and his ministerial team a model of individual and collective leadership which has been impressive and striking compared to the previous Lab-Lib Dem era.

This doesn’t mean the SNP has got everything right. It has clung too closely to the institutional Scottish consensus to allow it to be radical and different on the economy, public services, health and education, while often striking the right tone in general and on specifics such as minimum pricing for alcohol.

The main event at every SNP conference is the keynote address from Alex Salmond. This year he had the opportunity to lay out how the SNP plans to use majority government, its vision and strategy for independence, and how it sees the prospect for change short of independence – which has become known to some as ‘devolution max’.

Salmond’s speech to a packed, expectant hall invoked the idea of a long standing set of different Scottish values, what he called ‘the community of the realm’ stretching back into medieval times, and a Scottish ‘common weal’; this was an attempt to situate the ideal of a Scots public and civic realm distinct and different from England and the rest of the UK (1).

What it did do is position independence as an expression of traditional Scotland, as being about continuity and preservation, rather than fundamental change. In this sense the SNP is placing independence within the paradigms of the devolution mindset and as a logical extension of devolution: a kind of ‘devolution max plus’. Continue reading →