The State We’re In
Over the coming weeks over the holiday period we’ve commissioned a series of writers and activists to reflect on where we are and review not just the year but the space we find ourselves in. This is the first of a series reflecting on the State We’re In.
As we come to the coldest darkest part of the year, support for independence is in the ascendancy against all the odds. It has been the majority position now in Scotland in four consecutive polls carried out since the Supreme Court said Holyrood didn’t have the power to legislate for another referendum. We’re a thrawn bunch, no doubt. Nobody really likes being put down. While this could be seen as just the inevitable, indeed some would say way overdue reaction to the experience of living under disastrous Tory rule, there are two other things going on that may bring some tinsel to your day.
There are two basic assumptions that the Unionist side have settled on that will defeat the Vile Nats. Neither involves building a future-vision or responding to democratic deficit, don’t be so silly. The first is the assumption that the SNP government would just run aground on the momentum of its own incompetence. They have been in office a long time, and incumbent governments eventually tire and fade and crumble. It’s an iron law of political life. This, the argument goes, would have a terrible – -indeed terminal impact on the wider Yes movement.
The second assumption that the left (ish) wing of the remnant No side rested on, was that at a certain time a Labour alternative would come along that would woo back recalcitrant Scots, wearied by SNP managerialism and drawn back to the idea of a socialist, or social democratic Britain. Recently that idea has become over-agitated again because of both Labour’s long-awaited leapfrog up the polls against the beleaguered Tories and second, Gordon Brown’s (also long-awaited) report on ‘New Britain’ etc.
But there is a problem. Brown’s report was a very wordy damp-squib that has had precisely no impact in ‘shifting the dial’, and Sir Keir Starmer’s positive polling hasn’t really translated north of the border. Last week new polling from IPSOS announced that: 56% would vote Yes and 44% No in an immediate #indyref2 – Yes up 6 points since May; that the SNP had strengthened its General Election support to 51%; and that there was no indication that a ‘de facto’ referendum strategy would harm the party’s electoral chances. Ipsos’ Scottish Political Monitor suggests the SNP would win 58 seats at the next UK general election, with Scottish Labour on one and every other party facing a wipe-out.
Neither assumption was necessarily a bad one or a mistaken one, but things have changed in the past few weeks. The great irony here, and it is an extremely funny irony, that all of this was avoidable and all of this is the product not of nationalist cunning or SNP strategy (god knows there has been precious little of that), no this was all delivered by the Unionist sides complete intransigence. As Neil Mackay the Herald’s writer has put it:
“This is delicious for Yes voters, and for non-partisan fans of bitter irony it’s a moment to pull up a chair and get the popcorn. Before the Supreme Court ruling No was ahead of Yes. If there had been a snap referendum, Yes would probably have lost. Now, Yes is on a slow but sure upward path that may one day soon leave whichever government sits in London with no option but to agree to a referendum. Saying no to the SNP is easy. Saying no to a permanent 50+% of the Scottish electorate is impossible.”
If we return to the first assumption, that SNP time in office would eventually expose their weaknesses, it seemed quite logical. The SNP have after all been in office for a very long time, and though they maintain remarkable polling ratings, the First Minister’s own status is under sustained attack, not just from the Conservatives and opposition but from critics within her own party and movement. But multiple failings across social policy, environmental and education policy, drugs deaths and health stats and various scandals and exposes have done little to really alter much. The churn against the First Minister might keep the troops happy but it is doing little else. To be clear this is not a leadership – or an administration – that is without its problems to seek.
The problem for the proponents of the attrition theory of constitutional warfare is that it seems that the electorate, those not entrenched in implacable identities, are shifting towards believing that a government based in Scotland is more likely to deliver the good society that they want. This isn’t rocket science as peoples live experience is one in which Westminster simply can’t deliver the basics of everyday life: affordable homes; affordable food; affordable heating. Every time Starmer doubles-down and plays to the acceptable politics of Middle England it gets worse.
The other issue which isn’t going away, and sections of the left hate this but it’s true, is Europe. As Adam Ramsay of Open Democracy explains (‘Labour’s run to the right is pushing Scotland towards independence‘): “Around two-thirds of Scots say they would like to rejoin the EU. Starmer has made clear that his government would do no such thing. The SNP and Greens, by contrast, posit independence as a route to do just that.
Most Scots (and most people across the UK) believe that immigration is good (pdf) for both the economy and society. Again, this attitude is likely to be particularly strong among less-nationalist swing voters in Scotland. Yet Starmer has repeatedly talked tough on immigration. And on crime. And so on.
While Labour runs to the right, the Scottish government has, if anything, shuffled slightly to the left over the last year, ever since the Greens allied with the SNP, and Sturgeon kicked the right-wing Fergus Ewing off her front bench. While the Scottish government’s more radical policy ideas may yet melt into waffle, it is at least talking a good game on everything from tenants’ rights to the climate crisis.”
None of this resolves or wishes away the independence movement’s deep problems, particularly on currency, and the many issues that ‘Europe’ evokes. But people don’t care. People are now at the stage that the effect of the British government’s stance – do nothing – admit nothing – concede nothing – has had precisely the opposite effect they had hoped. However useless and misdirected has been the SNP’s strategy it has been trumped again and again by the Unionist belief that simply repressing the right to a vote will lead to the nationalist movement melting away. It won’t.
Where are we now? There are problems ahead for the Yes movement, particularly if it focuses inward rather than outwards, this is not about some ideal of creating ‘unity’ within a movement in which some fragments need to be included despite there being no political gain from doing so. And the boost in the polls doesn’t detract from the strategic and campaigning issues that beset the independence cause. But the despondency that has fallen on the democracy movement for months (if not years) is alleviated by this new momentum.
Ironically the relentless mantra of ‘a generation’ is now backfiring beautifully on the Unionist cause. As Neil Mackay has put it: “It’s really déclassé to say but unionism is over in a generation. Both men and women are now majority Yes supporters: 53% for men, 54% for women. Significantly, more men supported independence in 2014 than women. If the stereotype holds that women are more cautious and less ideologically hidebound, this indicates independence has become a less risky prospect than the status quo.”
What can the Unionist block do about this? Their best bet, and the idea they had put all their chips on, was that the Labour party would come up with a cunning ruse, a compelling constitutional ask that would change the whole narrative of the debate. That hasn’t happened.
One of the great mysteries of all this is why people haven’t given up? As the English theologian and historian Thomas Fuller put it ‘the darkest hour is just before the dawn’, or as we approach the Winter Solstice perhaps it is because, as Martin Luther King had it: “Only in the darkness can you see the stars”.
Perhaps consider – to whom do the Scottish MPs and MSPs currently swear allegiance? An alternative?
” … any Oath of Allegiance to be sought from, and given by, a potential Member of the Scottish Parliament recognises the Sovereignty of the Scottish People in the following terms: “By this oath, I acknowledge that IF ELECTED as a Member of the Scottish Parliament, it will be as a result of votes cast by Sovereign Scots, and I do solemnly swear and affirm that my allegiance is, and will remain, to the Sovereign people of Scotland.
Those words are an extract from “The Declaration of a Sovereign Scot”. An initiative started just short of two years ago, with support, and individually signed Declarations, being gained in ever increasing numbers at EVERY rally held in Scotland since the initiative started.
The originals have been, and will continue to be lodged at the HQ of the United Nations in New York, as the beginning of the process of international rcognition.
A scanned copy of each signed Declaration is retained, with the intention that eventually they will all be combined into one, as a modern day equivalent of the Declaration of Arbroath.
The opening paragraphs of the Declaration read:
Exercising my Claim Of Right as a Sovereign Scot, I declare:
I do not consent to the terms of, nor the continuation of, the Treaty of Union established through the Acts of Union in 1707.
**************************************
International recognition?
A small part of a second stage in the initiative, involves a question:
” If Scotland reaches out – not to the individual members of the UN nor its institutions – but reaches out instead to the people of the world – will they reply? ”
How to do so? One example currently underway:
From Scotland with love!
To our families and friends living elsewhere in the world. A song (slightly adapted), sung by the “Indy Choir”, from a rehearsal in Scotland’s capital, Edinburgh.
Now available for all those who wish to SHARE with their family and friends living elsewhere in the world.
https://www.facebook.com/IndyLiveStream/videos/1294827687743367/
On the subject of a referendum, are we not shooting ourselves in the foot with the SNP’s de-facto plans by restricting those who can vote and risking that the build up to the de-facto will not meet the heights of the build up to an actual referendum?
Would the following not be better?
The turnout in 2014 was 84.59%. The Scottish govt should run the referendum on the basis that YES has to have the majority of votes and more than 42.295% of those eligible to vote have to vote YES. In other words, the 2023 YES vote supplanted into the 2014 referendum would result in a YES victory in 2014.
If there was a referendum run along 2014 lines, would you not expect them to achieve the 42.295% figure anyway? On the other hand, if the Yoons boycotted it they’ve already won as they can claim they rendered it meaningless.
My suggestion renders their actions meaningless. A YES vote without the required 42.295% would not be a NO vote and we could have another referendum after the next Holyrood election. By boycotting, the Yoons would be shooting themselves in the foot by not campaigning and denying Yoons the opportunity to “put independence to bed”.
Or the way ahead looks darker if you’ve got tunnel vision, perhaps. While I broadly agree with this article’s points, there is also a lot of other things going on in the world that, in brief, make Scottish Independence supporters look like the small furry mammals against the squanderous warring dinosaurs of British Imperialism, to recycle an old image from cartoonist Steve Bell. The SNP and Green government have exposed the weaknesses of party political systems and the irrational injustices of British imperial quasi-Constitution and raised, I think, the demand for trying something new, fresh, that can respond to the crises we, and the living planet in general, face.
Excellent article.
Re the ‘small furry mammals against the squanderous warring dinosaurs of british imperialism’..I seem to remember the tortoise beat the hare ..
But I prefer action not words… UDI …or as Shere Khan said as he bashed the head of Kaa… the conniving sneaky snake in Jungle Book (Westminster) with the words…’I’ve no time for this sort of nonsense’..whack!..worked too..
For Scotland!
As Mike says, “the electorate … are shifting towards believing that government based in Scotland is more likely to deliver the good society that they want”. Which immediately raises the question: how do voters imagine the good society?
One crude answer to a very complex question would be – they want to combine some degree of wealth (material and cultural) with some degree of freedom and autonomy. People differ about the degrees they desire, but very few will plump for zero at either end. Freedom has little value if you and yours are starving to death; wealth has little value if you have no freedom of action or ability to enjoy your wealth as you choose.
Partly by accident, mainstream unionists have stumbled into a position of saying that we as Scots have no collective right to self-determination. This is untenable: it denies any possibility of delivering a good society in Scotland. Independence then becomes the only viable route to a good society.
Unionists need to find a way out of their self-created impasse, but it’s hard to see any current unionist politician or thinker with the necessary vision and drive.
@Dennis Smith, the ‘good society’ can (should) mean ethically good, as in ‘good life philosophy’, and therefrom arise questions of what good an Independent Scotland can do in the world, how it might optimise the potentials of its inhabitants, promote justice, right wrongs, embrace the good of non-human lifeforms… wealth as well-being rather than riches, altruism and selflessness rejecting extreme forms of individualism (like ego-dominance) in favour of respecting the needs of future generations… Such good life philosophies have been incorporated into some political Constitutions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumak_kawsay
and it is indeed past time that they were debated across the mainstream in Scotland, to see if some consensus could be formed.
@SleepingDog In many ways I agree but there is a problem here about carts and horses. Influences and arguments run in both directions – indeed multiple directions. As someone (Rousseau?) said, you need good people to make good laws, but also good laws to make (or enable) good people.
You can’t just legislate from above to make people good: you need to negotiate as equals within an ethical agreed framework, aiming to expand the area of agreement. I’m all in favour of opening up a debate on the good society, and of linking this to a future Scottish constitution. But this debate needs build up majority consent. Recent events in Chile, where electors ended up voting to reject a new radical-progressive constitution, so leaving the country stuck with a widely despised Pinochet-era one, illustrate the dangers of over-reach.
As I said, agreement on a collective right to self-determination is the essential starting-point. Without it the rest of the debate can’t even get off the ground.
@Dennis Smith, yes, I think you are quite right in introducing the problematic Chilean Constitutional quandary, which in my limited understanding seemed to be an overwriting attempt at a political Constitution. We can all learn from that. You also address the difficult point of political maturity, which is also a generational problem (maturity is not passed on). We are in unprecedented political waters, where it is very difficult to determine whether arcs or cycles are going to be useful guides.
Two perspectives on immigration, you get cheap labour, the skilled, which you do not need to educate or train and the unskilled, which does the jobs you would not do.
Neo colonialism, neo imperialism tied up in a comfy humanitarian goody bag.
However, In both cases «the source» is deprived of a workforce which it might well need.
Scotland, as a country which suffered from centuries of emigration, ought to demonstrate sensitivity to the many negatives of this traffic in human transhumance.
Leaving your country of origin does not address the cause of that leaving, It weakens, exposing the risk of further neo imperialist/colonialist exploitation and systemic malaise.