The spectre of Scoxit

AS INVITATIONS for haughty English scoffing go, Nicola Sturgeon’s opening speech at the Scottish National Party conference was irresistible. In the SNP manifesto for the Scottish Parliament elections in May, she had committed to a new independence referendum in the event of a Brexit without Scottish consent. Assembling in the lee of Scotland’s 62% vote against leaving the EU (outweighed by England’s 53% vote in favour), her members in Glasgow knew the score, studding themselves with stickers and badges reading “Yes2” (nationalist-speak for a new plebiscite), cheering a French delegate who praised the party’s Europeanism and experiencing paroxysms of delight when Ms Sturgeon announced that she would consult on a new referendum bill. But was that a note of hesitancy in her voice? A hint of trepidation on those thin lips and arched brows, as she took in the applause? Why, yes it was.

Ms Sturgeon is in a bind. Many in her party, including Alex Salmond, her predecessor, are demanding a new referendum now, and no messing about. But, despite Scotland’s resounding vote against Brexit, and an initial post-referendum bounce in support for independence, opinion polls now put support for a “Scoxit” from the United Kingdom at or below the 45% achieved when the question was formally put in 2014. That is hardly surprising. An un-Brexited, independent Scotland would probably have a hard, costly border with England; the sort which threatens to complicate relations between Northern Ireland and the Republic. Then there is the 97% fall in North Sea oil incomes in the past year, which would force a huge rise in tax after independence. Were it held today, a referendum would probably be lost.

So the first minister hedged, backing a new Scoxit vote before 2019 in a tortuous sentence that ended with the rider: “…if that is necessary to protect our country’s interests.” One for the lawyers, that. Then, to more muted cheers, came a weird formulation about being urged both to hurry up with, and hold off, the referendum by different people. What a huckster, Bagehot thought. She doesn’t want a doomed vote but is stringing the members along. She is merely after a new dose of devolution within the United Kingdom. She is bluffing. The union is safe.

But this sort of thinking grows cracks when one starts to interrogate the steps needed for Scoxit. Take the referendum. Ms Sturgeon’s only proximate chance of losing power is if her own party turns against her. Apart from the punchy Ruth Davidson, leader of the rising but still marginal Scottish Tories, she faces little external opposition. The SNP holds 54 of Scotland’s 59 seats in Westminster and almost half the seats in the Scottish Parliament, the next election to which is not until 2021. The first minister is not without her critics inside the party, hyper-centralised and stage-managed though it is. So if the yellow-lanyarded troops really want a new vote, she will eventually have to produce it. Publishing the draft referendum bill will only stoke their appetite.

Moreover, Ms Sturgeon does not just ride her party’s frustration at the Scottish referendum result in 2014 and the English vote for Brexit this year: she shares it. According to David Torrance, her biographer, the old SNP slogan “Independence in Europe” is something like her “personal manifesto”. And although Whitehall technically has the final say on whether a new referendum goes ahead, the Scottish government can point to the commitment in its May electoral programme, endorsed by an unprecedented 47% of Scots, as a mandate to hold one now. So it is entirely possible that Ms Sturgeon will make good on her threat in the probable event of a hard Brexit.

And what if she does? Once Yes2 is triggered, anything could happen. As Mr Salmond likes to brag, he pushed the referendum button when just 27% of Scots supported quitting the United Kingdom, but on the day almost half of them backed it. Brexit could yet transform the independence debates of 2014 into something new, different and dangerous for the union.

Newly sprung in June

Consider the basic dynamic of the referendum in 2014: the nationalists had emotion and the thrill of the gamble on their side, while the unionists had reason and numbers. Reason won. But now that picture is blurred. Is it riskier to stay in a Britain without the EU, or an EU without Britain? With the pound sinking, is joining the euro as horrifying a prospect as it was two years back? And with wide-eyed Brexiteers in Whitehall making all sorts of dubious claims about the benefits and ease of leaving the EU, the gap between unionist sense and nationalist emotion is closing. This could tilt the allegiances of the sort of middle-class voters who strongly opposed both independence and Brexit: say, the Edinburgh professional working in finance and now worried about the effects of leaving the single market.

The heart of the SNP argument in 2014 was the claim that a Tory-led government in Westminster with little support north of Hadrian’s Wall was fundamentally at odds with a more left-leaning, liberal Scotland. This was a gross exaggeration, but Ms Sturgeon could not have scripted a better illustration than the Brexit vote and its aftermath: a mean, isolationist England (where the political mood is increasingly nasty) dragging out a Scotland where every single local authority area voted to stay. Brexiteer exuberance south of the border could make the SNP’s own nationalist excesses look more reasonable. A Britain flouncing blithely out of the EU with little regard for jobs, investment or liberal values is a workable case for Scoxit.

It remains in Scotland’s interests to stay in the United Kingdom. Yet it is also true that the two largest parts of Britain’s union are growing apart. Brexit is both a symptom and a catalyst of that process, lending nationalism momentum and allowing unionists no room for complacency. They underestimate Ms Sturgeon at their peril.

Correction (October 21st): An earlier version of this column said that the SNP had "over half" the seats in the Scottish Parliament. In fact, since May it has had just under half. Sorry.