BOTH sides in the Scottish constitutional debate are watching events in Catalonia closely. There are few constitutional issues that supporters and opponents of Scottish independence can agree on, but everyone can agree that Mariano Rajoy’s decision to send in the paramilitary and brutal Guardia Civil to violently disrupt the Catalan referendum was a mistake.

That is, everyone with the exception of the frothier fringe of online British nationalists who aren’t nationalist because they’re British. And as we all know, British nationalism is distinguished from the nationalism of lesser nations by its claim not to be nationalist.

All Mariano Rajoy has achieved with his decision to send in a police force, who have a reputation as the historic enforcers of the Franco dictatorship and his subsequent decision to activate Article 155 and take central control of the Catalan Government, has been to inflame an already delicate situation. British nationalists will have learned from his actions. They won’t repeat the same mistake.

What this means for Scotland is that if the British Government refuses to agree to a Section 30 order for another referendum, Scotland won’t face a mass influx of English and Welsh police officers trying to physically prevent voters from participating in any consultative referendum which the Scottish Government organises.

The legal situation is far less clear than in Spain. Unlike Spain, there is no Clause 2 of a written constitution which makes a consultative referendum illegal in Scotland, and British politicians have always agreed that Scotland is a part of the UK by consent. Even Margaret Thatcher recognised that Scotland has a right to self-determination.

What this means is that Holyrood requires Westminster agreement in order to make a referendum legally binding. It doesn’t require Westminster’s agreement in order to have a referendum. Even without a Section 30 order Holyrood could certainly proceed with a referendum. Westminster and the British nationalist parties will certainly claim that any such referendum has no legal standing and that they won’t recognise it or participate in it, but they won’t resort to police action or violence in order to stop it happening.

One of the biggest problems a consultative referendum which Westminster refuses to recognise is going to face is the media. Catalonia was able to hold its referendum in the teeth of Madrid’s opposition in no small measure because Catalonia has a far more representative media than Scotland does.

The Catalan media was able to explain the justification for the referedum and to tell people where and how to vote and what their vote would mean. In Scotland we have a media which is overwhelmingly opposed to independence. We can expect a BBC which will either ignore the referendum or pour cold water on it. We can expect a barrage of criticism from the anti-independence press. We can expect a uniform line in the anti-independence media telling us that the referendum is meaningless and won’t be recognised and saying that there’s no point in voting even if you do support independence.

All this means it’s going to be far more difficult for Scotland to achieve a respectable turnout in a referendum which the anti-independence parties are going to boycott. The only way in which a referendum boycotted by the anti-independence parties can have any validity is for the turnout to be high enough that it will be clear that even had the anti-independence parties participated, the cause of independence would still have won.

Then the Scottish Government will be able to legitimately claim that it has a cast-iron mandate for independence negotiations, a mandate that Westminster will not be able to ignore. Given Scotland’s lamentable media landscape, that’s going to be very difficult.

Westminster’s plan will be to do all it can to present the referendum as meaningless, and then afterwards turn round and say – well you had your pretendy little vote and no one turned up. Then they’ll say that they’re not going to bother engaging with the Scottish Government on the subject of independence.

Get back in your box Scotland. They’ll have a chorus of cheerleaders in the media and the independence cause will struggle to be heard.

This is why it’s important that in our next referendum we ensure that those opposed to independence participate in the process. Getting Westminster’s agreement to a Section 30 order which makes the outcome of the referendum legally binding on both parties is one route to achieving that, but it’s not the only one. Certainly the Scottish Government should press the British Government on a Section 30 order, but the British Government hasn’t even seen fit to respond to the Scottish Government’s communications following the vote in Holyrood earlier this year on another referendum.

It’s pretty clear what Westminster’s strategy is. Ignore, marginalise, and trivialise. We need a back-up plan in case Westminster continues to refuse to play ball.

But all is not lost. There is another way in which Scotland can have a vote and ensure that the anti-independence parties participate in the process. It’s a way which conveniently side-steps the arguments between those who want a referendum during this parliamentary term and those in the SNP who are angling for a second mandate in the Holyrood elections of 2021. That way is to turn the next Holyrood elections into a plebiscite election on independence.

The election becomes the referendum, and if Scotland returns a pro-independence majority to Holyrood then that is the mandate for negotiating independence.

The great advantage of this is that the Tories, Labour and the LibDems can’t ignore the vote, because it will be an election for a Scottish Parliament. They have to participate because if they don’t, and still refuse to recognise a mandate for independence, they will have surrendered the Scottish Parliament to pro-independence parties. They will have no MSPs and no representation in Holyrood.

Actually, a Scottish public life without Ruth Davidson or Anas Sarwar in it would be almost as good as independence, come to think of it.

There are certainly difficulties. Organising a plebiscite election is going to require considerably more in the way of co-operation between the pro-independence parties and the wider independence movement than we’ve seen so far. Crucially, it’s going to require the SNP surrendering some control. But given goodwill and planning, there’s no reason it couldn’t be done. However the point is that this is not Spain, and Scotland does have a right to self-determination and potential routes to independence that cannot be ignored by Westminster. One way or another, Scotland will have its say.