I AM struggling to follow the SNP’s train of thought lately. Its love of the EU is undiminished, despite CETA, Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Italy and the unedifying sight of Spanish police bludgeoning Catalan voters and the jailing of Catalan independence-supporting politicians without trial.
With yesterday’s vote cancelled, now what?
a) The government tries to get a new “Norway” deal or something else;
b) The UK parliament may get to vote to repeal Article 50;
c) The UK crashes out with no deal;
d) The status quo – remain in the EU and the 17.4 million Leavers feel betrayed; or
e) There is another EU referendum;
If it’s the last option, then what?
Who frames the new referendum, and is “remain in the EU” an option? If it is, Leavers are betrayed, with possibly disastrous results, even civil unrest. If “Remain in the EU” is not an option, what is the point of another referendum?
If we get through that maze:
a) Leave wins again; maybe because Remain can offer nothing that would appease Leavers and, like Better Together, has no positive message that doesn’t require ignoring quite a lot; or
b) Remain wins.
If Leave wins twice, it is settled, but if not, does EUref2 count or would we need a kind of vote-off, perhaps televised over 24 hours? We could do this in a space between Celebrity Jungle Non-Personalities Bore Everyone to Death and Strictly Come Dancing/British Bake Off etc); or
If Remain wins:
a) We enforce the result because it is what the liberal elite wants; but it is a betrayal of Leavers, including a fair number of SNP members. Not so much of a disaster in Scotland, because at least the majority voted to Remain (I wonder how many Scots voters thought seriously about the EU’s shortcomings when voting?); and
b) We wave goodbye indefinitely to Scottish independence into the long grass of a confirmatory vote after indyref 2.
Either way, Scotland may be widely feted as being the “adults in the room”, sacrificing their indy ambitions for the greater good of a progressive alliance with the rest of the UK. They will have to give us our Section 30 order now, won’t they? No, bad luck. The progressives the SNP is courting generally translates as Labour, who consistently deny Scotland’s nationhood and aspirations. The best they offer is federalism, when they are having a really bad day.
A further irony is that it was actually the hated Tories who did give Scotland a Section 30 order. And one of the main reasons for another indyref is that we are being dumped out of the EU as part of the UK, so remaining in the EU after all would blunt our reason for leaving the UK, especially if the government does manage the “Norway-style” agreement many independence supporters are talking up. And making common cause with so-called progressives may lose us votes to Labour, especially among the young.
It is hard to see any scenario which furthers our cause, but easy to see a dozen ways we can shoot ourselves in the foot. It is also hard to see any tinkering with the present result which would end well.
Going back to 2014, we are constantly being told to honour the result. I believe we did just that, although it hurt. We respected the will of the majority then, but don’t want to now. It is no good saying it was not a majority of Scots who voted to Leave the EU. We did not vote as Scotland, we voted as the UK. If ignoring the will of the majority is such a great idea, why didn’t we ignore the will of the majority in 2014?
If we demand a rerun/confirmation of the EU result, that will come back to haunt us if we ever win indyref2. We should respect the Leave vote now, go for indyref2 (for which we have a triple mandate already), and think again about EU membership when Scotland is independent.
Julia Pannell
Tayside
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