THE debate about plans for independence is essential. To answer Alan Crocket’s concerns, I am not proposing we do not have back-up plans; far from it. I merely argue that to keep outlining what we may or may not do in public is foolhardy.
Strategic planning is all about thinking things through, and the common theme for those demanding Plan B to be announced to the world is that they expect someone else to produce the plan. Asking for plans is great, but those doing the asking should be considering the various options and thinking them through. Some will be infeasible, and others will have catastrophic consequences.
Aside from these issues, I raised Catalonia not as a direct parallel, but as one of the potential outcomes of a particular course of action – in their instance a suspension of their parliament. This is something that could happen here, and has in Northern Ireland. For different reasons, yes, but it shows one possible negative outcome.
The biggest question behind all the plans is that of ensuring that we can carry a significant majority of our population behind whatever plan is enacted. Unless we have that support, whatever we do is doomed to failure.
There are already a range of scenarios for which plans have been outlined, and they are already in the public domain. So in that sense we have Plans B already. These are coupled with the need to ensure we have majority support, and when we propose independence the public have to be asked – and won over. We have cross-party parliamentary support and, given the shenanigans in English politics, also increased public support. We have non-party aligned campaign groups, notably Business for Scotland, Constitution for Scotland and more. We have the means to demonstrate, provided people listen, that we can successfully go it alone.
Our current constitutional position, much the same as gaining the Queen’s approval for legislation, requires us to seek “permission” to hold a process of ascertaining public support on specific questions. This is clearly a flaw, but the declared democratic wish to seek independence is there, from the last election, and with a bigger majority in favour than was used to push Brexit through.
The question we have to consider is how we proceed if the prime minister of the day denies a democratic mandate. That will open a whole can of worms for which we have to be prepared. And to return to the main point, does the wider public, not just the activists, have the stomach to put up with the consequences of a potentially (UK) illegal Plan B? Some of us will, but a majority?
The only way to guarantee that support is to continue to demonstrate administrative competence and to show people how much better we would be if independent, and the biggest barrier to that is the fear of the unknown and a general preference for people to stick with what they know, in the face of lies and fake news. We still have to convince enough of the wider public – not by a mere four or five per cent swing, but enough of a margin for our plans to work.
Alan has already outlined a viable Plan B (paragraph six) which I also referred to, as have many other contributors, so I am not really sure what the argument is about. We have already had several strategic options and I sense that the frustration is not about them or the detail but more the lack of clarity of when we put them in action. So we have to be careful we do not jump the gun, and not do as Jon Snow did at the Battle of the Bastards. We do not have the luxury of any external saviours.
Nick Cole
Meigle, Perthshire
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