Why Scotland will not vote for independence in a second referendum

The independence cause is now synonymous with the SNP. To a great degree it always was, but during the last referendum campaign they were joined by the Greens, the Scottish Socialist Party and lots of other organisations representing different sections of Scottish society. But these were always minor players and the aftermath of the 2014 referendum saw most of this rainbow coalition for independence collapse into the SNP. Membership grew to over 100,000. With this sort of movement you would expect support for independence to have increased, but according to the latest opinion polls the Yes vote is currently on about 40%. Even during all the upheaval over Brexit it only got to over 50% in one poll. 

By the time that any second independence referendum takes place the SNP Scottish Government will be deeply unpopular. This is the standard unpopularity of incumbent governments after a time, but that dissatisfaction with the SNP will spill over into the referendum campaign. Add to this continuing depressed oil revenue and the, still unresolved, currency issue and you have a toxic mix. It will be exceedingly difficult to get a majority for Yes second time around. Even now there are a significant group of Yes voters who have switched to No. As many as have switched the other way according to some polling organisations. It is possible that Yes would only achieve around 40% in a referendum rerun. Current polls seem to suggest this.

The problem with discussing this is that everyone seems to have their fingers in their ears while going "la-la-la I am not listening".  When I suggested this scenario on social media I got jumped on by people for whom the independence cause is a religion which cannot be questioned. They are the fundamentalists of the Scottish cause. Strong supporters of the SNP for whom independence is more important than workers rights; more important than environmental protection and, yes, more important than beating the Conservatives. Because their enemy is the Labour Party, particularly "municipal" Labour, with whom they fought many hard local election campaigns. There is no love lost between them and many in the SNP relish killing off labour as much as they do independence itself. Yet as Labour has moved to the left, the SNP has been left as the last guardians of Blairite economics, with a strong focus on private industry and profit as the key to Scotland's future, and content to be better managers of the existing system rather than trying to change it. This is something the independence fundamentalists are unable to recognise. And while the say they want to win a second referendum they are quite happy to cannibalise their own vote by refusing to engage with anyone who is sceptical because they are obviously not "true believers". Exactly the people they need to persuade in order to win a Yes vote.

Of course, this all supposes that the UK government agrees to hold a second referendum on independence. How likely is this? Well, the most likely way I can see this happening would be if the SNP gained enough seats at the next Westminster election to make a coalition with Labour the only way to keep out the Conservatives. Even if that happened would Labour be willing to make a deal? Locked in a fight to the death with the SNP in Scotland, Labour might be willing to sacrifice restricted power in Westminster in order to kill off the independence cause. In other words: don't hold your breath.

Another scenario would be if falling oil revenues stoked demands from back-bench Conservatives for the government to scrap the Barnett formula. If that was combined with greater autonomy for English regions then there may be a section of the conservative party who want to get rid of the Scottish "problem". This would be uncharted territory and might lead to a referendum with a successful Yes vote.

Alternatively, the May Conservative Government might just decide to call a referendum to call the SNP's bluff: dangerous though, given how the Brexit vote went. I can't see them really taking that risk.

The upshot of all this is that with Scottish independence looking very unlikely we need to find other ways to protect worker's rights, the environment, food standards and all the other things that are under threat from the shift to the right in British politics. This is where our energies should be rather than wishing for another referendum.

Postscript

No - I don't think Scotland is "too wee", "too poor", or "too stupid" to survive on it's own. I just don't think our future should be reliant on a referendum that is unlikely to take place and which is even less likely to be won, even though I voted Yes last time.

As always, this is an opinion piece. Please leave a comment below as I have trouble keeping track of social media.

My latest election prediction: a (well) hung parliament.

According to a mix of the Ashcroft constituency polls and general polling the outcome of the election will look something like this:

Conservative 281

Labour 267

Libdem 26

UKIP 1

SNP 51

Green 1

Others 23 (including 8 DUP and 3 SDLP)

In this scenario the Conservatives would try to get support through either a formal coalition (as in the last government) or by "confidence and supply" agreements with other parties. This looks unlikley to work:

Conservative + Libdem + DUP + Lady Hermon (Ind) = 316 (10 short of the required 325, 7 short of the 323 that could technically form a majority without Sinn Fein MP's sitting in Westminster)

Labour would then try, but have a harder time at forming a majority:

Labour + Libdem + SDLP =296 (29 short, assuming the Libdems would speak to Labour at all)

If Labour does not do a deal with the SNP then David Cameron, as the leader most likely to be able to get close to a majority, will stay on as Prime Minister to see if he can get a Queen's speech passed. If he can't then he will probably give way to Labour and let them try.

At this point Labour will either do a deal with the SNP or we will head into a second general election in September.

One warning though: there is a nuclear option. If both the Labour and Conservatives believe that allowing the SNP any influence would be either too toxic or give them unnecessary credibility they might decide to form a "grand coalition" or "national government" with Labour and Conservative parliamentary parties forming one bloc in parliament. With Labour likely to be decimated in Scotland the effect of any fallout on Labour north of the border would be self limiting, making this scenario less unlikely than a few weeks ago.

And one final word on the general election campaign. The BBC Poll Tracker shows us that nothing that any of the parties did changed the outcome. Most minds were made up long before the campaign started:

How Labour lost the Scottish electorate.

It now seems certain that Labour will enter the next parliament with only a handful of Scottish MP's. They may even be fewer Labour MP's in Scotland than pandas. Labour's collapse was predictable and inevitable. It may have culminated in the referendum, but it has been a long time coming,.

Labour could have made a socialist and internationalist case against independence, or even a federalist one within the European Union, but they chose not to. Instead, they went into a coalition with the Conservative Party to push a vision of lack of capability within Scotland to manage it's own affairs. Couple to this an overblown fearmongering, especially with older voters and people had simply had enough.

Labour have also failed to recognise that their core social democratic values are no longer unique. The SNP has reinvented itself since 1979 and is now more clearly social democratic than Labour.

The local breakdown of referendum voting showed that tribal voting has effectively ended. Glasgow voted Yes, even though Labour had traditionally harnessed the working class Catholic vote. Catholic and working class voters now seem more comfortable with the SNP and are voting for them.

Not content with annoying half the electorate many in Labour have continued to demonise those who vote SNP as either racists or "nasty nationalists". This shows a complete failure to engage with the SNP's civic nationalism - if you move to Scotland tomorrow you will be considered Scottish.

Labour's last campaign tactic seems to be an eve of poll leaflet entitled "24 hours left to prevent another referendum". The SNP have made it clear they do not want another referendum unless there is an attempt to leave the EU. Even if they did want a referendum under those circumstances presumably Labour and the Conservatives will vote against legislation enabling it so if it went through it would be Labour's own fault.

With one week left to go, both Labour and the Conservatives may be relying heavily on a pro union bounce from the imminent royal birth.

Why I have not pressed the button on joining the SNP

As I write the membership of the SNP stands at 57,243 - up from 31,601 before the referendum. People are still signing up in their hundreds every hour, but so far I have resisted the urge. Why? because I don't think their policies are enough to make enough of a difference to real life in Scotland. What we need is system change not regime change. And that means no more of the neoliberal consensus that the SNP is part of.

Even though the outcome of the referendum, and the way the Better Together campaign conducted themselves sent my socialist nerves jangling, I don't think that committing to more-of-the-same at Holyrood is the way forward. I don't think that many of the Yes activists do either. The SNP at Holyrood is a very disciplined political machine and it remains to be seen how that will change with an influx of new members and a change of leader.

The SNP is not a progressive party. Here are some examples of their non progressive policies:

• The number of university students from low income households has dropped over the past ten years. Funding cuts to further education colleges has further reduced access to higher education for young people from low income families.
• The SNP does not support a reinstatement of the 50p rate of tax for high earners.
• Proposing to reduce corporation tax, when this is a tax already being avoided by many multinationals.
• The council tax freeze has caused local authorities to cut funding to voluntary organisations providing care services to the elderly and others.
• Wanting to get rid of Trident while maintaining a nuclear cover through NATO membership.
• The SNP do not believe in redistribution of wealth and want to tackle poverty through economic growth. Much of that initial growth seems reliant on the oil industry. Yet, if we burn that oil we submit our planet to the effects of climate change, which will make the world's poorest countries poorer still.

These are all fairly intractible problems for me and explain why, for now, I am not lining up to join the SNP.