Scotland: independency culture

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/20/scotland-independency-culture

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The Scottish National party annual conference that finished in Perth on Sunday had an urgency that was absent from the other party conferences earlier in the autumn. It is not hard to grasp why this should be. While the UK-wide party conferences were centred on the buildup to the May 2015 general election, the SNP is fixated on its date with destiny in next September's independence referendum. In the SNP's world, all roads lead to 18 September 2014 – and the possibility of defeat in 11 months is not permitted to exist.

The SNP's problem, however, is that the possibility of defeat next September is actually extremely real. The message of the Scottish opinion polls is both negative and steady. The most recent poll on independence among Scots who say they are certain to vote next year has 28% opting for independence, 50% for remaining in the UK and 22% still to decide. That is not an irredeemably hopeless position for the nationalist cause. Polls and moods can and do change – though Scotland's have yet to show evidence of that. But turning things around is certainly a tall order. Those poll figures mean that the yes campaign has to convince every undecided voter between now and next September if the cause of independence is to prevail.

If that is to happen, it will require a change of mood at once dynamic and organic. It will probably not be shaped by one big thing that happens overnight. It will require successive missteps by the no campaign and an accumulation of sure-footed momentum by the yes camp. The SNP is a formidable machine and it has opportunities over the coming 11 months to make it happen. Next month's much vaunted white paper on independence will be one of the most important. It will also, as Alistair Darling warned on Sunday, be a huge test of credibility. A backdrop of steady economic recovery would undoubtedly help. But it is not clear that Scottish voters, however much they may like having the SNP in charge of a devolved Scotland, are ready to take the bigger leap into the uncertainties of separation.

Alex Salmond's speech to his party on Saturday attempted to address this scepticism without explicitly admitting that it exists. In the past, Mr Salmond has done this by blurring the edges of what independence might mean – Scotland would keep the Queen, the pound, the NHS, a place in Europe and the rest of it. This speech still had some of that slippery pragmatism – a pledge to retain the Royal Mail in public hands, for instance. In an interview on Sunday, Mr Salmond also appeared open to a less demanding timetable over the future of Trident in Scottish waters.

In Perth, however, Mr Salmond and his party have made great play of pushing the SNP's credentials as a governing party that delivers on bread-and-butter issues. The first minister promised to bolster the minimum wage. His cabinet colleagues promised to increase bursaries and loans for students and to cut fuel bills – something for the middle-class, something for the workers. All this is designed to tell voters that life is increasingly more secure in Scotland while life in the rest of the UK becomes increasingly problematic and unequal under the coalition. The problem is that this dodges most of the difficult taxing and spending questions facing any European country in the modern era.

Mr Salmond has no alternative but to push on all fronts and hope that something works. The SNP has to persuade the voters that not much is going to be placed at risk while simultaneously inspiring them to believe that independence would be an historic change for the better. Mr Salmond ended his speech on a more visionary nationalist note – "If not us – then who? If not now – then when?" – than in the past.

A climactic moment of one sort or another in the national story is certainly on the horizon. But Scots show no sign, yet at least, of being convinced that independence is the overarching and urgent answer to their problems.

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