Is the fabric of the union about to be weakened by another tug?

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/09/fabric-union-about-weakened-another-tug

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Preparing for a recent interrogation by the Treasury select committee, George Osborne thought it a sensible precaution to acquaint himself with the biographies of the new MPs who would be quizzing him. He checked out George Kerevan, elected in May as MP for East Lothian when the Scottish Nationalists annihilated all the other parties north of the border. “Oh,” remarked a surprised Mr Osborne, “he’s a professor of economics.”

The chancellor is not the only politician of another party to have been impressed by the calibre of the Nationalist MPs that Scots sent down to Westminster. Like any parliamentary grouping, they include their share of mediocrities and mavericks. But the first impression of the SNP brigade has been of cunning, iron discipline and ruthless opportunism – these are all compliments at Westminster. “We’re just really tight,” explains the 20-year-old Mhairi Black, the SNP MP for Paisley & Renfrewshire South and so-called “baby of the house”, who comes over as anything but a newborn innocent.

Even the apparently silly stunts have had a serious purpose. Occupying Labour’s frontbench on the last day of the parliamentary session and declaring themselves to be the government’s official opposition was designed to compound the torment of a leaderless Labour party while delighting their supporters back home by projecting the SNP as the “real opposition” to the Tories.

In the period up to the summer recess, they proved cute at spotting issues where dissent on the Tory benches meant that David Cameron was deprived of his slender majority and the government was therefore vulnerable to defeat. SNP MPs played an important role in frustrating the Conservatives on human rights legislation, the timing of the EU referendum, English votes for English laws and foxhunting.

The pantomime over foxhunting exemplified their vulpine tactics. Much as the SNP like to mock the fuddy-duddy rituals of the palace on the Thames, they are adept players of Westminster games. As you may recall, the government wanted to align more closely the law on foxhunting in England and Wales with the more permissive regime in Scotland. The SNP decided to oppose this, even though foxhunting in England and Wales had been cited by Nicola Sturgeon as the sort of non-Scottish issue that her MPs would abstain from. One of their justifications for this volte-face was that “hundreds” of the English had begged the SNP’s MPs to use their votes to thwart the government. As excuses go, this was comically hollow. If hundreds of English voters wrote to the SNP demanding that they supported the restoration of capital punishment south of the border, would they oblige them? If they were really so appalled by the idea of England having a less stringent law on foxhunting, why hadn’t they used their majority in Edinburgh to toughen up their own?

There are two broad prongs to a Nationalist strategy designed to pave the way to another referendum on Scottish independence. One element, the obvious bit, is to build more support for the idea among Scots so that when the question is put again the Yes vote prevails. The other, rather less remarked upon, prong of their strategy is to loosen the attachment to the union of the English and the Westminster-centred parties so that they wilt in their resistance to secession by Scotland.

The SNP’s intervention on foxhunting was designed to irritate the hell out of the Tory English. Which it duly did. When the Commons returns in the autumn, Tory MPs will be more aggressive about demanding a tougher mechanism to exclude Scottish MPs from votes on legislation that purely affects England and Wales. Hostilities will be returned by SNP MPs claiming that Scotland is being treated as second class. And the fabric of the union will be weakened by another angry, unravelling tug.

Alex Salmond, who once described last September’s referendum as a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity”, now declares that a second one is “inevitable”. While that is a big word, I think the former SNP leader and irritant-in-chief of the English is probably right. Far from the question being settled “for a generation”, as David Cameron once thought, the future of the union feels highly contingent on what happens over the next 12 to 36 months. The Scotland bill transfers control of 60% of spending and nearly half of taxation to Holyrood to make it one of the most powerful devolved parliaments in the world. The prime minister and pro-union politicians hope that will eventually build support for a kind of independence within the UK. It will never satisfy the SNP. Perhaps as importantly, there is a swelling chorus of Tory complaint that the new devolution settlement will leave Scotland advantaged relative to the rest of the UK. Mr Cameron has a sincere attachment to the union, though the limits of his commitment were exposed when he played on English fears about the Scots in order to win the general election. I am not sure any of his potential successors as Tory leader would be so bothered about preserving the union.

Nothing anyone says about the timing of a further referendum can be taken at face value. Mr Cameron says there will not be another one in this parliament. That is not something he can truly guarantee. While it is legalistically the case that it would require the approval of the UK parliament, it is hard to see how, in practice, it could be resisted if the SNP secured a mandate from the Scottish people to re-ask the question.

The SNP says that it is “entirely a matter for the people of Scotland to decide”. That isn’t true either unless they are proposing, which they are not, to hold a referendum on whether there should be another referendum. The timing, in large part, will be determined by the SNP’s calculations about how best to fulfil their ambition. The Nationalists could seek a mandate for a second referendum by putting it in their manifesto for next May’s elections to Holyrood. They could wait for the outcome of the referendum on Europe. If Scotland votes to stay in the EU but the majority of the UK goes the other way, then the Nationalists would be handed a very plausible reason for demanding another plebiscite. Or they could play a longer game.

They have a dilemma about the timing and it is the source of tensions within the SNP that are likely to become more visible. You could argue that the next few years offer an extremely promising context in which to have another go at independence. There is a Tory majority government at Westminster that will be making more spending cuts. Labour is shattered north of the border. The general election result did not just unseat all but one of Labour’s MPs, it was also devastating for the infrastructure, morale and reach of the party. Kezia Dugdale, who is favourite to be announced as Labour’s next leader in Scotland when the result of that contest is announced this week, has suggested that the party may have further to fall before it hits the bottom north of the Tweed.

The flaws in the SNP’s record in office have yet to catch up with it. There are big issues with Police Scotland, the health service and education, but none of it appears to be sticking to the Teflon-coated Nicola Sturgeon. Opinion polling of voting intentions for next year’s Holyrood elections puts the SNP at around 60%, 10 points up on its general election performance.

The prospect of another Nationalist landslide in 2016 will encourage the big majority of the party’s supporters who say they want another referendum within the next five years. SNP MPs predict that the party’s autumn conference in Aberdeen will be fizzing with it. Yet there are reasons for them to be cautious. They did lose last time and just one poll in the entire campaign put Yes ahead and then only by a nose. There has not been a poll since showing a sustained majority for independence. The great surge to the Nationalists in the wake of the No verdict may not have done them a favour in one respect because it seems to have been a bit of a barrier to thinking about why independence was defeated and what they’d need to change about their arguments to have a better chance next time. The Nationalists don’t seem to have come to terms with the collapse in the oil price. It isn’t a slam dunk argument against separate statehood – there are plenty of affluent countries that don’t have a drop of the black stuff – but it sure makes it harder to persist with the claim that Scots would be richer outside the UK.

So I can see why Ms Sturgeon is hiding behind rather vague statements of intent that avoid boxing her into a commitment one way or another. Her challenge is to maintain the momentum of the SNP without it hurtling them into another independence vote before there is evidence that it would be won. Lose two in succession and it really would be off the agenda for a generation.