Scotland's sleep-walk towards independence

When I heard that Nick Clegg had told Forth One radio during his visit to Scotland in August that he “would like to see Megrahi behind bars”, I did a double-take. Was the deputy prime minister suggesting that the UK government would try to overturn a decision made by the devolved administration in Edinburgh?

I needn’t have worried. The radio station had clipped his interview to the interesting bit, but left out the part where he said: “It is for the Scottish Government to reflect on how the circumstances have changed. I’m just expressing my own view.”

Naturally, the UK government shouldn’t ride roughshod over perfectly legal decisions by devolved administrations, and the rights and wrongs of the Megrahi case are a separate issue. But if the leaders of the UK coalition feel that Megrahi’s release represents such an egregious travesty of justice, with such serious consequences for the country’s international reputation – isn’t that worth replacing hand-wringing with action?

The episode illustrates a failure to acknowledge the seriousness of the situation now facing unionists in Scotland and across the UK. Alex Salmond has a parliamentary majority, and stands unchallenged as the dominant personality in Scottish politics. Every other political party is in retreat, with the two largest unionist blocs engaged in self-regarding leadership contests, one lethargic and the other chaotic. There will be an independence referendum within the next five years, as much as Iain Gray taunts the First Minister at FMQs for not having called it yet.

Has David Cameron ever gone in front of a camera to say that he’d rather Scotland didn’t separate? Is it even conceivable that he would – even though that is his position? If an independence referendum is to be defeated, Cameron and the UK leaders of all the unionist parties will have to do much more than just that; they would have to mount a political offensive the likes of which the country hasn’t seen since the Corn Laws. That’s how high the stakes would be, and yet the political will instead matches that seen around the AV referendum. That simply isn’t enough.

In Canada, a Quebec separatist movement more militant than the SNP will ever be – it even had a paramilitary wing – has all but been extinguished. Yet when Francophone nationalists first came to power, their situation was as enviable as the SNP’s is now. The Parti Québécois enjoyed overwhelming public support and Rene Levesque, the party's founding leader, was the dominant personality in provincial politics much as Salmond now is in Scotland. 

Yet today, Quebec separatism is a spent force, abandoned at the ballot box. It was overcome by aggressive campaigning by a succession of federal prime ministers, who recognised that separation wasn’t an issue to be relegated to the provincial level. Every party leader in London should now wake up to the same reality.

Of course, unionists aren’t helped by the fact that the United Kingdom is a constitutional four-car pileup, with a resultant inability to articulate an endgame for devolution or a place for Scottish national aspirations within the UK. If the SNP's case for independence is to be undermined, then the shutters of the ramshackle edifice that is the British state need to be thrown open so some light can shine in. Is Britain to become a federal state? What do we as a society want to be run at the local, regional and national levels? Where do we want most of our governing done – in the nations, or in London? After 600 years of muddling by with the Magna Carta, Britain needs to sit down and do the paperwork that comes with being a nation. A national conversation needs to be had on the UK’s constitutional status, and everything should be on the table.

If the forces of unionism are to have any hope of winning the argument over Scotland’s future, they need to realise that they are in the trenches – because right now the battle is being lost. Scotland is sleepwalking towards independence, and if those who want to see Scotland remain part of the United Kingdom cannot summon greater efforts, then they must prepare for an outcome they do not wish, but that is of their own making.