IAN Blackford, the SNP’s Westminster leader, suggested something this week that most of us who have been paying attention to the workings of the independence movement (so not most of the British press then) have known for some time. Nicola Sturgeon isn’t going to announce the date of a second independence referendum at the party conference next month.
No doubt the British press will report this as a huge setback which will spark off civil war within the independence movement, but it will, of course, be no such thing.
READ MORE: Independence referendum not featured on SNP conference agenda
The reason for the October announcement was always because back when Brexit was new, and even those of us who had a low opinion of Theresa May’s government to begin with still hadn’t grasped the depths of its uselessness, it was expected that by that point there would be some clarity on what Brexit was going to entail.
READ MORE: The pros and cons of a second Brexit referendum and indyref2
There is clarity now. It’s just a shame that it’s clarity that the Conservatives are unfit to negotiate the exit from a pub at closing time. Actually, that’s unfair to people who are blind drunk; at least they know the general direction that they’re headed in and when they do finally collapse face down in the gutter they don’t demand that everyone else lies down in it alongside them. All of which is more than can be said for the Tories. It would be the height of recklessness for Nicola Sturgeon to call an independence referendum when we don’t even know if Theresa May’s government is going to survive the next two months.
READ MORE: This is what happens if Theresa May says No to indyref2
If there is an early General Election, the SNP can fight it on securing a mandate for the people of Scotland to have their say on the outcome of Brexit, irrespective of what happens in the rest of the UK, and if the only way that Scotland can resist the Conservative Brexit is through independence, so be it. If the SNP win the largest number of seats and the largest number of votes, then no-one will be able to say: “Scotland doesn’t want another referendum.”
It’s far better for the people of Scotland to make an informed choice than it is to rush blindly into the unknown. It’s bad enough that the Conservatives offer Scotland nothing but uncertainty, insecurity, and an unknown outcome. It’s even worse that they are insisting that Scotland gets no say and no representation in whatever that outcome might turn out to be.
Although, to be fair, we don’t actually know what Ruth Davidson thinks, because she’s currently in hiding from the press in case anyone asks her about the dark money scandal; the disloyalty of Ross Thomson and the other Scottish Tory Brexiteers; the utter confusion in which her party is mired; or indeed anything that can’t be answered with either, “Scotland doesn’t want another referendum,” or: “Yes. Yes. I’d be happy to accept your invitation to appear on Bake Off.” Scotland doesn’t need a say on Brexit when Ruth can bake a cake with patriotic British icing on a telly show.
Like every other committed supporter of Scottish independence, I’d like another referendum as soon as possible. In my ideal world, we’d have a referendum tomorrow and Scotland would deliver a resounding vote of confidence in itself as a nation. However, the only people living in a fantasy world are the Conservatives and their hard-line Brexiteers. Here in the real world, I want an independence referendum when we’re going to win it. That means waiting for Brexit to play out, so that that large part of the population which doesn’t live and breathe politics becomes aware of its negative consequences.
In 2014, we were told by British nationalists that independence meant we’d be defenceless against threats from outer space. We learned this week that Brexit means the UK would be outside the EU’s early warning system for meteorites, so now it’s being part of the UK that means we’re defenceless against threats from outer space.
We’ve already seen one opinion poll saying that there would be a majority for independence after Brexit. The Scottish Social Attitudes Survey now shows that a majority think that independence would be good for the Scottish economy, a big difference compared to 2014.
However, waiting for a referendum until we’re going to win it certainly doesn’t mean delaying it until there’s a banged-on majority for independence in the opinion polls. The likelihood is that the polls won’t show much in the way of movement until there is an official campaign and a date for a vote. It’s only when there’s a date for a vote that people who are not normally interested in politics will start to engage with the issues.
That vote will be carried out against the background of a chaotic Brexit, and many thousands of people who voted No in 2014 being confronted with the reality that everything they were promised in 2014 has turned out to be false.
They’ll be confronted with a Ruth Davidson whose bluff has been called, and who will be exposed as someone who only claimed Scotland didn’t want another referendum because she has nothing positive to offer Scotland within the UK.
The wind is in our sails. The independence ship is on course. I’ve never been more confident that Scotland is indeed on the path to independence. Let’s keep calm heads and our eye on the prize.
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