Why the SNP must put Scottish independence front and centre

Don’t be distracted as Rory the Tory gets sacked by text collecting his Politician of the Year award.

Set aside even the repellent spectacle of Jacob Rees-Mogg, lounging across three Commons seats as if he was in a posh boys’ club not the “Mother of Parliaments”.

There is going to be a General Election. Even if Jeremy Corbyn blocks it for now. Even if valiant MPs like Joanna Cherry are still battling it out in the Court of Session. Even if placards rightly proclaim the immediate political objective is to “Stop the Coup”.

Sooner or later there is going to be a General Election.

Of course, the date matters hugely.

An election before Halloween means Boris – if he wins – can undo any No-Deal-blocking legislation passed this week.

But an election after that date is no walk in the park, either, because a victorious Boris will just contrive a No-Deal departure at a later date. Meanwhile if Corbyn wins, he inherits the poisoned chalice of getting a Brexit deal that’s better than full EU membership and withstanding the rage of thwarted Brexiteers till the whole messy thing can be put to a People’s Vote.

Party turmoil could massively complicate the electoral arithmetic. The Conservative and Unionist Party is swiftly morphing into the English Nationalist Party – like the creature in Alien, finally engulfing the craft that was once a convenient host. With 21 Tory rebels (plus those already cast adrift in the Independent Group) there could be a plethora of Tory parties by the next election. They might not win seats (thanks to the distorting effect of first past the post) but they could take votes from Boris’s Tories or the Brexit Party or the LibDems.

Likewise Labour. Corbyn’s astonishing balancing act has kept most of his parliamentarians on board thus far, but when the focus changes from the current, unifying emergency of an impending hard Brexit, to the prospect of negotiating a new deal (impossible) which will nonetheless be opposed in a People’s Vote by a Remain-supporting Labour Party (perhaps), all bets could finally be off.

So yes, a General Election will give a result, and for a country accustomed to the satisfying certainty of a result after 90 minutes of play, that’s not nothing. But until the party vehicles more precisely match the many shades of grey of public opinion – and until a fair voting system allows that spectrum to be translated accurately into seats at Westminster – no General Election will resolve the big issues that have been let rip.

Nor can they be. Brexit has finally lanced the ugly boil of elitism that’s lain fundamentally untouched for centuries, albeit in a perverse and destructive way.

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We are meant to feel appalled that Nicholas “get back to Skye” Soames has been upended by his own party, because he’s Churchill’s grandson. Sir Nicholas won’t resign his seat though and will continue to sit as an independent -- a position of high-handed entitlement and disregard for rules that few on the left will call out, because the rules have all the legitimacy of Celebrity Big Brother and Sir Nick, unleashed from the Tory whip, boosts the numbers needed to contain Boris.

Nicholas “get back to Skye” Soames​

No side looks clean as the Tory blood bath unfolds. This is a measure of the crisis of at the heart of British democracy – yet like any patient in denial, the British electorate is barely interested in the underlying causes of its complaint.

So, a General Election can’t fix very much.

But it would let Nicola Sturgeon put independence front and centre of an SNP Westminster campaign for maybe the first time, going beyond sabre-rattling to spell out in detail the advantages of independence and a route map.

Getting onto the front foot and embracing independence as its main platform would also let the party transform its embarrassingly indy-lite conference agenda to create a new showpiece – the launch of a case for independence delivered by the First Minister (maybe on the eve of a snap election) as vigorously as she delivered this week’s impressive Programme for Government -- making independence the centre-piece of a wide-ranging and honest conference debate about Scotland’s constitutional future.

Now, I ken. Such a move won’t force a UK Government to give us a Section 30 order.

And yes, the polls don’t suggest the electorate is completely sold on independence yet either. The latest Times survey reconfirms 49% support, with a larger number for a second referendum in the next five years than against, and a likely 51 seats for the SNP at any snap election. So, there’s a gap between support for the party and support for the policy.

How will that shift without a change in strategy?

Opting to lead a General Election campaign on Brexit or even the climate emergency would be understandable, but ultimately missing a trick. An electorate which constantly sees other issues given greater prominence and more explanatory effort than independence will inevitably draw its own conclusions. Voters who see “later” coded into every speech and intervention are bound to lose confidence in the proposition and to start thinking “later” too.

Brexit is still the biggest most urgent issue of the day – nae doot. But even a Japanese soldier lost for 90 years in the Cairngorms knows the SNP’s position on it by now. The party’s been the most coherent, persistent and steadfast advocate for remaining in the EU and its politicians have been at the fore of every legal attempt to give British parliamentarians the rights they could not (apparently) win for themselves.

It’s time to give independence the same powerful limelight.

Of course, the SNP may lose votes and even some seats if they nail their colours unequivocally to the mast during a General Election campaign and make it clear that a vote for them means endorsement of indyref2 – by whatever means practicable.

But maybe the party wouldn’t lose as much as it secretly fears. The spectre of the 2017 snap election clearly still haunts Nicola Sturgeon. But was the loss of half a million votes really due to the SNP’s championing of independence – or the fact they promptly disowned the cause, vainly trying to fight the election instead on education and health while the Unionist parties (successfully) fought a proxy indyref?

A pushback from the SNP’s heady 2015 results was bound to happen.

The party’s leadership needs to get over that and rediscover its mojo, if there’s any chance of independence having a “good crisis” while British politics collapses before our very eyes.

This time round, the media and commentators actually anticipate a Scottish response. John Curtice, commenting on the recent Times poll says: “It can no longer be presumed that Scotland would vote No again in an independence ballot. This a nationalist movement that again seems to have the wind in its sails.”

So why disappoint? Why fail to use this unexpected fair wind, by failing to set sail?

Of course, timing is all important and MPs are currently in a race against the clock.

But we are where we are.

And that is on the brink of the most important General Election in modern times. It can become an explicit endorsement for independence, or another safety-first campaign by the SNP.

Which is it to be?