George Kerevan: Independence is ‘dead’? What about the British state?

We were even assured that senior SNP figures “now accept they’ve nobody but themselves to blame”. Anonymously, of course. Wouldn’t do to take public blame and shame. If, indeed, that is what they told the newspaper.

The FT went on, rather gleefully, to say that John Swinney, assuming he becomes the new SNP leader, “may be able to slow the decline but there is little chance of him taking Scotland out of the UK”. So that’s all right then. The writer, by the way, is Euan McColm, whose scintillating and penetrating analysis of Scottish politics often graces the Daily Mail and The Spectator.

You can imagine the sighs of relief over the breakfast tables of Britain’s ruling elite as they devoured McColm’s FT piece over their cornflakes. The SNP’s juggernaut “has veered off course” and “today, the SNP is in the deepest crisis of its 90-year history”.

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Funny that: I thought the 1942 explosion, when John MacCormick and his followers split the party and nearly wrecked it, was pretty existential. Not to mention the jailing of party leader Douglas Young for refusing to be conscripted (yes, SNP top brass have had legal problems before). But then, the memories of political commentators are short. They get paid for instant punditary.

So, is the Scottish national question dead for the next 30 years, pace McColm? Is independence a dead-duck issue as a result of Humza Yousaf unceremoniously dumping Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater?

Is the entire national question safely off the agenda, so the British media can concentrate on the edifying Punch and Judy show between Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak? Or might it be that most of the British commentariat doesn’t know a scoobie about Scottish politics? Methinks the latter.

I can no more predict the exact political future than McColm. But I do know that the fault lines in the structures of the ailing and rickety British state run deep and are unrepairable. I know that Brexit has wrecked business confidence and created vast economic uncertainties. I know that the Labour and Tory parties –the traditional bedrocks of political stability – are being challenged by the populist left and the populist right.

I know that a decade and a half of mindless austerity has simultaneously wrecked the public finances and caused a massive increase in poverty. I know that revered British institutions are failing by the hour – the NHS, the BBC, the rail system and local government.

I’ve served in the House of Commons and know first-hand that it is a dysfunctional, incompetent, remote sideshow incapable of addressing serious national problems.

Set against this raging series of political firestorms, it is no surprise that half of Scots want to opt out and run their own state. They could hardly make a worse go of it than Messrs Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss and the lacklustre, humourless Sunak over the past 14 years.

The issue of how Scotland is governed – and who governs it – has dominated Scottish politics for the past 60 years. That’s two generations, by conventional counting. In that time, we’ve had three constitutional referendums (two on more devolution, one on independence).

Support for independence, as expressed in opinion polls, remains strong. A poll for yesterday’s Sunday Times has independence on 48%, versus 52% for staying in the Union. And that’s after the SNP’s recent travails. No, the national question is not going away till it’s resolved.

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Of course, that’s different from saying the Unionist elite will bow to the will of the Scottish people. And, faced with getting rid of the hapless, dangerous Tory Party, more Scots might temporarily back Labour at the coming General Election.

But neither circumstance should be interpreted as the independence question disappearing off the agenda.

The cracks in the British state run too deep and Scotland’s problems remain too enormous to think people north of the Border will abandon looking for a Scottish solution to Scotland’s difficulties. Especially as those difficulties are largely the result of outside control.

Take but one issue: fuel poverty. Some 31% of all households in Scotland are currently living in fuel poverty, with 20% living in extreme fuel poverty (defined as minimum fuel bills taking up more than 10% of income net of housing costs).

That’s way above the figures for England. Plus fuel poverty in Scotland has jumped by around 10 percentage points since 2019. But why? Scotland regularly supplies more than 15% of UK electricity but consumes less than 10%. In other words, we are giving away our fuel while our low income and OAP households shiver. What’s the logic?

It’s not like we are earning money from exporting energy and so able to import more of our necessities. Most of the energy industry is foreign owned. That means the profits flow overseas as well the power being generated.

According to a new study by Common Weal, Scotland is one of the most foreign-owned countries in the world. As a result, some £36.5 billion in profits flowed out of Scotland in 2021 alone. We have experienced a net outflow of wealth every year since contemporary records began in 1998. That is around £277.4bn in total.

If I have an animus against the SNP Government it is that it has not just allowed this to happen, it has actively encouraged foreign ownership in the hope of investment. But it forgot about the profit drain.

Scotland needs independence to regain control of our economy and natural wealth. That imperative is not going away, whatever the commentariat proclaims. The iron logic of the national question cannot be refuted.

We either command our own future or hand over control to others. If there’s a lesson to be learned about the SNP crisis it is that we should be done ceding the initiative over independence to outside institutions, London-based politicians, and anyone other than the Scottish people. It is high time we set the agenda and the timetable for independence in Scotland itself. You don’t ask for independence, you take it.

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That is not rhetoric – it is a political imperative. All independence movements exhibit ebbs and flows. Such ebbs and flows need not be decided by others.

The next Holyrood election must return a pro-indy majority or risk subordinating the needs of the Scottish people to London-based parties (and probably populist, English nationalist ones).

But any future pro-indy coalition needs to be willing to confront Westminster rather than sell out the Scottish economy to foreign ownership. We want our factories, our wind farms, our oil refineries and our land back in Scottish ownership. Even under devolved rules, we can do that. Let’s make that the issue, then.

The independence question over for a generation? Only if Britain becomes a land of milk and honey governed by benign geniuses, in a world at peace. Otherwise, like the Irish before them, the Scots are about to wrongfoot the media commentariat by rudely changing the form of the question.