By Stuart Crawford
All politics is about compromise in the end. So, notwithstanding their landslide victory on 5 May, the SNP is not so subtly abandoning the primary principle behind its raison d’être in favour of the pragmatism of the art of the possible.
Faced with mounting evidence that a vote in the Holyrood elections for the SNP is not, per se, a vote for Scottish independence, party apparatchiks are now watering down its independence message to make it more widely palatable, electorally speaking.
At least we are now beginning to get somewhere near what many of us have been asking over the past few years – namely how exactly the SNP defines the word “independence”, which has been etched deep in its collective psyche for the near-century of the party’s existence.
There are many schools of thought within the party, and the old divide between fundamentalists and gradualists still gapes cavernously, a political fault-line across the body of the kirk which has yet to be closed.
There has been much thinking out loud and policy on the hoof, but what seems to be emerging is a loose consensus amongst some on a concept inevitably labelled “independence-lite”. Although there doesn’t appear to be a formal policy statement on this – yet – most people think it describes an arrangement whereby Scotland would raise all its own finances (full fiscal autonomy) and then “buy” what it needs in terms of defence and foreign policy – and possibly other things such as macroeconomic policy – from the rest of the UK.
In terms of a future Scottish defence policy under this arrangement, senior SNP members have even suggested that Scotland would wish to be able to “choose” which operations “its” defence forces participated in. A little knowledge is clearly a dangerous thing, and we can only hope that wiser heads will point out the difficulties with such a proposition, not least of which is in terms of the party’s current position on NATO.
Be that as it may, independence-lite is an interesting idea, and worth further discussion in a more intellectually coherent manner in due course. What I find difficult at the moment, and perhaps others do too, is how the concept differs fundamentally from “devolution-max”, or indeed any of the other models of enhanced devolution which have been mooted from time to time.
Because, to the layman at least, independence-lite and devolution-max look almost indistinguishable. And given that the opposition parties in the Scottish parliament are more or less all signed up to some form of enhanced devolution, is this a sudden outbreak of consensus?
To quote the admirable leader of the Scottish Conservatives, Annabelle Goldie, “You can no more be independent lite than you can be pregnant lite. You are either one or the other. You either are or you are not.” So the concept is damned from two points of view. One, because it is more or less the same as every other party is advocating, and two because it is neither fish nor fowl. It is, in fact, a bit of a dog’s breakfast if the truth be told.
Personally, I have always favoured the other end of the independence spectrum, independence-max or full sovereignty. A Scotland which is responsible for everything – defence, foreign policy, social security, macroeconomics – the whole lot, not just the easy bits. Some have said that sovereignty is an old-fashioned concept in the modern world and has been invalidated by globalisation and modern communications. Well, maybes aye and maybes naw, as Kenny Dalglish might put it. From a negotiating point of view, I would rather have a full hand and then give away the cards I wanted, than start with a short hand and try to buy in the extras.
Easy? No, but no more difficult conceptually than independence-lite. Where there’s a political will there’s a way. But whatever path Scotland takes towards the future, the SNP government will have to address some of the more untenable of its current policy positions before any of the options make sense. Negotiating our way out of NATO, for example, because it is “nuclear-led”, borders on hysterical nonsense. Neither can we just demand that the Trident fleet leaves Scottish waters forthwith without any sort of suggestion on when and where it might go.
And the current pathological fascination with all things green and renewable needs to be tempered by more incisive and practical consideration. Scotland’s current focus on the renewable sector may be admirable in many ways, but the wild claims by various political figures of jobs that will be created and electricity that will be generated must be taken with a large pinch of salt. Recent research shows that renewables will be, at best, jobs-neutral for Scotland – and if anyone truly believes that we will be producing 100 per cent of our domestic electricity needs by 2020 from renewables, then I fear the men in white coats will be at the door already.
Be all that as it may, though, I’m for independence – and the full-fat version at that, please. Heaven forfend that I should say this, but I agree with Annabel. We either are or we’re not. Let’s keep the flame of independence burning brightly.
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