Shit Got Real

Last Thursday, as the Americans say, shit got real.  That is, to be slightly more “European” about it, reality got real in a subtly different way.  History, politics, everything.

Like Scottish Independence in the months before September 18^th 2014, before last Thursday, Brexit was a threat or a promise, depending on your preference. On Thursday December 12^th 2019, unlike voters in Scotland in 2014, voters in England made it real.  In retrospect, it turns out to have always been clear that in order to become a real process in the UK as it already was in Brussels, it needed BOTH the mandate of the 2016 referendum and a parliamentary majority to lift leaving the EU from the category of abstraction to that of “Oh Crap, this thing is really going to happen.” For the first time in the whole process what Brexit actually means in terms of the practical management of trade, of the economy and of the politics of the Union, is actually on the table. Till now, it was a game. On Thursday, as the Americans say, shit got real.

The other shit that just got real, of course, now that the issue is done and dusted in England by the electoral will of the people…twice…once as an idea and again as a willed practical process, is that we in Scotland need to decide properly whether we’re going along for the ride. It was always the case that it was only when one piece of shit got real that we would find ourselves having to get real about the other one.

Now it’s here. What was a bad joke in 2014, that Prime Minister Boris Johnson, armed with a ten year majority,  would drag Scotland out of the EU and make devolved government a functional impossibility in the process…is no longer a half-baked threat of a worst case scenario for a No vote …it’s actually going to happen.  It’s actually already happening.  Shit, undoubtedly, got real.

Everything with which one might make a progressive case for the union, the prospect of a UK labour Government before 2030 and of meaningful federalist constitutional reform in the context of the necessary centralisation without which it is inconceivable that Brexit can happen coherently seems to be for the birds. Though it seems entirely possible this weekend that the Tories will bring forward some palliative constitutional tinkering next year in order to head off the threat of independence, I for one simply cannot see how even the limited “principle of consent” within the devolution settlements of Scotland, Northern Ireland , Wales and even London can be honoured within the context of having to make comprehensive trade deals (with the EU and the USA just for starters) that will absolutely demand renegotiations of the health and welfare markets, let alone farming, fishing and retail.  In short, I can see it being possible for Scotland to take a full part in Brexit, or to have an effective devolved government. I cannot see it having both.

The “half way house” of devolution and full participation in a Full English Brexit simply cannot live together.  We are either fully and whole heartedly on board the good ship Brexitania or we are in the lifeboat of independence. This has been the case in the abstract since 2016, of course.  But shit, as I may have said before, just got real.

One of the consequences of this altered sense of reality is that you suddenly see your own history differently.  For example, it was May 2011 when the election of a majority SNP government suddenly made the prospect of a independence referendum a really possible future event, and not just something for individual daydreams and wistful collective longing in the pub. But in retrospect, the immediate test back then was of devolution itself, not yet of independence. Would the result of a Scottish election be taken sufficiently seriously in Holyrood and Westminster for a referendum to actually happen?  That was the question then.  Up until the last few weeks of the campaign in September 2014, Scottish Independence itself seemed, like Brexit until last week, an abstraction, a threat or a promise, depending on your point of view. In practical political terms, the real priority for the Yes campaign was to ensure that the seemingly inevitable victory of No Thanks or Better Together or What You Will was not so overwhelming as to remove the threat of independence altogether for the foreseeable future.  After all, for both Labour and SNP administrations, the name of the game from the seventies onwards was to extract concessions from Westminster with the use of a prospective threat to the status quo of the British order of things, and if Indy had been defeated 70/30 as seemed entirely possible in the early days of the campaign, then Scotland as a political entity within the union might well have been fatally compromised. If anyone had offered me 55/45 at any point before August 2014, I’d have bitten both their arms off.

That result, though it was a decision not to make the Indy Shit real just for the moment, kept the leverage real…and the electoral success of the SNP since, with a wobble or two, has maintained that reality of Scotland as a political entity, a factor in the calculations of any UK government, with a majority or not.

What really makes the difference is the vote;  what England has just done. All those Labour voters who either stayed at home last Thursday or actually, unbelievably, voted for the Conservatives…have just done something very analogous to what the Scottish electorate did in 2011.  They have killed the Labour Party stone dead as a serious electoral force for the foreseeable future (though as in Scotland then, the Labour party in England, left and right,  will spend probably the next ten years in denial) and they have crucially decided that their democracy, their referendum, expressed though Brexit, is more important to them than anything.  Than Party loyalty or the Union or any other comparative abstraction. In closing one story, in “getting Brexit done”, they have knowingly opened up another door, another pathway which only seems to lead one way.

Like I’ve always said, Breaking up the Union has always been a job for the English. 

And now that Belfast has got three out of four nationalist MPs, now that Scottish voters have once again, and with a renewed sense of purpose, entrusted the SNP to navigate our way through the stormy weather to come, (can I take it that the subterranean mumbles about the SNP leadership will shoosh for a while?), we are faced in a subtly different way with defining, asserting and protecting our identity in these islands. And, as in May 2011, I would argue that here and now in the real world, the choices to be made are not yet about independence, they are once again about devolution. Is devolution a real thing or not, is Scotland at THIS moment a real entity within the UK or not. If Boris now has a real mandate for a real Brexit, can it possibly be argued that Nicola Sturgeon doesn’t have one too?

I don’t think so. I think, once the mince pies are digested, and at least SOME of the civil service can be dragged away from the all-consuming process of Brexit, that even this Tory government will settle on a consensus that, in the event of an SNP/Green…and maybe even LABOUR super majority for a second, binding Indy Ref after the elections of 2021.

And this time, unlike in 2014, the referendum will be different. This time, right from the outset, with a real possibility of winning, the real possibility of real independence will be on the ballot paper. Shit will be real next time. So everybody on all sides had best be ready. 

And despite online assertions to the contrary, I don’t think anyone on either side is nearly ready yet. Getting ready, getting all the real arguments in place for a real world future as either an independent country or a fully subsumed status as a region of Boris’s Brexit Britainnia Inc. is the real job for 2020.    

Boris Johnson and The Ice Flow

If and when the Tory Party in England chooses Boris Johnson (or even Jeremy Hunt) as the next Prime Minister, in theory this doesn’t really change much in Scotland. In practice though, what it will tell us about England, and what it tells England about itself,  changes everything on both sides of the border.

It’s not the men themselves who will change things.  It’s not as if Boris Johnson (or even Jeremy Hunt) can instantly change either the parliamentary arithmentic on Brexit in Westminster any more than they can change the negotiating stance of the European Union.

It’s what the Tory leadership election tells us about the Tory electors that really matters…even…or especially…because “we” (the Unions of England with Scotland and with Northern Ireland) are almost wholly uninvolved except as a whiny and annoying distraction from the serious English business (or total fantasy world) of Brexit.

The only way Brexit was ever going to “work” was if it precipitated a general collapse in the institutions of the European Union.  You may have noticed that this hasn't happened, despite what its paymasters were hoping. Britain outside of the EU is still part of the European economy and is therefore bound to make a deal with the EU at some point, as long as the EU still runs that economy.

No Deal Brexot is thus as chimerical and unreal a prospect as Brexit itself has turned out to be.  What will matter in the long term, in the words of the Clash is “Something about England.” Which will in turn matter to Scotland, Ireland North and South and Wales. Not necessarily in that order.

Just as the referendum in Scotland in September 2014 changed forever who gets to make the decsions about Scotland’s constitutional future, (no matter what the outcome was) so the Brexit referendum in June 2016 changed forever how sovereignty works in England. 

Now nowhere in these islands is the Crown in Parliament Sovereign any more. We have become “Europeanised.”  The people, the electorate are sovereign.  What is more, they are sovereign in each of the four nations of the "only just United" Kingdom.

This brings us back to Boris. Just as the next Prime Minister will have a choice of accepting the Brexit terms of the annoyingly still existing EU sooner (the May Deal, backstop and all) or later…(the same only slightly worse)... so he will only really have two choices about the next general election.

He, whether it's Boris or Jeremy, will either have to call an election sooner, in order to get any version of Brexit through the Commons…or later, hoping against hope that Brexit will have been such a huge success as to ride the Tories to victory on a wave of relief and patriotic enthusiasm. 

Wherher he goes for sooner or later, the decisive factor is, of course, not Nicola Sturgeon but Nigel Farage. Either Boris or Jeremy will have to gamble that they can make such a success of Brexit that they can call an election next year having eliminated Farage as an electoral factor…or they can make a deal with him now, secretly or otherwise, and call an early election.

If I had to bet the house on one of these options, I'd bet on "sooner"...and that means that Boris will have to do a deal, publically or not, with Nigel Farage.

If that scenario seems far fetched with Jeremy Hunt as Prime Minister, to me it seems downright inevitable once Boris Johnson has his feet behind the desk in Number 10.  I would be astonished if talks between his people and Farage’s were not already well underway. 

I would also be astonished if such a prospect didn't give an almighty boost in popularity to the idea of a second Indyref in Scotland. But what else might Boris Johnson in Number Ten mean for Scotland, where, you’ll remember, sovereignty of decision on the constitution unarguably passed to the people in 2014?

I think it means two things.  First, if and when the electorate of the Tory party in England choose Boris Johnson as the next Prime Minister for Scotland, a second independence referendum becomes absolutely inevitable in the next five years.

Further, if, with or without a deal with Farage, Boris Johnson calls a general election and wins it, inevitably entirely on the back of votes in England, then the result of that referendum in Scotland is going to be very different. 

This is not because of Boris himself.  One English Tory Prime Minister more or less is not the decisive factor here. What is decisive is England’s choice  If the Tory party in England choose Boris Johnson they are consciously choosing to ignore the Union. If the English electotate subsequently confirm him as their Prime Minister, they are just as consciously voting to end it.

The beginning of the union was England’s choice.  The End of the Union will be England’s choice as well. The Independence referendum in 2021, like the devolution referendum in 1997, will be a vote to effectively ratify an End of the Union that has already happened.

(It was always thus.  It wasn't the Easter Rising itself that was fatal to the Union with Ireland in 1916.  It was the brutality with which England chose to respond to it.)

Just as Nietszche discovered with God in the 1880s, so the British people will discover in the 2020s that the Union is already dead in the hearts of our contemporaries. Indeed, the "deadness" of the wholly negative"Better Together" campaign ion 2014 was as much a clue to the condition of the corpse as the Remain campaign in 2016.

My guess...for what it ends up being worth... is that the Scottish elections in 2021 will ratify a decision to hold another referendum, with Westminster’s consent (which will be given by a new Labour or Tory administration in London) My guess for a date is September 2021…and long, boring negotiations will then begin with both London and Brussels.

Anyway at that point the hard work of redefining our relationships with the rest of these islands and with Europe will begin.  This will be a job for the next generation of Scottish political leadership, probably. 

Whether we call this inevitable change Independence or not in a few years is another question. No doubt we'll have lots of esoteric and hugely irritating fights about it. But, insosfar as such a thing is meaningful in 21^st Century Europe, Independence is what it will be.

When “we lost” in 2014, history did not come a stop. The ice kept flowing. The accident of the Tory leadership contest in 2019 shows us where the ice has already reached, just like the accident of the death of John Smith did in 1994. And its direction, as I suspect he and Donald Dewar both knew, is as sure as the rise and fall of glaciers.

For Scotland, the next vote, referendum or not, is Do or Die.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/feb/10/mps-peter-kyle-phil-wilson-decent-brexit-proposal?CMP=share_btn_tw A referendum POST Brexit, to confirm leaving the way that 1975 confirmed joining, seems sensible. It would also give Scotland the chance to make its own choice. This morning, I wouldn't give it a snowball's chance in a circle of hell of happening. It might, however, be the standard against which to judge which of the Nightmare Before Christmas Assortment of outcomes we're faced with at the moment, insofar as it would offer the electorates in the UK and specifically in Scotland a chance to think again.
First, obviously, do the "British People" really want to entrust their fate to Boris Johnson Globalism, when, to judge by this morning on @BBCr4today , he, like most other Leavers is actually relying on pretty much remaining when it comes right down to it. (Just as a brief aside, it strikes me, and it must strike EU negotiators, that having kept buggering on about wanting this Brexit malarkey for year after year, British politicians seem to be constitutionally unable to treat it like it anything that is actually happening...)
A post Brexit referendum at the end of transition confirming whether the UK REALLY wants to leave, would give voters in Scotland a specific challenge: Do we REALLY want to go along with whatever England does, or do we REALLY want a Scotland specific relationship with the EU?
Reflecting on the Scotland-Specific meaning a putative "Confirmatory" EU referendum in the UK would have rather forces on me the following assertion that I want to test: the next election, no matter WHAT it is, is effectively a referendum on the constitution. Without necessarily meaning to, let alone planning it, it seems to me that we have arrived at a place historically where it is inescapably the case for what we used to call "the Yes movement", including the SNP, that the next vote we get is a decisive one for that constitution. Any election we take part in has to be about the decision we make on the question of our relationships with Europe and with the UK. An existential crisis is going to happen next time we vote, like it or not.
I have never been a fan of a simple repeat exercise on the 2014 referendum and "getting it right this time." I don't think the SNP Leadership is either. This is not a source of frustration to me. A second referendum loss is far more likely than a win. But more importantly, it is a principle of history that you can NEVER stand in the same stream twice. The 2014 Indyref came out of a very special set of circimstances among the most important of which was David Cameron's rock solid certainty, (advised by Labour) that he was going to win it. As far as Cameron was concerned, Project Fear in Scotland was a rehearsal for the really IMPORTANT referendum, which was the UK one on EU membership. Many books have already been written about both calculations and both outcomes. But we MUST remember that when it came right down to it, the 2014 referendum was a Tory scheme to DESTROY the Nats...and the fact that it didn't work and that we're even TALKING about a Scotland specific response to Brexit isn't actually bad going.
More important than the simple observation that time has moved on since the first half of this decade is the equally simple observation that it has moved on a LOT, very, VERY fast...and that any prescription for what we do next predicated on a past model is likely to come unstuck.
So I return to the new premise I want to test: that the next electoral test, no matter what it is, needs to be approached by the SNP (and others of the Artists Formerly Known as the Yes Movement) as seeking a mandate for a specific Scottish relationshop with the EU. Now...this sounds terribly dry and boring and unimportant...but then, until 2016 so did the EU itself...(hence the ease of the Leave vote winning and the unreality in which Leave leaders have dwelled ever since)..and now we know it's really important to who we - Brits and Scots- ARE in the world.
For example, the Brexit process has revealed that shared EU membership was absolutely CRUCIAL to the success of devolution in Northern Ireland...and, it will soon clearly emerge, in Scotland and Wales too. At its simplest, the "return" of trade and standards regulation from Brussels to the UK...to WESTMINSTER...is an absolute bureucratic consequence of any form of Brexit, hard or soft. Brexit will centralise power in London in a way that is unthinkable in the context of devolution. All those who created and supported the devolved settlement under which Scotland has been governed for the last twenty years will very soon find that without the roader context of EU membership (for the last forty five years) devolution simply won't work.
It should be a maxim from now on: You can have Brexit or you can have Devolution: you CANNOT have both. No Tory or Labour administration of Brexit Britain will be able to tolerate the notion that somewhere in these islands, someone can do things differently. But this, of course, is where the whole project falls apart...on what was always the Achilles heel of Empire: Ireland. That failing Ireland leaving the EU on the day the UK does, just as it joined the EEC on the same day in 1973, the entire Brexit project is incoherent. Ireland will do no such thing. And, it is my contention, that the next line of defense of ANY kind of "democratic control", whatever we call it constitutionally, is for Scotland to insist on an independent relationship with the European Union.
We need to make decent trade deals that protect the identity of Scottish Branding. (Glass of British Glenlivet anyone?) We need to control the big stuff too, like immigration policy...and agriculture, tourism...Every defender of devolution knows that devolution itself is a defense against the excesses of a UK government which cannot arithmetically reflect our views on matters of health care, education policy and on and on and on...What is really historically significant about Brexit in the context of devoluition, is that Brexit will wipe that line of defence out. We will helpless in whatever breezes Boris Johnson blows whichever orifice he blows from. And THAT is what the next election, for Westminster or Holyrood or the EU is about.
The next election, whatever it is, is a question about who governs Scotland. And if, to draw a final seventies reference, the answer to the SNP is "Not you, mate"...then so be it. But make no mistake, if the SNP win the next election in Scotland, then everything must change.