Whatever decision the Supreme Court takes on her holding a second referendum, the jury is out on her attitude towards voters
Source - Daily Telegraph - 22/11/22
The nine Supreme Court justices have it in their power to make or break Nicola Sturgeon’s leadership of the SNP on Wednesday when they deliver their eagerly awaited verdict on whether she’s legally entitled to hold the referendum on independence she’s planning for Oct 19 next year.
As the UK’s pre-eminent legal authority, they will not have been in the slightest bit interested in her future, or the lack of one.
Instead, they have been considering the referendum issue for more than two months now after Scotland’s First Minister referred the matter to them when even her own government’s senior law officer – Dorothy Bain KC, the Lord Advocate – said that she was unable to rule that Ms Sturgeon’s Indyref2 plan was possible without the say-so of Westminster.
It is expected, by Unionists and most nationalists alike, that the Court will insist that legally, the Scottish Parliament does not have the power to order another referendum.
Uphill battles to win support
Ms Sturgeon has always declared that she wants another such vote – she lost the last one in 2014 – to be lawful.
She has also insisted that she is determined to resist demands from many leading nationalists that she should defy the Court’s ruling and go ahead with a “rogue” vote.
That would end up completely without value, as most unionists would almost certainly boycott such a referendum.
But if that is the case, we would come to her Plan B where, displaying all of the arrogance Scots have gotten used to from her, she wants to use the next general election, not due until 2024, as a one-issue vote on Scottish independence.
This, she reckons, would be a de facto referendum on the break-up of Britain.
Her view is that if at least half of voters back the SNP as well as the two other nationalist parties – her coalition partners, the Scottish Greens, plus the minuscule Alba party, run by Alex Salmond – then that would be sufficient to begin talks on ending the United Kingdom between England and Scotland.
Echoes from history
But achieving half of the popular vote is a massive challenge – it’s hardly ever been achieved – and her plan ignores the fact that she, no more than any other political leader, can dictate what is to be the sole election issue.
The electorate decides that, as Ted Heath discovered when he labelled the 1974 election as being a choice about “who runs” Britain – him or the miners. The voters’ verdict was a brutal “Not you, Ted!”
A complete rejection by the Supreme Court of her demand for a referendum next autumn would also lead to uproar within nationalist ranks with umpteen protest rallies already planned and a mass lobby-cum-demonstration outside its headquarters in Parliament Square already organised for Wednesday.
A campaign of civil disobedience and mass protests by nationalists may well alienate undecided voters and ultimately prove counterproductive, even if the First Minister and other leading SNP figures would give their support to non-violent protests.
No winners in a long game
But such an election campaign would enable her to “play it long” over many months and thus placating her activists who have been growing ever more impatient at her lack of progress towards independence.
However, failing to accept the Supreme Court’s verdict, assuming it goes against her, would prolong the agony for the bulk of the Scottish people.
Currently, they are focused much more on bread-and-butter issues, such as inflation and how they are going to heat their homes, than on the constitution.
And they are not in the slightest bit interested in helping Ms Sturgeon maintain her grip on an increasingly fractured and unhappy party.
Sadly, as far as most voters are concerned, she is determined to maintain her determination to pursue an issue that is nowhere near the top of the voters’ current priorities.
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