Since 2016, she has argued that Brexit has changed the independence debate and provided the necessary “substantial change of circumstances” that she says would justify a second referendum.
The UK electorate’s decision to leave the European Union, despite a majority of Scots voting to remain, gave Sturgeon the excuse to fire up her activist base and start pushing for another referendum.
But if Brexit “changed everything”, it was hard to explain why polls showed that Scots themselves had not changed their minds, that a majority had decided they would rather live in a UK outside the EU than in a Scotland that had moved back in. in the commercial block.
However, claiming a mandate from the 2016 Scottish Parliament election, in which her party failed to win an overall majority, the First Minister began campaigning for another Section 30 order that would allow her government to begin organizing the second a once-in-a-generation referendum in three years.
But Theresa May, who replaced David Cameron in No 10, said no. This was an extraordinary development; nationalists were already used to UK governments doing whatever they wanted, whether it was referendums on independence or more devolved powers. The Gordon Brown and Cameron eras had really spoiled the nationalists. But now they ran into an unforgiving brick wall.
When Boris Johnson replaced May in 2019, the response was the same: “Now is not the time.”
Insecurity and division
It was a dilemma for Sturgeon. Faced with a series of domestic political failures and scandals, she needed the distraction of another referendum. More importantly, she needed to make progress on this iconic policy. Otherwise, what was the point of the SNP being in power at all? In the 2021 Holyrood election, her party again failed to achieve an overall majority, leading to a deal with the pro-independence Scottish Greens.
Last week the First Minister capitulated to his own members. Despite insisting for years that she would not support a “wildcat” or illegal referendum, she announced that she had set October 19, 2023 as the election day for the next vote.
And given the Scottish Parliament’s restrictions on setting policy on a matter reserved for Westminster, she announced her plan would be taken to the High Court.
If the court rules that the referendum proposal is ultra vires and beyond the legal scope of Holyrood, she will revert to plan B: making the next UK general election a “de facto” referendum that the SNP will use as a mandate to start negotiations for independence with the UK government.
All of this is miles away from the statesmanlike, moderate language that Sturgeon has used in recent years. She desperately wanted a formal UK-approved referendum because it would be the only path to international recognition of Scottish independence, including a future path to EU membership.
But such considerations are not important to too many of the First Minister’s campaigners, who would happily put up with a unilateral declaration of independence if it were the only way to break free from the UK.
In fact, for many of them, this would be the preferred option.
But it’s already hard to see a way forward for Sturgeon. While it’s impossible to predict the Supreme Court, judges are expected to veto her plans – especially after recent precedent found that the Scottish Parliament cannot pass legislation that obliges or even pressures the UK government to act in certain way.
But even if the court somehow approved a watered-down form of plebiscite, the vast majority of united Scots would boycott it, rendering the result meaningless and absolving Westminster of any obligation to even acknowledge that it took place.
And as for Plan B, does any party have the right to redefine what a general election is about? Who can say why individual voters put an X in this or that box? It is a “strategy” hardly worthy of description.
Sturgeon’s main complaint is that the UK government is taking her at her word and refusing to approve a new referendum within what is generally accepted to be a “generation”. But rather than admit her powerlessness to do anything about the constitutional framework that constrains her actions, she instead chose to do what leaders should never do: she decided to tell her supporters what they wanted to hear , not what they need to hear.
The consequence for Scotland is another year to eighteen months of uncertainty and division. The consequences for the First Minister’s party, at least in the long term, could be truly devastating.
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