The Supreme Court has been asked to decide whether Scotland’s independence referendum can be held legally in October next October. No one should be surprised. One of the responsibilities of the court is to decide whether a bill in a decentralized legislature does not fall outside its legislative competence. Nicholas Sturgeon, the SNP’s first minister, is looking for a legitimate way to hold a non-binding vote on Scotland’s 315-year alliance with the United Kingdom. She hopes the judges will give her the power to own one. The court may say that the “consultative” referendum – Indyref2 – is legal. But after unanimously declaring Boris Johnson’s “prorogation” of parliament illegal, the court appears wary of constitutional confrontations.
Ms. Sturgeon had to gamble because the prime minister opposed another independence referendum, arguing that the 2014 vote was a “one-generation” event. If the judge supports another vote, then Lord Reed, the president of the court and an experienced Edinburgh judge, could become – perhaps to his concern – a national hero for Scottish nationalists. If the judges refuse to do so, Ms. Sturgeon says she will fight in the next general election in the UK on the issue of independence. It is clearly a matter of policy as well as principles.
SNP sees a win-win situation for itself. It leads the majority majority in Holyrood and is the third largest party in Westminster. Its activists are pushing for a new vote to leave the UK after losing the latter. Mr Johnson makes sense when he says that with the cost of living crisis and the recovery of Covid that we have to deal with, now is not the time to reconsider the question of independence. However, Scotland’s Prime Minister is also right to say that Brexit means that the circumstances in which Scotland voted against independence in 2014 no longer exist. In the British referendum to leave the EU, all voted areas of Scotland remain. The Scottish question has come to the fore because many Scots believe they have been taken on a trip to a destination they did not vote for.
All nations are created. They are created by people, events and social and economic forces – and they can be unmanufactured by the same forces. There is some evidence that Scottish identity has increased over the last decade. This is hardly a surprise, given that it is politicized and to some extent aligned with the class. However, recent polls do not show that a majority of Scots support independence. Ms. Sturgeon and Mr. Johnson represent very different political views when it comes to society and the economy, but they are both nationalists. The struggle for self-determination in Ukraine suggests that this is not always a bad thing. Nationalism often distinguishes between a civic option based on citizenship and a much more problematic ethnic option.
Independence is sometimes seen as a divorce. This is a strange form of separation that leaves an ex-couple living next door to each other. Sovereigns may be better off thinking about how relationships can change over time than how they end completely. Nations must ultimately deal with their neighbors. The lesson from 2014 is that neither Brexit nor Scottish independence offers the pure holiday that many might expect or hope for.
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