Go-it-alone Salmond promises only chaos

Published on Sunday 21 January 2007 00:13

ACCORDING to the pre-publicity, Alex Salmond will this morning reassure viewers of GMTV that both the Queen and sterling will be safe in his hands. "After discussions with the Palace," Salmond solemnly declares, the monarch will be re-dubbed "Queen Elizabeth of Scotland". I have the feeling that delusions of grandeur are setting in.

Indeed, if Scottish Nationalism suffers another false dawn in May, the past week will be remembered as a bit of a turning-point. Salmond had the chance to get the referendum monkey off his back, hesitated and then retreated from taking it. Instead, he went ever deeper into his two for the price of one strategy - vote Nationalist for Holyrood but only as a stepping-stone to the grand design.

The commitment to put an independence referendum in train within 100 days of the May elections is flawed for a range of reasons. Jim Sillars, with characteristic rigour, pointed out some of them. Governments, at any level, cannot spend money on matters outside their legislative competence. The Nats, if they ruled alone, would see this as a trifling objection and welcome the ensuing confrontation with the hated British state.

Even in their more optimistic moments, they do not expect to rule alone. So the first decision for potential coalition partners would be whether to collaborate in this enterprise. Salmond would doubtless have any remaining Trots eager and willing by his side, along with the zanier Greens. It is difficult to see any more serious takers being interested. And if they are not prepared to coalesce on that issue, they can't on anything else either.

Salmond tried to defuse the problem by pushing the proposed referendum to the back-end of the next parliamentary term although the enabling bill would be published within the 100 days. But this was a clumsy half-way house which makes matters worse rather than better from the perspective of potential coalition partners, notably the Lib Dems, who do not subscribe to the separatist objective.

For four years, two parties with fundamentally conflicting objectives would have to work in supposedly common cause. The SNP's entire vested interest would be in demonstrating that Scotland's health, education, policing and all the rest of it could not be satisfactorily funded or administered without the independence coup de grace. No political party which would soon need to argue the precise opposite in a referendum could ally itself to that strategy.

These are the slightly longer-term, strategic reasons why the referendum commitment would either be ditched after polling day or prevent the SNP from entering into coalition government. But the more immediate outcome of Salmond's insistence on a referendum is that it gives his opponents the absolute right to campaign against breaking up the United Kingdom, rather than merely against giving the Nationalists a temporary place in the government of a devolved Scotland.

Before my green ink friends reach for their quills, I should point out that I am doing no more than endorsing the view of one of Salmond's most ardent admirers, the former MSP Duncan Hamilton, who recently wrote that it was time for "a disciplined refusal" to talk about independence and that it would be "a disastrous error" to fight the devolved elections on that platform. Yet this is precisely the irreversible path that Salmond has opted for.

For tartan political anoraks, some in the Holyrood press gallery, the prospect of four years of turmoil culminating in the thrill of a referendum is the stuff of dreams. They are, however, a minority. Most Scots want decent government that does not cause them too much trouble. Some might think it is "time for a change". But there is not the slightest indication that they want Holyrood to become the cockpit for four years of pre-referendum mud-wrestling, with their parents' health and children's education caught in the middle.

Holyrood's electoral system is designed to create permanent coalition. That was undoubtedly done with the SNP in mind since Donald Dewar and his fellow-drafters round the curry table were happy to forego the prospect of there ever being an outright Labour majority in return for the near-guarantee that there would never be a separatist one either. The flaw in this construction is that it becomes very difficult to vote for change without risking the kind of change most of them do not want - ie drastic constitutional upheaval.

This reflects the debilitating weakness in Scottish politics - a point well made by James Boyle in last week's Newsnight debate. Because the politics of the constitution have become so predominant within Scotland - though there is not the slightest confirmation this is the mindset of the people as opposed to their self-appointed opinion formers - we are left with a choice between centrist consensus and referendums leading to separation. The victim of this unwelcome framework is creative or radical thought, which is what Scotland used to be good at. Everything has to be fitted into the straitjacket of tedious constitutional debate.

I don't agree with the electoral system because it panders to that assumption. No voting system should be geared to producing a particular outcome and it should be possible for people to vote for change without endorsing constitutional upheaval. These are points Salmond would have been entitled to make in putting the referendum commitment onto the far back-burner. Instead, because he cannot help himself, he made the exact opposite one - vote SNP as a stepping-stone to the full monty. And if the first referendum does not succeed, then they'll have another and another. They only have to win once.

Does Scotland want this? Do we want our interest rates set by a foreign country? Do we want every English-based employer in Scotland turned into a foreign investor? Do we want our friends and relations in Corby and Newcastle to be citizens of a separate state? The Holyrood elections should not be about these questions - but Salmond has ensured that they must be.