Brian Wilson: Independent referee should settle it

NO MORE than a passing acquaintance with Scottish politics was required to write the script for this week’s hostilities over referendums, dates and mandates.

As soon as David Cameron opened his mouth, it was inevitable that he would be denounced as the Tory toff who had no right to an opinion on this hallowed subject. Whatever he might have said, short of abject surrender, was then purely secondary.

So what we now have is “a row” – not about the rather important matter for the future of Scotland and the UK, which the referendum will ultimately be about, but over the entirely ancillary questions of who has the right to speak, decide, express an opinion on any aspect of the process leading to that referendum.

And this is where a cursory knowledge of Scottish political behaviour would have come in handy. For Alex Salmond loves diversionary “rows”. They are his stock in trade. And, take my word for it, there will be plenty more of them to follow unless they are pre-empted.

In part, this is because Salmond is at heart a barrack-room lawyer who likes nothing better than arguing the points of order that used to keep student debaters endlessly amused. But there are also more serious political purposes to the tactic of revelling in these diversionary rows.

The first is to use grievance as a recruiting sergeant. There will be plenty of people in Scotland who do not currently share the SNP’s objective of dividing Britain into separate states but sympathise with their argument that Mr Cameron should not have a role in organising the referendum. “It’s not fair” is then a powerful platform for further persuasion.

Secondly, as long as public debate is about the diversions it is not focused on the main question. And this is the danger to which Salmond’s opponents should be rather more alert than this week’s events suggested. If we have an organisational grievance-a-month for the next two years, there will not be much time left for discussing the central issue.

All history suggests that a central part of the Nationalist strategy will be to force a whole procession of procedural “rows” in advance of any referendum. Every attempt to question their unilateral right to determine the conditions under which it is held will be portrayed as an attack on the sovereign rights of the Scottish people – aka A. Salmond, Esq.

So how should that tactic be addressed? It is surely by pre-empting its implementation by removing the points of certain dispute from the political arena. Cameron should not have entered the fray to argue in what is seen as every bit as much a partisan interest as Salmond’s. Rather, he should have been using his position to advocate a process which would take the conduct of a referendum out of political hands.

In other words, the sooner all arrangements for the referendum are handed over to an independent body, the better. The obvious rejoinder to this will be that it is the right of the Scottish Government to appoint that entity in its own good time. But at this point, the argument of “fair play” should surely kick back in the other direction.

While Scottish public opinion might not favour David Cameron’s intervention, neither is it oblivious to the fact that a referendum conducted under the aegis of Alex Salmond or his appointees is unlikely to be beyond reproach, to say the least. What the vast majority of people surely want is a fair test of opinion, not manipulated procedurally by either side of the debate.

The most obvious starting-point for achieving this is for Cameron and Salmond to have an adult conversation. Just as it was childish politics for Cameron’s people to brief that they were going to impose an 18-month deadline (only to retreat a few days later), so the Bannockburn Day option, now belatedly disowned by Salmond, was juvenile.

Salmond’s claims of a mandate are bloated just as his version of what the Scottish people endorsed last year is seriously at odds with the facts. Against that, the undisputed consensus is that the verdict of the Scottish electorate last year gives the SNP the right to deliver on its manifesto commitment to hold an independence referendum, whatever the constitutional niceties.

The political debate which flows from that understanding should be forced to concentrate exclusively on the pros and cons of independence – not on month after month of grandstanding about timing and procedure. Yet that is the real prospect which has been so clearly signposted this week.

By far the most important areas of certain dispute will, on current form, be the way in which the question is put – or indeed if there should be more than one question. It is beyond dispute that nobody gave the SNP a mandate for multiple questions but that in itself should not rule out the possibility. If a way can be found to offer the Scottish electorate a more rounded choice, then why not?

The problem at present is that nobody knows whether Salmond’s advocacy of a “third way” is a genuine offer or just another tactic, designed to promote a sense of disgruntlement when it is denied. This is the kind of game which people will grow impatient of. Along with much else, the option of a second question could be handed over – by both Holyrood and Westminster – to a Referendum Commission to resolve.

Economically, it is undoubtedly in Scotland’s interests to have a decision sooner rather than later. However, I doubt if there are more than a few months difference between what Cameron has in mind and Salmond’s Autumn 2014 date. It would be complete folly to get bogged down in yet another diversionary exchange of handbags on that score while the huge implications of separation were going relatively undebated.

So who are the lucky individuals who would sit on a Referendum Commission and accept the slings and arrows of both sides? They could be drawn from the existing Electoral Commission or formed specially for the purpose – surely neither Mr Salmond nor his opponents would claim that Scotland lacks judges or constitutional experts whose integrity is beyond reproach? Some international input might also be useful.

Scotland deserves a debate about how ending the Union would affect our economic and social future for generations to come. Let all sides of that argument be expressed with dignity and conviction, then examined in depth. What Scotland does not deserve is a whole procession of superficial sub-plots such as the one that has played itself out this week.

If everyone could agree on these two statements, it would be a useful starting point. But do they?

• Brian Wilson is a former Labour MP and cabinet minister.