Why cock-a-hoop Scottish unionists are actually LOSING the argument

Last Saturday, I happened to be crossing George Square in Glasgow just as Alex Salmond finished addressing what looked like a rally of his supporters, and a bit of an independence fair, to mark the tenth anniversary of the 2014 referendum. The scene was a bleak one; a crowd of a few dozen, some old guys with dogs, and middle-aged men at the microphone shouting angrily into the wind, mainly about the failures and betrayals of the current SNP leadership.

It was a scene, in other words, to gladden unionist hearts; the sight of a once-mighty movement now divided, defeated, and in disarray, sniping at its own leaders, while going down to stinging electoral defeat. And there is no doubt that, on this anniversary, the forces of unionism in Scotland’s public and media debate are quietly cock-a-hoop, convinced that recent SNP difficulties have scuppered the cause of independence for at least another generation.

Dark clouds may have gathered over the SNP and its leader John Swinney recently, but the independence movement's positive message is more appealing than unionists' negative one (Picture: Jeff J Mitchell) | Getty Images

Yet difficult as these times are for the once upbeat “yes” army, it is hard to avoid the feeling that the forces of unionism in Scotland are now in serious danger of overplaying their hand. Like all Westminster-focussed observers, for example, they now risk mistaking House of Commons arithmetic for an accurate picture of public opinion. The loss of 39 Westminster seats in July – most of them to Labour – was certainly a humiliating and costly blow to the SNP.

On that day, though, the victorious Labour party won only 35 per cent of Scottish votes, to the SNP’s 30; and according to polls published this week, that lead has already evaporated, with support for Labour plummeting in the wake of the winter fuel payments row. The truth is that Labour and the SNP remain neck-and-neck in the struggle to speak for Scotland’s large centre-left majority; and it is therefore not at all certain that unionist parties will be able to form a stable governing majority at Holyrood after the 2026 Scottish Parliament election, whatever some unionist observers may want to assume.

Promise of stability to chaotic misrule

By far the most important area where unionists are currently taking too much for granted, though – and where their arguments are weakened by a serious culture of denial – lies in the history of the last decade at Westminster. When Scots voted “no” a decade ago, the UK was presented to them as a reliable and stable option, a familiar status quo intrinsically preferable to the risky business of embarking on independence; we were promised, above all, that a “no” vote would guarantee our continuing place in the European Union.

Yet in the decade since the vote, that promise of stability and rational reform has been not so much broken, as utterly mocked. Scots have not only been taken out of the European Union against their clearly stated will, but have also endured a decade of chaotic Tory misrule from a rogues’ gallery of Prime Ministers, topped off by a tragically mishandled pandemic and a searing cost-of-living crisis after a decade of economic stagnation. And all this at the hands of a system of government blatantly unfit for purpose; a system which confers quasi-monarchical powers on Prime Ministers however unfit for office, and where checks and balances depend on gentlemen’s agreements that have long since broken down.

Lavish gifts for Starmer

Nor, it has to be said, are there many signs that the new Labour government will turn all of this around. Instead, so far, they are offering more of the same stale and mendacious economic mantras that have kept Britain labouring under austerity since 2010, alongside massive evidence of their vulnerability to Westminster lobbying and influence-peddling. Add the bizarre decision to hack the pensioners’ winter fuel allowance (particularly critical in Scotland, of course), and Keir Starmer’s ridiculous misjudgment in accepting six figures worth of highly personal gifts from wealthy donors, and you have a new boss that looks far too much like the old boss; and hardly capable of reversing the UK’s recent slide into decline.

Now of course, the big question that the independence movement has yet to disentangle is why this decade of exceptionally poor governance at Westminster has not shifted the dial on support for independence; it may be that the very instability it has created has made voters wary of yet more change.

Unionists need a positive vision

Yet what is striking about the Scottish unionist cause, as it marks the tenth anniversary of its victory, is how little it has moved on, in these ten years, from the wholly negative “project fear” approach that delivered that result, but also drove much larger numbers than ever before into the independence camp. There is, after all, something profoundly wrong and reactionary about a Union which can only survive by constantly telling the people of Scotland how broken and dependent on handouts the place is, how useless they and their elected government are, and what fools they were ever to vote for it.

What the parties of the Union need, in order to “defeat separatism” for good, is not more misery, but a positive vision of the future that is more persuasive than the idea of an independent Scotland in Europe, thriving alongside countries of similar size, such as the Nordic and Baltic states, and Ireland. They need, in other words, to dump the remnants of Britain’s imperial past, and to offer Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland a new confederal deal, based on mutual recognition and respect, that will finally replace the current alternation of bullying and bribes.

And until they make that shift, they will always be vulnerable to another surge in the politics of hope they seem to fear so much; particularly when that hope attaches itself to the idea of a new Scotland no longer fated to live out the consequences of decisions taken elsewhere, but able – for better or worse – to chart its own path, through a world increasingly beset by dramatic and unavoidable change.