The ultimate disruption: What if Reform promised a referendum on Scottish independence?

Nigel Farage could easily promise Reform would campaign for the Union while agreeing a referendum

PA

It was billed as a new forum to pose “the big questions” about Scotland’s future, and in fairness Tuesday’s Scotland 2050 conference offered a decent line-up, with an intriguing pairing of economy secretary Kate Forbes and Cherie Blair and keynote speeches from First Minister John Swinney and Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar.

They are, of course, always “keynote” speeches, shorthand for a solo spot without interruptions in which little of any note, key or otherwise, is said, and judging by transcripts and subsequent coverage, the presentations at Edinburgh’s Assembly Rooms lived down to expectations. “We were expecting great visions of the future and what we got were stump speeches,” said one attendee who knows about these things.

But it received extensive coverage, so those who bankrolled the free event, presumably the property companies who put up panellists, will have been satisfied with their investment. However, it was who was not there that was most revealing. The faces and names might have been different, but the line-up was drawn from the same sort of bien pensants who have dominated the Scottish Parliament since its inception, and before that the Scottish Constitutional Convention and other “Civic Scotland” talking shops.

“Scotland 2050 will be Scotland’s most inclusive one day conference,” said the blurb, “We believe that new thinking is required to reimagine what can be achieved to deliver a new enlightenment”. Perhaps, but whether by accident, absence or design, Scotland’s most inclusive one day conference did not include anyone from the Scottish Conservatives, and there was no-one from Reform, the party which won 26 per cent of the vote at the Hamilton by-election.

I was, however, at an event that evening which was attended by four of the emerging party’s leading figures, some of whom I doubt are even household names in their own households, but all the same they are people who are making the political weather; disruptors, bogeymen, crypto-fascists, denigrate them however you like, but poll after poll indicates there will be around 15 Reform MSPs in the Scottish Parliament. While plenty of their more prominent candidates are former Conservatives, as a party Reform is unburdened by a past political record, and while a clean slate, blue-sky thinking or whatever might produce quite bonkers ideas like Nigel Farage’s suggestion that a Reform government would re-open South Wales coal mines, it does reveal a party prepared to think the unthinkable in the quest for votes.

The other side of the Hamilton coin was the trouncing of the SNP, finishing second in a seat it had held, with vote share down nearly 17 per cent, compared to the Conservative loss of 11 per cent. Speaking separately to two prominent Nationalists this week produced the same analysis; that the SNP is a hollowed-out party in which critical thinking has been crushed, controlled by a failed hierarchy unable to produce workable ideas to take Scotland forward economically and advance the independence cause. Both saw opportunities arising around the time of the next general election, in the next ten years certainly, but with the party as it stands incapable of taking advantage, a spent force in a state of financial and intellectual collapse.

I am not close enough to vouch for its accuracy, and of course the SNP leadership would claim it’s fighting fit, but when the number of people who say they currently favour independence is about 20 per cent higher than those who say they will vote SNP, then something is badly wrong. The failures of the UK Labour government so soon after a general election victory based on hope is making no difference to SNP support, but even if independence is less of a priority for most voters than the cost of living, NHS, immigration, schools and crime, Unionists can have no cause for complacency.

In the run-up to a general election in 2028-29, what if an ostensibly Unionist, but ultimately opportunist UK party like Reform were to make a manifesto commitment to offer the chance of a referendum with few strings attached? Maybe if independence support polling at 55 per cent for a year. No other Unionist party would match it, and neither could the SNP because it can never be in power in London.

There is an obvious risk some Conservative defectors would return to the fold ─ and one, but not all, of the Reform folk on Tuesday night was quick to say it won’t happen ─ but Nigel Farage could easily promise Reform would campaign for the Union while agreeing a referendum, as did David Cameron when signing the Edinburgh Agreement in 2012. He could argue that the principle of sovereignty and self-determination is consistent with the position taken by UKIP and the Brexit Party, and there would be no shortage of ordinary English voters who would be quite happy for Scotland to depart and for the Barnett Formula billions to stay south of the border.

But how would it go down with the thousands of disaffected independence supporters who have turned their backs on the SNP because they believe it has become comfortable with devolution and has only an aspiration for independence, not a deliverable plan? If next year’s Scottish election gives Reform a more visible Scottish presence, it could be the platform for those voters to vote tactically for a Unionist party with a clear roadmap to separation. It wasn’t on the Scotland 2050 agenda, but it could be the ultimate disruption.