General Election 2017: Can SNP secure indyref2 majority?

Will Nicola Sturgeon secure a majority for indyref2? Picture: Contributed

Nicola Sturgeon’s party had previously agitated for the Prime Minister to seek a mandate to govern, but it doesn’t appear they were on a war footing as Britain prepares to go to the polls on June 8.

The First Minister has been angling for the permission to hold a second referendum on Scottish independence, but thus far, Mrs May has shown a reluctance to do so.

Ms Sturgeon’s party won 56 of the available 59 seats at the election in 2015, although two have subsequently left the SNP.

But will winning another near clean-sweep mean Nicola Sturgeon has the mandate that she so desires to hold another vote on Scotland’s constitutional future?

We look at how this might affect the Indyref2 issue.

UD-Aye?

The thorny issue of a Unilateral Declaration of Independence has been floating around some of the more eccentric fringes of the nationalist movement even before the referendum of 2014.

While it has become synonymous with outlandish activists, that doesn’t mean that it is a policy that is entirely off the agenda.

In fact, declaring independence if the an anti-Union party won a majority of Scottish seats at a UK general election was SNP party policy until relatively recently.

Alex Salmond, in one of his first interviews after stepping down as First Minister, said that a referendum was just ‘one of a number of routes’ Scotland could take to gain independence.

He was backed up by former SNP Deputy Leader Jim Sillars, who wanted UDI to be enacted if there was an SNP majority at the 2016 Scottish Elections.

That unsurprisingly didn’t make the party’s manifesto, and in any case they were deprived of an overall majority.

It seems that no matter how many MPs the SNP returns at the next election, anything like UDI is not on the table.

Manifestos and Mandates

There isn’t much time for any party to put together a properly costed and researched manifestos, with just seven weeks until voters go to the polls.

With everything from court battles to old fashioned negotiations a factor in the debate over a second referendum, it could come down to what parties put in their manifesto.

It is likely that the SNP will put in their manifesto the plans of the First Minister to hold a referendum before Spring 2019.

It is equally likely that the Conservatives will put in their own manifesto the plans of the Prime Minister to reject that referendum.

Nicola Sturgeon’s party will be odds-on favourites to win a majority of the constituency seats in Scotland, while Theresa May’s are almost certain to win more than half of the seats across the UK.

Both parties, then, will claim a mandate for their constitutional position, leaving Scottish voters looking at a political impasse.

Successful defeat?

The SNP are in a difficult position at this election.

They achieved extraordinary success at the last General Election, and as the 2016 Holyrood vote showed, they may have reached the absolute peak of their support.

Some outlandish MPs have been elected, others have been forced to leave the party, and others are facing strong challenges.

Opposition parties will frame their challengers as the anti-independence candidate and hope to hoover up some other unionist votes.

A drop of a few seats is unlikely to derail the entire SNP raison d’etre, but anything other than a repeat of the 56 seats won in 2015 is likely to be framed by the opposition as a rejection of independence.

Those parties will also frame a majority vote for unionist parties (if the combined votes of the Lib Dems, Labour and the Conservatives are more than those of the SNP) as a sign that voters don’t want another referendum.

Likewise, the SNP could dare the Scottish Tories to back Theresa May if a majority of voters back the SNP, especially if they put a second vote on the constitution.

In Scotland, all we know for sure is that once again the fate of the Union is again at stake.