Why SNP diehards must stop carrying on like Monty Python’s Black Knight and seek economic strength

Two years later, on June 23, 2016, it was given the coup de grâce when the UK voted to leave the European Union.

The nationalists of the SNP – and beyond – had their chance and were inexplicably granted great latitude by David Cameron, yet they still managed to lose despite building up a head of steam against a near catastrophic defensive campaign.

After what seemed like an interminably long referendum campaign – four times longer than the Falklands War – the SNP has refused to come to terms with the result, with many politicians as well as the rank and file in denial of how their dream is over, for the foreseeable future. Until they face up to the chilling reality they lost, and lost convincingly, there will be no chance of a long-term resurrection.

SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon and her predecessor Alex Salmond campaign in the Gordon constituency in April 2015. Picture: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

That is not to say there will never be another opportunity to appeal for Scotland to secede from the United Kingdom. Those who believe Scotland is British and our UK is greater than the sum of its parts cannot dare be complacent – but both campaigns must change if either are to triumph in the future.

Not believed at the time, but ultimately proven correct, the late Labour iconoclast Tam Dalyell MP and Tory QC Donald Findlay warned in the two devolution referendums, the SNP would use devolution as a tool to deliver independence. Once Alex Salmond became First Minister in 2007, he set about demonstrating the SNP could govern better than Labour, proving having more powers amounting to an independent Scotland would be a natural and positive progression.

Patient moderation helped him win an unprecedented majority in 2011 and Cameron then hastily conceded a referendum where the lengthy campaign, the wording of the question and the inclusions and exclusions determining who got a vote were determined by Salmond. Yet they still lost 55 to 45 per cent.

Fundamentally, there was a reluctance among Scots to accept SNP assurances its model of independence would work. Too many questions remained unanswered, too many answers were wishful thinking, but most importantly the currency question demonstrated in a nutshell we were now one indivisible country. Too many vital organs would need to be cut out of our corpus without any idea of how to effect a transplant or live without one.

Scotland was left bitterly divided and deeply scarred by the experience. Many nationalists talk of being invigorated, but for the majority who rejected their dream it was a time of great anxiety, lost friends and relations, which both Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon did nothing to heal.

Instead, by failing to attend the service of reconciliation at St Giles Cathedral after the result, the suppurating wound was left open to fester and later be regularly poked with a stick called a second referendum. The SNP’s failure to provide losers’ consent, something Salmond and Sturgeon had signed up to in the Edinburgh Agreement, and which other political parties had provided instinctively for decades in representative elections at all levels was unconscionable.

While Salmond left centre stage as first minister, he then re-entered stage left at Westminster. But now Sturgeon was to show how devoted she was to her cause – whether it meant maintaining Scotland in a heightened state of partisan division, ignoring her day job or turning on her one-time mentor.

Before the Brexit referendum, the SNP of Sturgeon and Peter Murrell had not been interested enough in the EU to commit campaign resources in its defence, infamously spending more on a Holyrood by-election than the 2016 referendum. The reason became obvious. When Brexiteers won this gave Sturgeon a false pretext to argue for a second referendum – due to the claimed change in circumstances of leaving the EU.

This remains Sturgeon’s biggest political lie. Cameron had stated in January 2013 there would be an EU referendum if the Tories won the next general election (which they did). The SNP Government’s White Paper had argued staying in the UK presented a risk of the UK voting to leave the EU in a possible future referendum. The EU Commission had warned the SNP directly and unequivocally, secession from the UK meant secession from the EU.

All along she knew the circumstances, but Sturgeon presented them as having changed without warning.

When the Scottish public reacted badly to the thought of another indyref, Sturgeon offered to withdraw her demands if a “soft-Brexit” were to be delivered. Yet when presented with an opportunity to keep the UK in the EU’s customs union, the SNP MPs abstained when their votes would have made the difference.

The reason was simple. The Sturgeon strategy was to effect the most disruptive Brexit outcome in the belief this would drive forward a rupture between Scotland and the rest of Britain – delivering independence in its wake. Instead it served to bring focus to the fact that post-Brexit an independent Scotland would need a hard border with either England or the EU, as well as its own hard currency.

By pressing ahead with his muscular unionism, Tory Scottish Secretary Alister Jack forced Sturgeon and her successors to confront the economic and cultural contradictions of their rejection in 2014. Though Sturgeon and Salmond are no longer elected politicians, the SNP diehards carry on like Monty Python’s Black Knight, cursing “’tis only a scratch”, despite losing limb after limb.

Until nationalists recognise Scotland must be economically strong within the UK, so secession can be afforded, their long term will remain in the long grass. Yet for anti-nationalists there is no solace, for they too must recognise the need to strengthen the cultural, social and strategic case for remaining British – so whenever the Scottish economy ever improves, secession remains an unattractive and undesirable destination.

- Brian Monteith is a former member of the Scottish and European parliaments and editor of ThinkScotland.org