‘Is Home Rule the only realistic alternative to independence?’ was the question posed at a Spectator debate, sponsored by Brewin Dolphin, in Edinburgh last week. In one sense the question is redundant since, no matter how much some nationalists claim otherwise, there is no reasonable or realistic scenario in which it is possible to envisage the United Kingdom government scrapping the Scottish parliament. Some measure of Home Rule, therefore, is indeed the only realistic alternative to independence?
But what is Home Rule? As the panel agreed (not least since this has long been obvious) there is no agreed or even satisfactory definition of Home Rule. Is it, as the journalist Iain Macwhirter suggested, something similar to the parliament Ireland was promised in 1914? Well, yes, I suppose it could be even though the growth of government since Edwardian times necessarily makes dividing responsibilities in the Irish manner significantly more complicated than was the case a century ago. We have been here before but it was not quite the same then. The expansion of the welfare state, to take but one example, makes that kind of Home Rule more difficult to achieve.
It runs into other difficulties, too. Does Scotland really want responsibility for pensions? This, it seems to me, would be a bold demand, not least because Scotland’s population is, relatively speaking, older than England’s. Moreover, though the public will cheerfully tell pollsters it would like control of pensions, unemployment benefits and much else to reside at Westminster, it also desires these payments to be uniform across the UK. Which would, if it remained the case, necessarily limit any Edinburgh finance minister’s room for manoeuvre.
In any case Adam Tomkins, professor of public law at Glasgow University and constitutional advisor to the Scotland Office, said this is the wrong way of looking at matters. Responsibility for welfare, as outlined in the new Scotland Bill, will be shared between Holyrood and Westminster. The new bill devolves significantly more power to Edinburgh – notably over income taxes – but remains, as it to be expected, a profoundly Unionist act. Indeed, Tomkins suggested it should, with luck and all being well and all of that kind of thing, reinforce the Union as a partnership in which responsibility for the governance of Scotland is shared between Scotland’s two parliaments.
Moreover, Tomkins claimed, some British form of quasi-federalism – however that may be defined! – would require the Scottish government to accept that its sovereignty, and even that of the Scottish people, have been diminished. A new constitutional code might very well deprive Scotland of its right to secede from the Union (just as the American states have no right of secession). Scotland might, in constitutional terms, be less free than it is now when that right is generally accepted.
Perhaps, suggested Charlie Jeffery, professor of politics at Edinburgh University, but the awkward fact remains that David Cameron gives little impression of having thought these things through. Just as significantly, the Union has been presented – and increasingly accepted – as a transactional bargain, not as something with merit in its own right. ‘You stay in the Union because you get something from it’ (and not because you owe it anything). All of which led Mr Macwhirter to suggest ‘The will is not there to remain in the UK’ (a sentiment which your correspondent disputed, there having been a referendum on precisely this question not ten months ago).
Jim Sillars, former deputy leader of the SNP, remains impatient. Like much of the SNP’s membership he has no desire to wait another generation for another shot at independence. At 77, he said, he doesn’t have time for that. Nor, he suggested, should anyone expect anything from the Smith Commission or the new Scotland Bill. ‘I want power, unrestrained power to do things here.’
And that, it seemed to me, is the heart of the matter. The SNP, perfectly reasonably, will always want more. That is the party’s purpose. Whether it can carry the people remains more doubtful. The leadership is nervous of testing these waters again too soon. Each side is playing constitutional roulette, the one betting on black, the other on red. Or, to put it another way, the wager is that additional powers for Scotland will satisfy the national desire for more autonomy and render independence unnecessary or, contrarily, will make the leap from greater autonomy to independence so short and easy that it will seem foolish not to take that final, irrevocable, step.
The status quo cannot endure but, yes, some form of Home Rule, however it is defined, is the only realistic alternative to independence. If there is one. On that all seemed agreed.
This event was sponsored by Brewin Dolphin
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