If the SNP win a majority at next year’s Holyrood elections, the UK government should be prepared to start independence negotiations with them. This may sound like a mad idea, at first. But as I say in the magazine this week, it might actually offer a way to save the Union.
Rather than saying a straight no to another independence referendum, the UK government would tell Nicola Sturgeon she could have one, if the terms of independence were negotiated first. This would take time – unravelling a 300-year-old political, economic and military union would make Brexit look like child’s play – but it would mean that when the referendum came, it would be on the realities of independence not just the idea of it. This would give the Unionist side a far better chance of winning it. It would force the Nationalists to answer questions they would rather avoid: what currency an independent Scotland would use, what share of the UK national debt it would take on and more.
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