What does Independence in Europe mean in 2011? That’s one of the questions Alex Salmond and the SNP have preferred not to ask, far less find an answer to. Way back in the dog days of the Thatcher-era Jim Sillars coined the slogan as a way to demonstrate that Scotland, small and on the periphery of the continent, would not be cut adrift and helpless were her people persuaded to back the Scottish National Party’s vision for independence. It was a canny move: reassuring and progressive and other nice and cosy things.
That was then and this is now. The ongoing crisis in Euroland necessarily means things have changed. The euro is not the safe harbour it once promised to be and this awkward fact, like so many other troublesome details, is a problem for Salmond. What sense is there in leaving a currency union that, often, has been sub-optimal for another, larger union that cannot possibly be tweaked to put Scotland’s interests first?
As Eddie Barnes reported at the weekend, the SNP’s new preference is to stick with Sterling in post-Union Scotland. That’s one reponse to the problem, albeit one that prompts more questions than it answers. As Kate Higgins points out, it’s tricky squaring this with the Copenhagen criteria requiring new members to “take on the obligations of membership, including adherence to the aims of political, economic and monetary union”.
If Euroland moves towards tax harmonisation and fuller, deeper, union then where stands Scotland then? The old argument was that Edinburgh, London, Brussels was too long an address and it made sense to cut out the middle man. But, again, times and circumstances have changed. If independence, even in an inter-dependent world, means anything it surely demands that countries must enjoy some flexibility to control their own fiscal policy. But an increasingly-centralised eurozone would seem to rule that out. This may be fine in fat times but, evidently, is less appealling in leaner years.
All of which means that the SNP faces a choice of problem: either it must deal once more with the practical (and psychological) difficulties Independence in Europe was designed to solve or it must address the problems that arise from maintaining that policy. The present course, apparently favoured by the party leadership, of keeping the benefits of Sterling while also being a full and equal member of the EU seems, like much else, to be an attempt to mix and match and have the best of all possible worlds. How realistic this is – that is how acievable – must be a matter of some contention and would, one might think, be something that we might expect Salmond to explain before he has his referendum on independence.
At present, mind you, there’s little sign of any such explanation. Salmond, perhaps reasonably, has generally preferred to talk in Big Pictures. But the more probable a referendum becomes so the detail – tedious and awkward as it must be – matters just as much as the grander, broader sweep of history.
Which, in turn, brings us back to the beginning: what does independence mean, how is it achievable, what are you leaving and what are you joining? At present, the SNP don’t have many compelling answers to these questions. Which, in turn, helps explain why so-called “Independence-Lite” is the new kid on the block and why – though this is a matter for another day – there is increasingly little difference between the Tory federalist approach and the Independence-Lite favoured by some leading nationalists.
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