EUROSCOPE. A case of bad timing

The past week has been another dramatic one for U.K. politics: last Monday, Nicola Sturgeon, the First Minister of Scotland and leader of the Scottish National Party, launched a bid for a second referendum on Scottish independence, earlier than many had anticipated — in what The Times of London described as an “ambush”, the day before the UK government had been expected to launch formal talks on exiting the EU.

With those plans now pushed to the end of the month, Prime Minister Theresa May also unexpectedly rebuffed the plans for a referendum in no uncertain terms, and in far stronger language than anyone had anticipated, despite warnings from senior SNP leaders that ruling out a referendum would be disastrous.

“Now is not the time,” May told the BBC on Thursday, referring to the SNP’s plans to push for a referendum before Brexit had taken place. Doing so along that timeline could jeopardise negotiations and mean that Scottish voters did not have a clear idea of what they were voting for.

Sturgeon, however, has remained firm, telling an SNP conference over the weekend “There will be an independence referendum.” The government would be seeking the Scottish parliament’s permission, she said, to request permission to hold a second referendum, at a time when the terms of Brexit were known, but “before it is too late to take a different path”.

Even before the referendum on leaving the EU last year there were warnings from senior SNP politicians that a vote to leave could lead to another referendum on Scotland. While the 2014 Scottish referendum was billed as a “once in a generation opportunity” and resulted in a decisive vote to remain within the UK (55.3 per cent said they wanted to remain, on a turnout of 84.6 per cent), nationalist politicians argue that at the time the potential of exiting the EU wasn’t even on the cards, and would fundamentally change the case for remaining in the UK.

At the weekend, Sturgeon repeated her accusation from earlier in the week that the Westminster government had refused to budge an inch on Scotland’s eagerness to remain within the single market. Appealing to those who supported remaining within the UK, she said there was need for a debate about the future, and the challenges facing the country — around both independence and “an austerity obsessed Tory government pursuing a hard Brexit”.

The Scottish parliament is set to debate the call for a referendum on Tuesday and Wednesday and, despite opposition from the Scottish Labour, Liberal Demcorat and Conservatives, give Sturgeon the necessary approval. It would then fall to Westminster to sign off on the plan.

The developments add another degree of uncertainty to British politics, with the recent polls presenting a mixed picture of public opinion in Scotland. According to a report on Scottish social attitudes published just before Sturgeon’s announcement last week, there has been a rise in support for independence since 2014, but over time Scotland has become more Eurosceptic, despite 62 per cent of people voting to remain in the EU in the June referendum. “This scepticism is far from being the preserve of those who voted to leave the EU,” the report concluded, adding that 56 per cent of those surveyed who had voted to remain in the EU wanted the EU’s powers reduced.

Sturgeon’s referendum call has received a mixed reaction in Scotland: according to a poll conducted by ComRes for The Sun newspaper, only 46 per cent of those surveyed in Scotland agreed that the British government was wrong to refuse permission for a second referendum till after Britain had exited the EU, while over 1,93,000 people have signed a parliamentary petition calling for the referendum not to take place at all, accusing the SNP of being “intent on getting independence at any cost. As a result, Scotland is suffering hugely”.

Even some politicians who had campaigned to leave the UK in 2014, are now sceptical about the push for another referendum off the back of Brexit.

It is this scepticism that May will be counting on. In a speech to Scottish Conservatives last month, she outlined the various ways in which choosing the EU over the UK risked endangering Scotland’s future: the UK market was currently worth four times what the continental European market was to Scotland, she said.

Highlighting her government’s recent push to link up with Commonwealth nations, she also sought to highlight opportunities this could offer Scotland, pointing to the minuscule share of India’s whisky market Scotland currently had hold over, thanks to EU tariffs, and the potential for it to grow in the future, if Britain were able to develop this relationship unencumbered by EU partners. “I am determined we should do better than that for our key industries,” she said at the time.

Sturgeon, on the other hand, has sought to focus on the economic toll of leaving the EU and, in particular, the end of the free movement of people. “For Scotland, the result will be lower living standards and a hit to our prosperity… In an independent Scotland, the SNP would guarantee — unequivocally — the right to stay here for all EU citizens who do us the honour of making our country their home,” she said.

To date Scotland’s plans have had a mixed reception from Europe: the Commission has reiterated comments made by former Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso in 2012 that a new independent state would have to apply to join the EU and that membership would not come automatically.

Perhaps conscious of the complications, Sturgeon suggested in an interview with the BBC that the exact timing of a referendum could be up for debate. However, this will only delay the issue, and the appeal of the independence movement in Scotland could change greatly, dependent on how the rollback of power from Europe is split between Scotland and Westminster. Scotland is not the only devolved region to question its post-Brexit future: Sinn Fein, the largest nationalist party (and second largest party in the legislature) in Northern Ireland recently expressed its eagerness for a referendum on independence, while the head of the Welsh government told The Guardian over the weekend that Westminster risked making itself rather than the EU the focus of public scepticism in the devolved regions if it did not engage with them fully.

Britain may be all set to leave one union, but in doing so it has raised major questions about the future direction of its own united kingdom.

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