In the 1995 gangster movie Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead, Andy Garcia’s character knows the mob are going to kill him, so he uses the time he has left to do good. It’s an approach that springs to mind when you think about the Labour Party in Scotland: if it’s too late to stop its own political death and maybe the end of Union with it, then why not do some good?
Big political change, like bankruptcy, tends to happen slowly and then very fast. This is how support for Scottish independence has developed. It simmered for decades and then—whoosh!—in 2014 it pinged into to our laps. And there it has stayed, lodged more firmly than ever at around 55 per cent in the polls.
If it happens, if the 300-plus year Union is undone, then the impact on the establishment of a no longer Great Britain or United Kingdom will be more profound than the impact of Brexit. More dominos are likely to fall: the re-union of the island of Ireland, and possibly even independence for Wales. What then is England, if not the dominant nation of four nations?
Labour’s fall from Scottish grace is as dramatic as it is profound. The 2014 referendum in which Labour sided with the “Tory enemy” to claim we were “better together” sealed Labour’s Scottish fate, but it was the 2015 election that saw the tipping point, when the Party’s Westminster return dropped from 41 to just one.
Labour, it was increasingly felt, had taken Scotland for granted for too long. Its brightest and its best headed south to ferment what was to become the New Labour project: a project defined by its contempt for Old Labour, which is what Scottish Labour largely was.
New Labour came and went, and after 2010 left barely a trace as its shallow successes were too easily ripped up and cast aside. Trident remained, cutting tax was seen as a political triumph, austerity took root, and the long industrial decline of shipping and coal were replaced by only minimum wage jobs. In the process, institutions that gave cultural and economic meaning to “Britain,” such as the Post Office, the BBC and even the NHS were undermined either through privatisation or commercialisation.
The one institution that did remain was the Scottish Parliament. But even its legacy for Labour was contradictory. It was devised as much to thwart full-throated nationalism as it was to rebalance the centripetal pull of London. Keir Starmer’s speech in December on devolution and Scotland was in part an attempt to fill the growing void left by this conflicted constitutional move. Because rather than “kill nationalism stone dead” as Labour’s George Robertson hastily predicted, it provided the perfect vehicle for the reinvention of the SNP.
Like all parties and political projects, the SNP is a complex and contradictory beast. But the decisive switch from an ethno-cultural nationalism to a socio-civic one created the basis for it to usurp Labour. Policies such as free care, no tuition fees and experiments with citizens assemblies and basic income puts the bulk of the party in the progressive fold. It is, of course, hidebound by the Catch-22 dilemma of not wanting to be too successful domestically because that would diminish the case for independence. The line has to be, “Scotland can only flourish when it’s independent.” And being a catch-all party means it has to keep the establishment and more radical tendencies together. This builds frustration in places such as Common Weal, both in terms of policy content and tactics to deliver a second referendum. But the big prize is likely to glue the increasingly divergent factions together unless and until a second referendum takes place.
I care less about what happens to Scotland and the Union than I care about how anything happens. There are two progressive scenarios. Almost certainly both require a second referendum. The first is that the Union is maintained via a vote that includes deeper devolution and progressives both sides of the border working together. The second is that independence is passed, is a success, and Scotland becomes a version of Denmark. The pressure of example and the proof of concept will then be a powerful trigger for a more progressive England, not least through demands for the federalisation of England, which are bound to erupt given the proximity of places like Newcastle to Edinburgh compared to London. And it’s hard to ignore the thought that an independent Scotland could find its way into the EU, however improbable that might be, and the pressure that could grow for the return of other home nations.
If I were young, radical and Scottish, the case for a Scotland unchained from a UK dominated by the politics of the Tories and Brexit, of the City and austerity, of the Mail and Murdock might well feel overwhelmingly attractive. You don’t have to believe Scotland is a socialist nirvana just waiting to be unchained to know that a country that voted 62-38 against Brexit and has no UKIP/Brexit Party base is a very different country to England.
Of course, either scenario could go disastrously wrong. If the Union remains, so could Tory domination. We might not be “better together.” Equally Scottish independence could be a failure defined by corporation tax cuts and a standards race to the bottom. All that is for debate and conjecture. But the choice, the implications and the motivations are not just about economic rationalism.
The Scottish nationalism argument contains strong echoes of Brexit. That choice was part material calculation—£350 million for the NHS, if you want to believe such a claim—but it was also deeply emotional. When asked about why they wanted Brexit, many working-class Brexit voters echoed the line of “taking back control.” Yes, such a desire was abused by the populist right, but it worked so effectively because it enjoyed at least the ring of truth. The European project was about pooling sovereignty, but within a profoundly undemocratic system of distant politicians and powerful lobbyists. Brexit was, in part at least, a democratic revolt. The same deep desire plays out in Scotland. Will Scotland be better off economically the other side of independence? Who knows? But clearly a lot of Scottish voters believe that regardless, they will be more in control of their lives and their country.
Many on the left think this is a sign of the utmost stupidity. Why would you inflict such economic self-harm? The answer is that the desire to belong can be more powerful than the desire to buy. Surely such post-material instincts are to be welcomed as through smart politics they can be turned to a deeper democratic and sustainable new settlement.
In an intervention in October 2017 Jeremy Corbyn famously told the people of Scotland the self-evident truth that “you can’t eat a flag.” But people will follow a flag and even die for what it symbolises; pride, identity, meaning, belonging, their past and their future. Democratic self-determination is not bread and butter; it’s more important than that.
What distinguishes the urge for Scottish power, whether for devolution or for independence, is that those moments are built on genuine social movements. In 2014 the Yes campaign was not just a product of the SNP but a vast and vibrant eco-system of single, local and sectoral campaigns in which civil society, communities, colleagues and neighbours debated politics to a depth and sophistication the UK has rarely seen.
Here it should be recognised that the SNP has four times the membership of Labour on a per capita basis and it is one of Europe’s truly mass parties. Both the devolution and independence campaigns have shared a deep sense of optimism and hope for a better society, and opened doors to new possibilities for change. England and Labour could not be trusted to deliver, so why not bring decisions closer to home?
Of course, at one level it is rather heroic of Scottish Labour to hold out despite all the electoral evidence. But it has now become embedded in Scottish politics that the only choice is independence or Tory rule. If you want independence you vote SNP or Green, if you want the Union then you back the Tories. Where is the room for Labour? The big Focaldata poll released at the start of January predicted the SNP winning 57 out of 59 seats at the next general election. Some in Labour will heave once more, but it’s looking forlorn.
Maybe the answer lies in separating out real enemies from imagined. If former staunch backers are to be won back, then just maybe the path lies in empathy and even a sense of vulnerability—an admission of failures and even weaknesses. We trust people not when they snarl their moral superiority to us, but when they lower their guard and say, “I’m not sure,” “I don’t know,” or “I got it wrong.” That goes for Labour but also the SNP as they defend their domestic agenda.
In this, as in much else, Labour is in denial. Denial of electoral reality based not so much who is the leader but on systemic structural weaknesses that afflict social democrats the world over. Defiance can be brave, but it can also be vain and self-defeating. Richard Leonard stepping aside as Leader of the Scottish Labour Party for a more Starmer-friendly alternative is unlikely to make a jot of difference to the polls and could make things worse if the pressure for change is seen to be coming from London.
So, let’s think this through. Despite the pressure after May’s Scottish elections, it is unlikely the Tories will allow a second referendum, but even if they do, it’s now too late to operationalise independence in the wake of a Yes vote. So whatever happens, it’s likely that the SNP Westminster bloc will still be big, if not decisive, the other side of the next general election.
Any non-Tory and therefore Labour-led government is almost certainly going to rely on some form of SNP backing. This is not going to be a coalition, but must at least be confidence and supply, if not more. Labour could cynically demand SNP backing and offer nothing in return to try and expose the party as right-wing. Labour could reject a second referendum, but if the Scottish continue to return big majorities for the SNP, a refusal to give in to a clear democratic desire is only going to stoke the case for independence.
Labour’s only real hope is to hold a second referendum against the relatively stable backdrop of a new and reforming non-Tory government that makes the leap to independence much more of a risk. In particular Labour could allow a second vote not on principle, like the Brexit referendum, but on the basis of an actual deal, so people would know what they were voting for. Detailed plans for real Home Rule could be presented as an alternative to both independence and the status quo. The SNP might struggle in this context, but even if there is still a Yes vote the result would have been fairly conducted, offering the chance of a grown-up divorce.
Scotland is not just an existential electoral threat to Labour, but an opportunity for renewal and the embrace of a different and more seductive culture. The party can continue to try and crush, command and control, or it can learn to trust and let go. It can go on believing in its own monopoly on wisdom or recognise that the complexity of the challenges and opportunities we face in the 21st century demand a plural response—a future that is negotiated, not imposed. It must face up to a working class that is no longer “ours,” or anyone’s; one that hasn’t been duped by “Tartan Tories,” but has seen the performances of Labour and chosen to back someone else. In an era of destabilisation, Labour has to be on the side of deliverable change or suffer further irrelevance and marginalisation.
If your partner of over 300 years says they want a divorce, then the first response should be not to denounce them but to ask why. A marriage, a union has to be cherished by both sides—or it’s abusive.
Oddly, Keir Starmer said on 20th Sept last year that a SNP victory at Holyrood in May would legitimise the case for a second referendum, only to then row back in his devolution speech on 21st December. It was then he announced a Constitutional Commission that can be controlled from the centre, effectively ruling out independence as an option before any consultation, rather than a Convention in which power and decisions are given to citizens. This bodes badly. The lesson of democracy as a fix for other political problems (such as electability) is that like devolution, it backfires.
But there is time for change. Labour can rethink these plans and go for a deliberative convention in which all bets are off, instead of a controlled Commission. It can make the Scottish Labour Party fully independent of London and no longer a “branch office.” Labour must avoid having in effect the same position as the Tories, just as it must avoid another Tory general election victory. The embrace of a second referendum avoids both—and possibly avoids the end of the Union.
In all this, the Brexit debacle should at least teach progressives to be honest about the choices being faced. Like Brexit, there are no real absolutes, no binary choice—but a spectrum in which we will land somewhere between the status quo Union and some form of independence or home rule in which our nations share borders and maybe currencies, a monarch, and defences, but more importantly families, friendships, pasts, presents and futures. Upping the ante, rerunning Project Fear or making it all Braveheart does no one any good.
There are two roads to and from Scotland. The high one and the low one. Andy Garcia picked the right one by going high in Denver, will Labour get it right now?
