Scottish Independence remains a dream—but that could be best for the SNP

The SNP, it hardly needs saying, is now a very big party in a small country. The conference is bustling and busy with the stuff of government. Fringes earnestly debate the details of social policies: I’m writing this from the back of a packed Prince’s Trust session with deputy first minister John Swinney, where worthy questions are being asked about the operation of the apprenticeship levy.

But although the party finds itself responsible for just about everything that is going on in Scotland these days, this is only by virtue of the unexpected hegemony it has achieved since 2011, and even more particularly since the independence referendum two years ago. At heart, the SNP is not a party of everything, it is a party of nationalism. And when you catch the delegates chatting between the worthy policy discussions it is, as often as not, about the post-Brexit potential for independence.

Nicola Sturgeon’s “announcement” that draft legislation for a fresh referendum will soon be published has set the conference alight, even though it changes virtually nothing.

For a start, it is something she had already promised to do. For another thing, it is draft and not real legislation, a way of keeping options open and “the independence story” rolling forward, rather than a hard and fast pledge to make anything happen. And for a final thing, it is legally speaking really quite clear that Holyrood cannot legislate for a referendum that could force independence without Westminster’s blessing: the constitution is reserved matter.

None of these caveats, however, are dampening the buzz. Indeed, walking into the conference this morning, I got chatting to two suited young activists—Ian and Alan, both solicitors practising in Edinburgh—who were in excited debate about whether the sort of procedural footsie that Theresa May is trying to keep the House of Commons out of the Brexit decision could also work for Holyrood. Some Brexiteers claim that May can revoke the UK’s signature on the Treaty of Rome through Royal Prerogative. So, their argument ran, maybe Scotland can revoke its signature on the Act of Union.

Arcane stuff for young men to be getting excited about, but if you’re serious about—or, some would say, obsessed with—independence, then it is stuff that really matters. It was, then, no surprise at all that there was animated discussion at the fringe event on “Indyref2 and its alternatives” which Prospect—together with the Electoral Reform Society—put on last night.

The whole party wants Indyref2 to happen—if it is sure it can win. But that is an almighty if. Britain’s leading psephologist, John Curtice, kicked off the discussion by summarising the polling on independence since the Brexit vote, which many nationalists had hoped would steel Scots—who voted to stay in Europe, and now face being dragged out by English votes—to make the split with the UK that they had ducked from making two years ago. Curtice, however, had dispiriting news. Few Scots, he said, cared all that much about Europe, and in fact a significant chunk of SNP voters had actually voted "Leave." Yes, some people—perhaps one in 10 of all "No" voters in 2014—were now more inclined to vote for independence next time around, but a rather similarly-sized proportion of 2014 "Yes" voters had gone the other way. Either they preferred to be part of a Britain that was out of the EU, or they were increasingly nervous about the economics in the uncertain post-Brexit environment. Put it all together, and Scotland has barely swung at all.

The SNP MP Kirsty Blackman was frank in admitting that here the party faces phenomenal challenges with the sequencing of the referendum, in particular. If it rushed now—to exploit the full shock of the Brexit vote moment and the cross-border division that it revealed—London would be able to pretend that it would deliver all sorts of things from its negotiations with the EU. It might be impossible to secure both border control and single market access at the same time, but London could—for the moment—continue to bluff its way through and insist that it can have the best of all possible worlds, spinning its way through Indyref2 just as the Leavers did in the Brexit campaign. But if Scotland waits until the UK truly knows where it stands before deciding its future, then the UK will actually be out. The SNP would then have to explain how it would negotiate an independent Scotland’s place back in Europe, and would—without special treatment—have to accept both the euro and membership of the Schengen passport-free zone. All of which would greatly complicate the "Yes" side’s pitch.

Put such logic together with Curtice’s numbers, and you start to doubt whether—for all its might, for all its success in reducing three rival parties at Westminster to being just three isolated MPs—the SNP is in any position to fulfil its defining mission. Darren Hughes, of the Electoral Reform Society, observed that while while binary referendums can seem like a clean way to settle big questions in theory, the aftermath of the European plebiscite is already illustrating how messy the practicalities can be. The lesson he took from it was that, rather than fixating on an all-or-nothing referendum, Scotland and the UK as a whole would be better to grapple with all the complexities of home rule and even independence through a real conversation, a constitutional convention rather than a crude Yes or No. The constitutional question will certainly not go away. Indeed Alan Page, Professor of Public Law at Dundee, explained it could very well flare up anew after Brexit. Hugely important and contentious aspects of social policy—anti-discrimination laws, employment rights—are soon set to move from Brussels to London. When they do, the left of centre government up here could very well be in permanent dispute with Westminster, if right-wing governments more interested in “cutting red tape” than protections for workers continue to be the norm down there. And such arguments could turn nasty. But they would only cement the SNP’s dominance if it campaigns energetically against an unpopular Westminster agenda.

The thought I take away from the conference, then, is that the more difficult it looks for the SNP to progress its independence mission, the more entrenched it could become. That sounds like a paradox, but if so, it isn’t unique. Just look at Ukip. Within months of having achieved its own defining mission in the EU referendum, it has descended into a literal fistfight. The best way for a party to remain cheerfully motivated around a dream could be if it remains just that. A dream.