Tag: mandate

Posted on

We must take this step to independence before a citizens’ convention

First out of the trap in the race for a new strategic plan is Believe in Scotland. Even before the new Westminster parliament had been sworn in the organisation published its report on a Scottish Citizens Convention, heralding it as a new route map to independence.

Although reference is made to the election result, this report takes no account of it, and was clearly drafted well before July 4th. That’s its first problem. The report suggests that the Scottish Government’s mandate from 2021 is intact and we should move towards the 2026 elections as being a “de-facto referendum” on independence.

Hold on a minute. Didn’t the Scottish Government try to implement its mandate and get told by the Supreme Court that it couldn’t? Didn’t the SNP just fight the election asking for that mandate to be reaffirmed and for the constitution to be changed to allow Scottish people to choose their own future? And didn’t we just lose that election? We can’t pretend that didn’t happen.

Believe in Scotland is an organisation I admire. It has done a lot of valuable work is making the case for independence and coordinating disparate local campaign groups. Respect.

It styles itself as the national grassroots Yes campaign claiming more authority and legitimacy than political parties.

This anti-politics infuses this report to an unhealthy degree. Of course, we need people of all political persuasions to be involved in the movement for national autonomy. Of course, it will be bigger than any political party. But politics is how we change society without warfare. It is about making choices.

This report throws the political baby out with the bathwater stating  “politics shouldn’t be anywhere near the constitutional question.” It talks of the 2014 case being “overly politicised” and even suggests that support for “independence has not risen dramatically in the polls, due to its connection to politics.”

So, the Scottish Citizens Convention is seen as an alternative to, rather than complementary to the existing political process. At times this is dressed up in flowery quasi-academic language which is less than helpful. We are told that the convention will solve Scotland’s fundamental problems “by facilitating a more positive mindset change and socioeconomic paradigm shift.” Mmm?

The report doesn’t say exactly how the Scottish Citizens Convention should be established but in a valuable appendix it considers the lessons from earlier attempts at a similar thing including the Scottish Constitutional Convention of the 1980s, Ireland’s Citizens Assembly, and the Welsh Government’s Constitutional Commission. The implication is that the convention could borrow elements from all three.

The big difference from the 1980s is of course that the notion of Scotland becoming an independent country is way more divisive and contentious now than devolution was then. The Scottish Constitutional Convention was established with the support of every party bar the Tories and commanded massive public support.

Believe in Scotland acknowledge this difference and suggest that the way to deal with it is to be clear that a new convention will not be about independence, or the method of Scotland’s government. Instead, it will be charged with coming up for polices for a “better Scotland” centred on a well-being economy. This remit, the report rightly suggest, would allow a number of key players – trades unions, churches, charities – to get involved in a way an explicit focus on independence would not.

It is an idea worth exploring. But there’s a danger that it all becomes a bit too vanilla and ends up with everyone agreed on the type of fairer, nicer Scotland we want, but no further forward on how to get there. Believe in Scotland claim that any conclusions the convention might reach will self-evidently only be achieved by independence. But if we are not linking the two, that seems something of a stretch. Besides I can’t help feeling that whilst certainly we need to illustrate the powers that independence offers, prescribing the details of a well being economy is surely a matter of political debate to be resolved once it is achieved.

At no stage is there a suggestion that the outcome of the Supreme Court needs to be challenged, not by rejecting its decisions which are technically correct, but by rejecting the constitution which it was charged with interpreting.

The lesson that we do need to learn from the 1980s is that policy comes from principle. Before working out the details of devolution the Scottish Constitutional Convention drew up the Claim or Right for Scotland. That asserted that the people of Scotland had the right to choose their own form of government. They built a consensus upon that principle.

And that principle is currently being denied. That is the first order of business. To challenge and change the British constitution so that Scotland’s right to choose its own future is enshrined. It is in that context that the notion of a civil society convention might be best deployed.

Posted on

We need a brand new independence strategy

Welcome to my first weekly column. In the coming months I hope to use this to support the debate on how we rebuild a strategy to achieve political independence for our country. I start – as gobsmacked about the election results as everyone else – with questions rather than answers.  

I will in time reach my own conclusions and advocate them. So will you. In time. But for now, let’s take a beat. Let’s listen to each other, and to the majority of the people who are still unconvinced. And let us try to be nice, even though we might irritate the hell out of each other.  

We cannot take forever of course. But for a few months we can have a period of collective self-reflection. The more we think, and the more of us who do it, the stronger our conclusions will be. 

So, let’s hear suggestions for a strategic way forward. Let’s subject them to rigorous but respectful analysis, stress-testing each proposition to see if it might work in the real world. 

I can start by illustrating how not to do it. Two weeks ago, in the immediate aftermath of the election defeat, I wrote that those who didn’t vote for the SNP because they believed we didn’t have a strategy for achieving independence had a point. 

Within hours Alba were tweeting my words suggesting that the logical response would be to join their party – as only they had a plan to achieve independence. I can’t see that this helps anyone. Don’t get me wrong, I’m as partial to a bit of schadenfreude as the next person. But an “I told you so” response doesn’t really work unless you can provide evidence that the alternative works better. 

In Alba’s case their central strategic mission is that “every single election should be used to seek a mandate to begin negotiations for Independence.” Given the party has just paid nearly ten grand of its members money to the state in lost deposits and obtained 0.5% of the votes, it could be said that strategy is not working too well. 

In truth, I was mistaken. It wasn’t that the SNP didn’t have a strategy for moving forward to independence. It did. I know that because last year I was one of the people who spent a lot of time arguing about it and eventually getting a resolution through the party conference in October.  

The problem was the strategy did not survive its first contact with the electorate. It was a plan predicated on winning a mandate at this election, and then repurposing the 2026 Holyrood election if the new UK government continued to refuse to discuss changing the constitution. 

In the event we didn’t get a mandate, the new UK government have no dilemma, and the plan is now void. 

To go forward we need first to go back to first principles. For Scotland to become an independent country, and to be successful as one, it will require not just the consent, but the support of a majority of people who live there. That makes it a different project from winning an election. It means people who stay at home are voting against.  

A new independent future for Scotland requires not only that a majority are persuaded of the argument, but that they are mobilised into an effective political force than can achieve change. That requires a civic movement wider than any political party. But it does also require a party to win electoral contests. And that will be best created through a reformed and refocused SNP. 

The SNP, winning 30% of the vote this month, had the support of most people for whom independence is a priority. If we are to move forward, there are three broad groups of people whom we need to focus on.  

There are those who say they do support independence, but it wasn’t the main thing motivating them this time round. Many of them voted Labour, reasoning that this month’s priority was the change the UK government, rather than Scotland’s constitution. 

Then there are those who support independence but have convinced themselves that the SNP will not deliver it. Many of them will tell you that belief is fuelled by perceived failures of the party in the Scottish government. Most of them stayed at home, though more than usual seem to have spoiled their ballot.  

And then there are people who do not believe that independence is the best way to change their lives and their country in the first place. In the past few years, consumed with internal debates, we have made little or no progress in reducing this number. 

We are going to need a strategy which relates to all three of these groups in parallel and has realistic targets for winning people over. We won’t get them all. We don’t need to. But we do need to start convincing a lot more people than we have been recently. 

And that is what this column will be focused on in the months ahead.