Analysis: can the Brexit square be circled?

The Conservative government in London has insisted “Brexit means Brexit” while the Nationalist government in Edinburgh maintains “Remain means Remain”.

Of course, the word Scotland did not appear on the ballot paper on June 23; the words United Kingdom did.

As David Mundell, the Scottish Secretary, pointed out this was a UKwide vote. But, of course, the FM and her colleagues do not look at such issues through quite the same prism.

She has set up an advisory commission to look at “all the options” to maintaining Scotland’s status within the EU.

Mr Mundell adopted the glass half full view, suggesting earlier this week that he was open to Scotland getting a “slightly different” deal, if it could be done. But Philip Hammond, the new chancellor, who, in the Whitehall hierarchy of command has more pips on his shoulder, insisted there could be no separate deal for Scotland; last month’s vote was a “collective” one across the whole of the UK.

From his and Mrs May’s perspective, the UK Government will include Edinburgh closely in the process, but they are adamant Brexit will be done on a UK basis; how could it be otherwise, they suggest, when the member state is - the UK. And they have set their faces against the prospect of a second independence poll on their watch.

Given such an outlook, it looks impossible to turn the Brexit square into a circle and Ms Sturgeon’s finger is probably getting itchier towards pulling the trigger on a second independence referendum.

But politics, particularly when they have an international dimension, is rarely straightforward.

Earlier today, Stewart Hosie made some interesting comments, repeatedly referring to Scotland’s “status” within the EU. Was this a suggestion, for the first time perhaps, that something short of full-blown membership of the EU might be, to use Mr Mundell’s phrase, doable?

The SNP’s Treasury spokesman at Westminster said Mr Hammond had been “foolish” to “slam the door” so quickly on the possibility of Scotland getting some sort of tailored deal to maintain its EU status.

The Dundee MP said: “We are simply trying to make sure we can stay in this market of 500 million people, we retain the right to free travel and we retain access to that market without tariff barriers. All of the things that are likely to come now because of the decision to Brexit.”

So, it raises the question: if at the end of the Brexit talks, the UK were to get a kind of deal with Brussels, in which access to the single market without tariff barriers is maintained together with free movement albeit with some increased restrictions, would that be enough for the SNP Government?

Or, as some suspect, is Ms Sturgeon simply going through the motions, exhausting all the diplomatic avenues as she sees them, so that months down the line she can turn round and say that, because of Westminster intransigence, the only way to maintain Scotland’s status within the EU is to become a fully independent nation.

There are, however, overarching considerations.

The first is that, if the SNP Government is intent on using the Brexit process simply to massage public opinion towards looking more favourably on independence, then the fundamental principle – that the FM will only call a second referendum, when she thinks she can win it – still applies.

This, of course, all depends on the public mood. But Ms Sturgeon might only have a narrow window of opportunity to garner sufficient voter support, particularly if, as the Brexit Secretary David Davis appeared to suggest this week, he was looking at wrapping things up by the end of 2018.

If the SNP leader is unable to see that sustained level of support for independence – thought to be above 60 per cent for at least six months – before Brexit occurs, then the backdrop to the issue of Scottish independence fundamentally changes.

Scottish voters will be presented with the choice of staying in the UK outwith the EU, possibly even with a good tailored deal on single market access and the free movement of people, or breaking away from Britain and beginning the process of applying for its own EU membership as a newly independent nation with its own currency.

One might ask whether or not the conservative core of Middle Scotland, which opted to vote No in 2014, would, having gone through one major drawn-out constitutional upheaval with Brexit, want to go through another one in a second deeply divisive independence referendum?

If the answer is No, then it could well be that, rather than once again trying to get the full menu of Scottish independence, Ms Sturgeon and her colleagues have to settle for a dish of Belgian fudge.