IN the Brexit stand-off, Nicola Sturgeon drew first. The First Minister and the Prime Minister have been eyeing each other like two poker players with an all-in pot. Someone had to take the initiative and Ms Sturgeon was damned sure it wasn’t going to be Theresa May. It’s a bold play, because on the face of it, Ms Sturgeon has a weak hand.
With the oil price collapse, no clear majority in the polls and uncertainty about just how many Scots think Brexit is a justification for leaving the UK this might look like an in auspicious moment for a second independence referendum. But Ms Sturgeon’s view is that it’s now or never. If Scotland doesn’t “take control” as she repeatedly put it yesterday, in an unconscious echo of the Vote Leave campaign, then Scotland would no longer be “in charge of its own destiny”.
Sometimes you have to play, even if you know you might lose – and she very well might. Ms Sturgeon put her own job on the line yesterday, and her Government’s. If there is another No vote, then she will have to resign immediately and the SNP Government could collapse as the Scottish voters seek retribution for a second referendum they didn’t want. You can be damned sure the third one will be a very long way off.
The First Minister’s irritation had been growing as the UK Government failed to come up with any response to her call for Scotland to remain in the single market. There has been, as she said yesterday, a “brick wall of intransigence”.
There has not even been a convincing package of new powers for the Scottish Parliament. All she got was a strong hint from Mrs May in her Scottish conference speech, that the Scotland Act is no longer fit for purpose post-Brexit, and from the Scottish Tory leader, Ruth Davidson, an announcement that powers repatriated from Brussels would go “in the first instance” to Westminster.
The message from Number 10 seemed clear: go ahead, call your referendum – if you think you’re hard enough. The May cabinet believed that the First Minister was bluffing, and that even if she isn’t she’ll lose a second referendum. That’s why it seems most unlikely that Mrs May will come up with an 11th hour package to forestall a referendum. It would have to be something so big – effectively letting Scotland remain in the single market – that her own Brexit ministers would rebel. Another “Vow” would convince no one here in Scotland.
The battle is now over winning a Section 30 order to permit Holyrood to stage a legally-binding referendum. The constitution is a reserved power, so Westminster still has to give its assent. Mrs May is expected to demand that any referendum would be after Brexit, not before. That will be another head on clash of authority, because the First Minister will, by next week, almost certainly have a majority vote in the Scottish Parliament for an earlier referendum. The Green MSPs have signalled that they’re in.
But if a second referendum were to be delayed until after Brexit, when would that be? How long is a piece of string? The Brexit negotiations may not be completed in 2019, and we know there is likely to be a “transition period” thereafter. Would that be a better time? The First Minister will claim precedent: that the 2014 referendum was held two years after the Edinburgh Agreement.
This is war. Ms Sturgeon has upstaged this week’s planned announcement of Article 50 and infuriated the Brexiters. How dare she? Who does she think she is? This has hugely embarrassed the British Government in its own stand-off with Brussels. Mrs May has been made to look as if she isn’t in charge of her own country. The vision of a new Global Britain, echoing the British Empire, suddenly looks like Little England.
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