Why I don’t think there will be another Scottish independence referendum

Even if Nicola Sturgeon had been beaten into sixth place behind the unionist parties, George Galloway and Alba, she would have claimed the result of the Scottish parliament election as a mandate for another independence referendum. As it is, she now claims that mandate on the grounds that a majority of members of the new parliament are pro-independence.

Of course, a majority of the previous parliament was pro-independence too, which is why she was first minister, with the support of the Scottish Greens. Her claim of a mandate comes from Scottish National Party and Green MSPs being elected on a manifesto promise to push for another referendum – which wasn’t the case in 2016, when the elections were held before the EU referendum.

However, her mandate is not as strong as it seemed it would be a few months ago, when the SNP was riding high and the opinion polls consistently showed majority support for independence. As it turned out, she has scraped back in with the support of the Greens again, and the polls on independence are 50-50.

So Boris Johnson will continue to say “now is not the time” for another independence referendum, and public opinion in Scotland will continue to agree with him. Sturgeon’s notional mandate was undermined by her words during the campaign, when she said: “I’m asking people to vote for me as first minister to continue to lead us through a global pandemic, then to implement a bold transformative manifesto to kick start that recovery, and drive that recovery, then when we’re out of the crisis to give people in Scotland the choice over what kind of future we want and the country we want to build.”

In other words, “now is not the time”. And it may never be the time. The Scottish parliament may pass a law for a new independence referendum, daring the UK government to go to the Supreme Court to strike it down. But if it is struck down, as on any plain reading of the law on devolution it would be, where can the nationalists go next?

They will be left waiting for a UK general election, hoping for a hung parliament in which the SNP would hope to exert leverage over a minority Keir Starmer government. But it wouldn’t have much leverage, because the SNP has built its entire message on being anti-Tory. If Starmer says “now is not the time”, as I assume he will, it can be obstructive, but it cannot risk being seen by Scottish voters to be paving the way for the return of a Tory government. It got away with it in 1979 and in 2019, but I don’t think it would do so again. The next Scottish independence referendum could be years away, if it ever happens at all.

Yours,

John Rentoul

Chief political commentator