Sterling for subs? Scotland's referendum and the future of the UK

As Professor Iain McLean, expert on Scottish politics and history, told the audience, constitutional preferences among Scottish voters have been ’remarkably stable’ over a long period. Data from the Scottish Social Attitudes Survey showed that support for independence has never topped 37% since the survey began in 1997, and has if anything declined since the SNP came to power. Just 23% favoured withdrawal from the Union in the most recent survey.

By contrast, support for devolution within the UK has remained at around the 60% mark throughout the six years of Alex Salmond’s rule. One irony for the nationalist cause has been that the effectiveness of SNP government has sent the message that devolution can work rather well, and that popular and distinct policies such as free university tuition and prescription charges can be delivered within the current framework. Another problem for the pro-independence side is that Scottish voters have what political commentator Iain Macwhirter last night called ‘a very opaque idea about what independence means’. What currency would the country use? What kind of armed forces would it have? Would it be inside the EU? What happens to North Sea oil and gas? How will the UK’s huge public debt and pension liabilities be divided up? What happens to the UK’s welfare and benefits system? Many Scottish voters are understandably reluctant to cast their lot in with a cause that cannot clearly answer such questions.

Part of the reason for the lack of clarity is that the Scottish Government has yet to publish its White Paper – expected next month – on what independence will look like. Will this be a game-changer in the campaign? Perhaps, but a further difficulty is that many of the issues are inherently political and will be resolved only if and when the Yes campaign has won the referendum and entered into negotiations with the UK government on the terms of separation.

So how might those negotiations play out? One of the trickiest areas for the SNP, Professor McLean argued, would be the currency question. The SNP favour a continuing currency union with the rest of the UK. Yet the UK government ‘will absolutely want to impose stiff deficit and debt terms on a Scottish Government before it would admit it to a common currency’. And the UK would hold ‘the whip hand’ on this issue.

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Sterling for subs?

On the other hand, McLean pointed out, the location of the UK’s nuclear base in Scottish territorial waters could allow for some creative horse-trading. If the negotiations got into tricky territory for the SNP, they could always just retort ‘OK, now let’s talk about those submarines’. A matter of ‘sterling for subs’, perhaps? But ‘no’ voters don’t know exactly what they’re voting for either. Even if the pro-independence side loses the referendum – as seems likely, unless Salmond can once again defy the odds – that will not mean the end of the story. Instead, a new phase of devolution is likely, since opinion polls consistently show support for the Scottish Parliament acquiring additional powers. In particular, Scotland might gain further tax-raising powers to correct what commentator and campaigner Lesley Riddoch described on Monday as the “infantile bubble” of Scottish politics, in which all parties are happy to spend freely without bearing the responsibility of taxation decisions.

At present, Labour and the Conservatives are developing proposals for additional devolution (the Liberal Democrats have already committed to “home rule in a federal UK”), yet Iain Macwhirter was sceptical that the unionist parties would offer anything of significance if they triumph in the referendum – ‘no would mean no’. This perception might be an important trump card for the SNP in the campaign.

If the polls narrow in the months ahead, then the pressure will surely rise for the major UK-wide parties to lay their own cards on the table.