The Scottish National Party looks set to claim victory in next month's polls, but just how far can the independence movement go, asks Frank Millar, in Edinburgh.
No need to hold the front page: it is not the end of the British Union - at least, not yet. Stormont first minister-designate Dr Ian Paisley can talk a while longer of "the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland". Yet "the Union" is already changed beyond all recognition. To appreciate that, Dr Paisley need only survey the uniquely "joint" office bequeathed to him and Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness by David Trimble and Seamus Mallon, courtesy of the Belfast Agreement. The DUP leader also knows that his republican partners still regard devolved institutions in Belfast as merely "transitional", on the path to future constitutional change and Irish unity.
The Scots, meanwhile - so long, in so many ways, semi-detached within the Union - seem set to take their position to new heights of uncertainty and risk and, it should be added, possibility. On May 1st, they and the English will notionally "celebrate" the 300th anniversary of the Treaty of Union. Two days later, if the opinion polls are to be believed, Scottish voters could put nationalists into government at Holyrood with a commitment to hold a referendum on independence within three years. People naturally talk of the continuing horror in Iraq shaping and defining Tony Blair's legacy. But might the break-up of Britain be his final, parting gift to presumed successor Gordon Brown? Blair could not have been more convinced all those years ago in his first interview with The Irish Times.
Then - departing prime minister John Major had shot his own fox, the Labour leader argued in September 1995 - the Tory (power-sharing) policy for Northern Ireland actually made the case for Scottish devolution. In fact, Blair claimed, it was the Conservatives who threatened the United Kingdom by clinging to the status quo: "The way to damage the UK is to resist the pressure that is growing - not just in Britain but all round Europe and the rest of the world - for greater decentralisation of government and power." As for Major's contention that an Edinburgh parliament would put Scotland irreversibly on the road to separation, Blair was "as certain as you can be about anything in politics" that it would not.
This was eight months before the tidal wave of goodwill that carried Blair and "New Labour" into power on a promise to modernise Britain and secure her destiny at "the heart of Europe". In the dying days of his premiership, it is possible to forget the sheer force of hope and expectation that coursed through Britain on that sunny Friday afternoon of May 2nd, 1997, when Blair led his wife and young children into 10 Downing Street for the first time. Lost, now, too is that sense of new beginning, when Blair first won the referendum and then legislated for the new parliament in accordance with what was then presented as "the settled will" of the Scottish people.
TEN YEARS ON, the Scots seem anything but settled in terms of their direction of travel or intended final destination. And Blair knows there will be no reminder of that "glad confident morning" on May 4th as he waits to discover whether the Scottish voters have actually decided to put the Scottish National Party (SNP) into government for the first time.
The prospect of the SNP's charismatic leader Alex Salmond as Scottish first minister is enough to give Labour and Conservative unionists the shivers. But it is his commitment to a referendum on independence within the life of the next parliament, probably in 2010, that raises the dreaded spectre of a United Kingdom - "greater than the sum of its parts", as Blair, Brown and Conservative leader David Cameron would have it - reduced in terms of its standing and influence on the world stage.
The current frenzy is also fed, of course, by the exquisite timing that has the Scottish election coincide with Blair's planned departure and Brown's expected succession as prime minister. Some Tories, disowned by Cameron, have actually suggested the Scottish devolution settlement should make it politically impossible for Brown, a Scottish MP, to serve as prime minister. However, the prospect of a Brown premiership has certainly fuelled renewed debate about the "West Lothian Question" and Labour's reliance on Scottish MPs to force through Westminster legislation applicable to the English but not to their own Scottish constituents. Some of the current controversy is being generated in the hope of damaging Brown and influencing Labour's upcoming leadership contest. However, into the heady mix was one poll for the Sunday Telegraph suggesting that, while 51 per cent of Scots want independence, 59 per cent of English people now want the same outcome.
In advance of May 3rd, Labour will be hoping for more polls like yesterday's by Populus to bolster Brown's confident prediction that, as before, support for the SNP will "evaporate" on the journey to the polling stations. In any event, much of the current debate is well ahead of the reality. Salmond's first order of priority is to get his party into government. If he can't do that, there will be no question of a referendum. As Prof David McCrone of the institute of governance at the University of Edinburgh explains, the proportional representation (additional member) system makes it extremely difficult for the SNP to win a majority of seats in the 129-member parliament.
CURRENTLY ON 27 to Labour's 50 seats, the nationalists will be doing remarkably well to emerge the largest party. However, anything short of the magic 65 will leave Salmond in need of a coalition partner, and Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Nicol Stephen appears to be resisting unless the SNP drops its referendum plan.
"Why would a party agree to a referendum it doesn't believe in?" he demanded this week. Other Liberal Democrats, however, are said to be demanding assurance that Stephen will not sustain a further period of Labour/Lib Dem administration, should Labour lose to the SNP. While nothing will be admitted or conceded ahead of polling day, there is already speculation that a post-election SNP/Lib Dem deal could see a compromise on a multi-choice referendum, with the question of independence listed alongside other options, including a further increase in the devolved parliament's powers.
On the other hand, might Salmond's need first to get into government see him forced to defer the referendum question into a second term? Assuming agreement with a putative coalition partner on the content and timing, referendums, as David McCrone observes, can easily be hijacked by other pressing questions, or the simple desire of voters to punish a government of the day.
Is referendum the basis on which to determine the issue once and for all? Would one referendum be enough? And what (an interesting question in the Northern Irish context) would constitute a sufficient endorsement by the people for such a step? Would independence rely simply on a majority of those actually turning out to vote, or would Westminster (where the constitution remains a reserved matter - ie not devolved to the Scottish parliament) set a higher threshold? Even here, our speculation takes us well ahead of the game. For the outstanding question, given the current realities of Scottish dispositions and party political strengths, is how the SNP could hope to win an independence vote against the combined force of Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives in favour of continuing the Union. And if they did? McCrone ventures that the ensuing negotiations, about oil revenues, share of the national debt and all the rest of it, could make this at least a 10-year project.
So, not yet the end of the Union, then. Yet change is in the air, with the unmistakable sense of momentum behind it and, thus, the prospect of more to come.
Just as some think to divine a settled will and disposition in Northern Ireland, the Scots are reminding us that it is never the end of history.