PETER ROBINSON manifests what many might see as a surprising, but nevertheless perhaps realistic, confidence in the political solidity of both Scotland’s and Northern Ireland’s union with Britain. The North’s First Minister, speaking at the British-Irish Association at the weekend, insisted that even if Scots embrace independence in their referendum in 2014 – in his view most unlikely – “it would not alter Northern Ireland’s desire to maintain the link with England and Wales.” Polls in the North suggest he could be right.
Interestingly, he argues that for a Scottish defence of the union to be successful a campaign needs to reflect the complementarity of strongly assertive regional and national identities: “If I may twist the slogan used by Irish republicans a generation ago – Scottish independence can be defeated with a Saltire in one hand and a union flag in the other.” A successful case made in Scotland could also mean, he suggests over-optimistically, 100 years before another challenge to the UK’s integrity.
There is certainly nothing inevitable about Scottish independence. Recent polls put support for separation at just over a third, with more than 50 per cent saying they would vote no – a mountain for first minister Alex Salmond’s Scottish National Party to climb. It is the reason why he has toyed with also putting a second question to the electorate offering enhanced devolution, “devo-max”, as an alternative. Talks with prime minister David Cameron appear unlikely, however, to produce that format and now Mr Salmond, to the discomfort of many party members, appears to be working on diluting independence to make it more palatable, “independence-lite” (membership of Nato, sharing the monarchy. . .)
There is an interesting parallelism to Mr Salmond’s dilemma in last week’s successful re-election in Quebec of the separatist Parti Quebecois (PQ), and which also bears out Mr Robinson’s observation that the SNP’s electoral success will no more necessarily “translate into support for an independent Scotland . . . than support for an Irish nationalist or republican party automatically means support for a united Ireland”. Like the SNP the PQ finds itself governing without an overall majority, unable to do more than make rhetorical calls for separation to a firmly unionist-majority electorate which has simply tired of the outgoing corruption-tainted Liberal Party. Inevitably the PQ will now become embroiled in the incremental struggle for more devolved powers, home rulers by default.
Mr Robinson insists that, apart from the power to levy corporate tax, he sees no need for further devolved powers in the North. But the reality is that a referendum campaign in Scotland, even if it results in a likely No, will whet the appetite in all the devolved administrations for the extra powers Scotland has already been promised. And partly, as he points out, because, “of the constitutional irony where each part of the UK is governed by different political parties than those in government at Westminster”. The dynamic, Mr Robinson may be right, may not fundamentally threaten the Union, but it will not leave its character unchanged.