Wings Over Scotland

We think it’s quite cute that the Scottish Affairs Committee still imagines it can get away with presenting itself as a neutral arbiter when releasing the findings of an investigation with the pejorative title “The Referendum on Separation for Scotland”.

We also can’t help but admire the determination of the Unionist parties who stood in both Westminster and Holyrood elections on a platform of implacable opposition to any referendum taking place at all, in asserting that they nevertheless have the right to dictate the terms of such a vote after the Scottish electorate overwhelmingly elected the only party promising one.

What we don’t understand is quite what they’re trying to achieve.

Some prominent Labour activists have spent the last few months asserting that there won’t be a referendum at all, because Alex Salmond doesn’t really want one, on the grounds that he’d lose and his party would implode as a result. They argue – if that’s not putting it too strongly – that he’ll do his best to manoeuvre the politics in such a manner that he can call the referendum off while blaming Westminster for “blocking” it, and that that’s his only face-saving escape route from the certainty of defeat.

Strangely, the party and its allies in the Unionist coalition, including many of those same activists, also regularly insist that Salmond wants a devo-max option on the ballot paper, despite near-universal agreement that such a move would annihilate any hope at all of the nationalists securing their greatest prize.

So let’s recap the possibilities as the Unionists claim to see them:

1. A single-question referendum goes ahead, which (they claim) will deliver a crushing defeat for independence and destroy the SNP.

2. A three-option referendum takes place, which will result in a victory for devo-X, delivering a settlement of more powers within the Union – the policy all three Unionist parties currently claim to stand for.

3. No referendum happens at all – the policy all three Unionist parties stood for in 2010 and 2011.

We think it’s fair to say, then, that the official Unionist line is that they can’t lose no matter what. Which raises the question of why they’re bothering to make such an almighty fuss about any and every last aspect of the referendum from the wording of the question down.

Rationally, if they truly believe what they claim to believe, their best strategy would therefore plainly be to give the Scottish Government carte blanche to run the referendum as it sees fit, robbing it of any chance to cry foul over “Westminster interference” and allowing the Scottish public to vote unequivocally for the Union, putting the issue to bed for at least a generation.

Instead, however, the Committee’s report seeks to control every detail of the referendum for itself, in return for the UK Parliament granting Holyrood the “right” to hold the vote via a section 30 order. In doing so, the Unionists seek to block off the policy they all profess to stand for (more powers within the Union). But more to the point, by creating obstacles and conditions in the most uncompromising language, they’re offering Alex Salmond the thing they claim he wants most of all, and which must therefore conversely be the worst possible thing for them – a viable excuse to back out and avoid his party’s destruction.

The choice of Ian Davidson as the Committee’s chairman, in that context, may turn out to be a disastrous error on Labour’s part. Davidson is an unreconstructed old-school thug, a slow-witted dinosaur best known for threatening to assault a female MP and calling the SNP “fascists”. He would be a gift-wrapped Christmas present to the nationalists in the event that they wished to avoid calling the referendum but portray the reason as an arrogant, bullying Westminster government refusing the Scottish people the referendum they voted for.

If we were offered the chance to roll some loaded dice, knowing that every possible result delivered us a win, we wouldn’t be hurling them at the table so violently that they risked ending up on the floor and invalidating the game. But even when it’s making up the rules itself, Westminster is scared it hasn’t stacked the odds enough, and risks making its cheating so obvious that its “mark” will turn round and walk away with its money still in its pocket. An impartial observer might be forgiven for wondering if it was quite as certain of the outcome as it claims to be.