In the last article I wrote for the National I rejected a de facto referendum as a route to independence. A number of people have asked me why, but to answer that it will be helpful if we start right back at the beginning, with a very basic question; what is independence?
The point of the question is not to have us flailing around to find a precise definition but to highlight the fact that there isn’t a precise definition.
Independence is really just the ability to do things – control your own territory, enter into legally binding contracts, engage with other nation states on an equal legal footing, join international bodies and treaties and so on.
The reason you are able to do these things is because other nations agree to recognise that you have the right to do these things. You can’t force them, they have to agree. In almost all practical terms, independence is really about international recognition.
There is a basic sort of measure of international recognition – membership of the United Nations. To join the UN you must secure the agreement of two thirds of the 193 member states. That’s when you know you’re independent.
But recognition is far from inevitable – Kosovo governs its own territory but Serbia continues to claim territorial rights. In total 111 countries individually recognise Kosovo as independent, but because that is below the two thirds threshold, Kosovo isn’t a UN member, can’t join the World Trade Organisation, can’t sign (or benefit from) international treaties…
Scotland cannot begin to consider being stuck in the Kosovo situation because our economy is too advanced. There is no half-independence for us, no bluffing it, no work-around. Which leaves one major question – how do we get other nation states to recognise us?
In asking this question it is important to put away naïve sentiment; it doesn’t matter how much everyone ‘loves’ Scotland, they will all want to see certain conditions met before they embrace us, and by far the biggest of those is that we are entering the world in a state of agreement with the nation state from which we are departing.
If the rest of the UK has agreed to recognise us, the rest of the world will too. It is possible in theory to gain recognition even if the UK held out, but it would be a long, torturous process during which time we’d be stuck in the Kosovo situation, with the harm that would do to our economy.
I know many of you don’t want to hear this, but you need to – Scottish independence means successfully negotiating a recognition agreement with the rest of the UK
That is the question that should be asked of every proposed ‘path to independence’ – how and where on this path do we achieve full international recognition? If there is no convincing answer, then it isn’t a path at all.
I know many of you don’t want to hear this, but you need to – Scottish independence means successfully negotiating a recognition agreement with the rest of the UK. You can make speeches or fire off furious social media posts about sovereignty or democracy all you want, in your heart I’m sure you know that the world runs on realpolitik.
If you doubt this for a second, note this; there are only two countries which escaped the British Empire without Britain’s agreement. One fought and won a war of independence (the US) and the other declared unilateral independence but wasn’t recognized by the rest of the world for a long 15 years (Rhodesia).
When you focus your mind on this – that as a modern civic nation in an interconnected modern world we need to begin our independence with a recognition agreement from the UK – things become clearer.
The question then becomes ‘how do we get London to the negotiating table?’. If you focus on that, a few things should start to become clear. It is why I am warning you that tricks, proxies and shortcuts won’t work.
Democracy isn’t a science but a collective agreement – it works because (almost) everyone agrees to the rules of how it works in advance. If different parties start to play by different rules, it starts to break down.
For example, a referendum is an agreement signed by both sides which states they will abide by the result. It’s strength is this agreement, this binding commitment. Take that away and it is just an opinion poll. You cannot make another party agree to recognise the outcome of something against their will.
In fact, if you are in two minds on whether I’m right about this, we have a live example. When Nigel Farage got caught in the sleaze scandal of pocketing millions from a rich pal, he decided to run a referendum on his popularity by resigning his seat and forcing a by-election.
The theory was simple; he’d run a referendum on how much the people love him and how much they hate the establishment. But that isn’t what happened. The others refused to play along with him and so he spent the summer arguing with a bin. You don’t get to alter democracy unilaterally just because you want to.
Realpolitik operates in domestic politics just like it does in geopolitics. If you are granted power by law, you can use it at will. But if you want to get elected again, you can’t use it in ways that are wildly unpopular. If you want to talk about a certain subject, you won’t be able to if you are sinking in a crisis over another subject. And so on.
We will win because we build a position of strength, not because we find a way to redefine a no-score draw as a victory
This is how politics works. Scotland does not have the legal power to hold a referendum and it is unlikely that it can effectively bypass that reality and use a proxy, because that is only soft power, and unless you pull a rabbit out of the hat, it is very soft power.
(Incidentally, I am also very sceptical that we can get every single member of the potentially independence-supporting public to play along either. Some will be pissed off with the SNP. Some will be annoyed about education policy, or the state of the roads, or any other subject.
If even some of those people don’t act like it is a referendum and instead vote on a policy basis, our hand gets weaker and weaker.)
As I pointed out in my last article, you know perfectly well that the only thing which can make someone in power do what they don’t want to do is sustained political pressure. In our case it is really, really clear to see what that means.
If you want to be independent, the people have to support it. If a strong majority of Scotland wants to be independent and London continues to block it, then and only then does the political pressure rise high enough that it starts to force their hand.
At that point we can start talking about de facto referendums or unilateral declarations or delegations to the UN or mass protest as negotiating tactics from a position of strength – but as means of skipping the process of building strength? Forget it.
Now from past experience, me making this point usually results in another series of questions – how do we change their minds?, what is stopping them?, what about the hostile media environment?, what do we do once we get sustained support? And many more along the same lines.
But I’m nearly at my word limit so all I can say is that we got our parliament back because the Constitutional Convention spent five or six years doing the hard work of producing credible, agreed, detailed plans about what we were going to do, spoke to the public about their benefits and got 74 per cent support. Might I suggest there is a lesson for us in there somewhere.
But I’d want to leave you without one final point – the fact that we need an agreement from the rest of the UK does not ‘leave all the power in their hands’. Because realpolitik comes for us all eventually, and that also means the Brits. They’ve lost this fight many times in the past and they will lose it again at our hands.
When they do, when we show independence is the settled will of the Scottish people, they will have nowhere to hide and they will not be able to pass a TV camera without being asked about the democratic injustice of it. We will win and we are perfectly capable of outwitting them in negotiations.
But we will win because we build a position of strength, not because we find a way to redefine a no-score draw as a victory. The sooner we stop looking for tricks and start building real strength through a solid, defensible case and an enthused and engaged public, the sooner we win.
Everything else is a distraction.