What has changed since Scotland
chose to reject sovereignty in 2014
and how much of a factor is Brexit?
According to opinion polls, support for
Scottish sovereignty hovers between
40-50 percent [Jeff J Mitchell/Getty.
“
” James Mitchell, Professor
Glasgow, Scotland - If the UK
government was in any doubt about
the determination of Scotland's first
minister to make good on a promise to
go for a second independence
referendum in the advent of a so-
called "hard Brexit" , then it was
disabused earlier this week.
When Nicola Sturgeon on March 13
announced her intention to seek
permission from the regional
parliament to hold the referendum
between 2018 and 2019, it had
followed months of intractable
negotiations between the UK
government and the regional
government on the terms of Scotland's
Brexit vote
While the UK voted by a narrow
majority to "leave" the European
Union in last year's plebiscite, Scotland
voted overwhelmingly to "remain" -
and Sturgeon's call for a separate
Scottish deal ran headlong into British
Prime Minister Theresa May's UK-wide
approach to quitting all vestiges of the
EU project.
Relations between Sturgeon's Scottish
government, which has repeatedly
appealed to London to help retain the
semi-autonomous region's place
within the EU single market after the
UK's exit from the EU, and May's
British government, which has always
asserted Britain's Brexit vote as being
politically non-divisible, reached a
new low following Sturgeon's
announcement.
Indeed, after the Scottish National
Party (SNP) leader made known her
wish to offer Scotland a choice
between a "hard Brexit" and becoming
an independent country with the
ability to establish "our own
relationship with Europe", May
accused her of "playing politics with
the future of the [UK]". The British
premier then followed up, on March
16, by rebuffing Sturgeon’s demands
stating, "now is not the time" for
another poll.
"I thought that Sturgeon took the stage
of British politics in an audacious
move … that struck at the heart of the
British establishment," said Scottish
writer Gerry Hassan, the author of a
new political book, Scotland the Bold.
"It then begged many questions of the
nature of the independence offer and
the processes and the politics that
follow from that."
A second independence referendum
For most observers, Scotland is now a
very different place to the one that
voted on its constitutional future in
2014, choosing to reject sovereignty by
55 percent to 45 percent.
The UK and
therefore Scotland's
economy is not in
its healthiest state
as it was in 2014
While Brexit has put Scotland on a
path towards the EU exit door - against
the wishes of its electorate - the steep
collapse in the global oil price and
slump in oil revenues from the North
Sea has made Scotland's economic
prospects far from certain.
"The UK and therefore Scotland's
economy is not in its healthiest state as
it was in 2014," said James Mitchell, a
professor at the University of
Edinburgh's Academy of Government.
"And Scotland's relative position with
the UK has worsened … But another
major factor is Brexit - it's a process
that we're just at the beginning of and
exactly where [the UK] will be in two
or three years time is unclear, other
than it's not going to be a happy place
economically."
But how much has Brexit really been
responsible for putting Scotland on the
brink of a second independence
referendum?
With opinion polls commonly putting
support for Scottish sovereignty at
somewhere around the 40 to 50
percent mark, independence
campaigners have lamented what they
see as a hard Brexit-driven lurch to
the right in British politics that has
ushered in a wave of xenophobic and
anti-immigration sentiments.
Surgeon, the now-remote
prospect of Scotland retaining its
single market status - and her
contention that losing it would
adversely affect Scottish jobs - has
made her call for another plebiscite
unavoidable.
For pro-unionists, however, Sturgeon's
Scottish independence "obsession" has
simply found a convenient outlet in
Britain's Brexit debate that will, they
say, only add to further constitutional
wrangling and uncertainty.
"The type of Brexit being imagined by
the British government does make it
easier for Nicola Sturgeon [to call
another referendum]," said The
Spectator magazine's Scotland editor,
Alex Massie.
"But if it wasn't this, then it might be
something else - when it comes to
finding reasons for [another poll],
she's in a good position to do so."
Massie told Al Jazeera that while
politically, the pro-independence
camp "have an argument that is
stronger, in some ways, than in 2014,
about Scotland being in control of its
own destiny, of it being a different
kind of place and political culture to
the rest of the UK", it is negated by
"economic and practical arguments,
which are harder to make now than
was the case over two years ago".
That said, with Sturgeon's apparent
wish to see an independent Scotland
assume its place in the EU, Scotland's
SNP government has said it has found
a warmer reception from EU
politicians compared with 2014 when
few - if any - wanted to get involved in
its independence of Scotland'
Vote if then
Parliament's foreign affairs committee,
told the BBC news that while an
independent Scotland would have to
apply for EU membership, negotiations
would be "easy" because it "fulfils all
the legal needs" of membership.
Yet, while any attempt by an
independent Scotland to join the EU
remains open to speculation - Spain,
with its own independence movement
in Catalonia, is widely believed to be
wary of the proposition - Mitchell
from the University of Edinburgh told
Al Jazeera that its status as a potential
EU member state is greater now than
ever before.
"Scotland will be outside the EU
without any shadow of a doubt within
the UK," said the academic. He also
stated that 2014 pro-union assertions,
which contended that the only way to
guarantee Scotland's place within the
EU was to vote 'no' to independence,
had now "been turned on its head".
"There is a new warmth coming from
Europe to the notion of an
independent Scotland in the EU, and
that is a factor that has played into the
debate."
The mechanisms for triggering another
referendum will begin at the Scottish
Parliament next week when Scotland's
five parties will be asked to endorse
the wishes of the nationalist
. The chamber's three pro-
unionist parties, Scottish Labour, the
Scottish Conservatives and the Scottish
Liberal Democrats, will almost
certainly vote to block the plans, the
combined pro-independence majority
of the SNP and the Scottish Greens will
be likely to see the motion passed. It
will then be up to the British
government to grant the Scottish
government the legal right to hold
another independence poll - which, in
light of May's opposition, looks fraught
with uncertainty - as the UK seeks to
negotiate its way out of the EU.
So, two-and-half years on from
Scotland's last constitutional decision,
what will likely frame the coming
debate if and when a new referendum
date is agreed?
Hassan said that it will most probably
pitch the "very challenging" economic
case for independence against the
"bankruptcy of the British offer".
"It will be head and heart - a hope for
the future versus the risk-averse one
that involves all such debates," he
added.
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