EVENTS in Catalonia are opening fundamental questions of statehood and sovereignty. In this small corner of Europe, the Spanish state has cracked down on newspapers, banned meetings, seized millions of ballot papers and arrested local politicians. Essentially, Spain is assuming emergency, near-dictatorial powers. All reasonable people should be appalled.

This struggle isn’t really about the end goal of independence. Indeed, only 41 percent of Catalans want that. But more than four in five want the right to a vote, and understanding the fine line between the two positions is everything if you truly accept the right of nations to self-determination. The regional president couldn’t be clearer on this: the referendum “is not about independence, it is about fundamental civil rights, and the universal right of self-determination”.

Scottish MSPs, including Liberals and Labour, have signed a letter to Spanish President Mariano Rajoy opposing the crackdown and defending the referendum on principle. This, belatedly, showed some welcome leadership. I was disappointed, although not surprised, to find some supposedly socialist activists taking to social media to declare that “both sides are as bad as each other”.

This was acid tribalism, with a strong hint of bigger-state nationalism. It certainly has nothing to do with internationalist values.

The right to self-determination categorically does not mean that all peoples should form their own nation state. It doesn’t mean that every nationalist movement is morally vindicated by definition.

It only gives the right to choose. If a people consider themselves a nation, and if the international community also regards them as one, self-determination means that choice of statehood comes down to the people’s vote. Morally, this right should always cancel out the legal authority of the state they happen to belong to.

One common criticism is that nationalists will always want more referendums, leading to a “neverendum” scenario. The SNP’s recent problems show why that won’t be the case. If the people don’t want referendums, they will make their feelings known. In Catalonia, the mandate for a constitutional vote grew because the Spanish state viciously repressed the democracy of the regional parliament.

Spain’s state of emergency comes, ironically, as the principles of national rights celebrate their centenary. They were outlined in the circumstances of World War I and the Russian Revolution, first by Lenin and then by Woodrow Wilson. For both socialists and liberals, they should be sacred. But they are also tactically astute.

A left-wing government that represses small nations in favour of high-minded principles will always find itself punished. History has proven that time after time. Worse, abstract internationalism can quickly lead the most moral people to the crassest immorality, leaving them on the wrong side of history. It led many of the greatest Scottish Labour MPs to support the British Empire in its most decadent phase. It has led liberals to support American imperialism in the Middle East, or to dismiss the human rights of the Palestinians.

Events in Catalonia hint at unresolved questions in Scotland. Any many of the strange opinions that have emerged over Spain reflect a chasm of leadership when it comes to the politics of the state.

Labour still has a fundamentally conflicted attitude to state power. Scotland is symptomatic of it. Sometimes, they argue that the 2014 No vote expressed the sovereign will of the Scottish people to remain in the UK. Very well – but who decides when this mandate expires? The authority, at present, resides with the UK Parliament. When and if another referendum happens, it will come down to when the UK Government considers it tactically astute.

Alternatively, the judgment should be based in the Scottish Parliament. If the parliamentary majority has a mandate for a referendum, that should be honoured, and Holyrood should host it whenever it deems desirable. Labour might object that the Scottish Parliament’s arithmetic is a poor reflection of popular sentiment. But this is a shoddy excuse. Labour invented the formula for Holyrood representation, specifically to rule out a nationalist majority. Moreover, the system in Scotland, for its flaws, is clearly a hundred times better than the Westminster model.

This small nuance matters. On it rests Labour’s commitment or not to national self-determination.

In past months, Labour have been able to evade this. Recent elections have shown that a majority of Scotland isn’t ready for a referendum. But that could change quickly, because things are precariously balanced. It would only take a comparatively small change in public attitudes to tip the balance and create a majority for indyref2. If the Scottish Parliament voted for it, would a UK Government, driven demented by its own nationalism, resort to Spanish-style measures to repress it? If so, how would Labour respond?

The answer is, we don’t know. Maybe they’d side with the UK Parliament, maybe with the Scottish people. It would likely prompt an internal struggle for power, because there’s no consensus. Until they get this sorted, there’s every likelihood that they’ll end up on the wrong side of history, condemning both sides equally – the highway to amorality dressed up as flaccid moralism. Poverty, austerity, and capitalism are all fundamental questions. But so is the state. Ignoring it isn’t an option.