Here's why Scotland must seize its moment and go for independence

With the PM’s credibility in shreds, is now the day and the hour for Nicola Sturgeon and the independence movement to rally for the last battle to gain Scotland’s self-determination. Or will this historic moment evaporate in disappointment, as Boris and the Anglo-British establishment once again escape, Houdini-like, from their current farcical, self-imposed difficulties?

You might gather, from my tone, that I am a mite sceptical that Boris and co will disappear anytime soon. In one sense, this is the wrong crisis. The media frenzy over last year’s Downing Street Christmas shenanigans is hardly the stuff of real political drama. It has actually served to mask a host of more dangerous – if not existential threats – currently facing the UK and the west.

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First up, Vladimir Putin’s adventurism in the Ukraine (and the west’s overblown yet simultaneously uncertain response) threatens a major war in Europe. I think that trumps an office Christmas party any time, even during a pandemic.

Putin is a gambler and does not want open conflict. He is playing mind games, as usual, but that could go disastrously wrong. At the same time, the west is engaged in launching a full-scale cold war with China – the world’s second-largest economy – with absolutely nobody thinking through the consequences.

Vladimir Putin

Where does the SNP leadership position itself in this most dangerous diplomatic moment since the Balkan wars of 25 years ago? SNP Westminster deputy leader Kirsten Oswald used her question at PMQs last week to demand a pointless political (but not athletic) boycott of the Winter Olympics in China. The SNP have also aligned themselves firmly with the west’s confrontation with Moscow. By contrast, during the Balkan disaster, then SNP leader Alex Salmond actually denounced Nato bombing of Serbia, which caused some 500 civilian deaths.

My point here is not to ignore China’s human rights violations or to understate the political adventurism of Putin’s gangster regime. I find both regimes as detestable as I do US neoliberal pretence at representing moral order while shooting black people in American streets.

Rather, I am asking why senior SNP representatives think their primary role is to cheerlead a new cold war instead of using the moment to promote Scotland’s self-interest. Now, at this maximal moment of global crisis, Scotland needs to run its own affairs.

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Yet SNP elected representatives have taken to posturing – rather as if they had already won independence and were already Nato and EU ambassadors or Scotland’s representative at the United Nations. And yes, I understand the argument that by aligning Scotland with western interests, we are gaining a degree of influence that could boost international support for independence. It is just that I think this argument is wholly overstated.

For starters, when the chips are down, the US will not back independence against the wishes of London. Scotland does not count that much in the world. Secondly, and more importantly, SNP representatives are spending too much time being “good” Europeans and “good” Nato allies and too little time concentrating on confronting the UK Government in its time of crisis.

This requires much more than simply calling for the resignation of Boris Johnson, which was the SNP focus in Parliament. I respect Westminster leader Ian Blackford – his anger at Boris Johnson last week was both real and effective. But so what if Johnson resigns or is thrown out by the Tory backbenchers? They will simply elect a replacement and most probably a more effective representative of the UK establishment and the City hedge funds.

Ian Blackford

The only usefulness of the present Tory crisis to Scotland is if we use it to create our own political agenda. And that means accelerating the demand for independence.

But how? Through using this moment of profound weakness in the Anglo-British political establishment to Scotland’s advantage by making as big a nuisance of ourselves as possible. In other words, being as bloody minded and self-interested as possible and not behaving like well-behaved schoolchildren hoping teacher will pat them on the head.

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A Scotland vying to win its freedom has only itself to rely on. We should be angry, not play the UK establishment’s game.

Take last week’s Holyrood Budget. It wilfully reduced local authority spending in real-terms and the proposed wage settlement for public-sector workers amounts to a cut in living standards (as a result of UK inflation and higher Tory taxes).

Rather than present this Budget as some sort of victory, Finance Secretary Kate Forbes should have announced she was ignoring Treasuring financial rules and was going to borrow and spend whatever is needed to defend Scottish living standards. That would have precipitated a constitutional crisis, with Labour’s Lord George Foulkes doubtless popping up to demand the suspension of Holyrood. But engineering a confrontation on bread-and-butter economic issues would have put the blame for falling living standards squarely on the Tories.

This is the real crisis now being hidden by the Downing Street Christmas party sideshow. Instead, the SNP once again presented themselves as the party that “manages” economic decline rather than fights it.

Confronting the Tories openly on the economy – to the point of precipitating a constitutional crisis – provides the best pretext for launching a second independence referendum. Unless the SNP leadership is prepared to take the risk of launching a unilateral referendum then the entire independence project remains locked in the hands of Westminster.

With the Tories in disarray internally, and with support for independence above 50%, now is the time to outflank them by taking a daring initiative.

Sceptics will argue that such a unilateral move will frighten marginal voters. But, as the 2014 referendum showed, voters respond positively to being asked to make a binary choice. With the economy stalling again, with taxes at historic high levels, with inflation running away, with Boris being the arrogant fool he always has been – offering Scottish voters in these circumstances the choice between independence and the status quo is a political open goal.

Now is the moment of maximum weakness for the Anglo-British ruling order. The Old Etonian in titular charge in Downing Street has lost credibility with the Tory Party and English voters. If the Conservative’s lose this Thursday’s North Shropshire by-election, Johnson will be in even deeper trouble. This would be the perfect time for the SNP and Alba MPs to withdraw from Westminster, as a discredited institution. To set a proper Scottish budget at Holyrood that defies the Treasury – and demand that Scottish Labour vote for it. And to call a second independence referendum to defend that budget.

Will this happen? Probably not. Boris is a past master at muddling through crises because he is totally amoral. He will do anything and say anything to survive. The Tories will close ranks, one way or the other. And the SNP leadership will go on pretending that being moderate will win the day – someday, sometime, even if it takes forever. Which it probably will.

The present crisis of the Conservative government is the best chance Scotland has for seizing independence. Chances like this rarely come twice. It is now or never.