ANALYSIS:IN GLASGOW last Sunday, Scottish National Party delegates stood in patient queues to get into the hall to hear the speech of their party leader and Scottish first minister Alex Salmond. The numbers attending the party's spring conference had never been larger.
In May, the SNP is expecting to make major gains in Scottish local elections, perhaps ousting Labour on a good day. In October 2014 – Salmond’s preferred date for a referendum on Scottish independence – he wants voters to take the opportunity to end 300 years of union with England.
His opponents argue that there is no reason for such a delay. If the question is an important one, and all accept that it is, then it should be posed as quickly as possible, lest Scotland’s wider interests be damaged by uncertainty, they say.
If Salmond’s strategy was in any doubt beforehand, then it became clear on Sunday. “Home rule with independence beats Tory rule from Westminster. Any time and any day,” he told the party’s cheering rank and file. Faced with continuing cuts from a Whitehall controlled by Conservative chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne, Salmond believes that Scots will become increasingly discontented with the union the longer time goes on.
However, the polls, and they are obviously to be taken only as a guide, suggest otherwise. Earlier this month, figures from the Scotsman/YouGov survey indicated that Labour support has risen sharply, with the SNP falling.
Indeed, the rises and falls in the support for the two parties is equal in every respect: up, and down by seven percentage points for Westminster elections; up, and down by four points in Scottish parliament constituencies and up and down by a single point in the Scottish parliamentary list elections.
Questioned about their attitudes to independence, 32 per cent of people said they would vote Yes, 53 per cent would vote No, while just 15 per cent – quite a small figure so far out from the expected polling date – said they did not know, or would not vote.
Asked to choose between independence, the union, or more powers from Whitehall, 33 per cent said they preferred the status quo; 36 per cent were in favour of greater self-government – the so-called “devo max” option; and 24 per cent were for independence. Given a choice between independence or greater self-government, devo max leads substantially.
However, academic John Curtice of the University of Strathclyde puts the average support for independence at 40 or 41 per cent. “All the sound and fury over recent months has not made any difference,” he told a conference in Edinburgh last week
For Curtice, the key issue is what question, or questions, will Scots be asked to answer, since he says that a poll of seven polls puts support for independence at 29 per cent, while devo max and the status quo each have 30 per cent.
Given the breakdown illustrated by the polls, Curtice believes it is far from certain that devo max – contrary to the understanding of the issue currently shared by politicians and the press – would come first or second if the referendum is run under alternative vote rules.
Such mechanics will make the public yawn, but they are crucial to the events to come. And the Scottish National Party has form on the subject, since it has tried to play fast and loose with some of the rules up to now.
Though Salmond insists that he wants a simple Yes or No to be tabled on the union question, he goes on to say that in a spirit of openness he must allow supporters of greater self-government to have their say, leaving open the possibility that that question could be added.
However, his opponents say that he is trying to keep his options open, so that if he cannot win independence he can progress it to the point where it will become a historical inevitability. However, even the pro-union camp is offering greater self-government to Scots, for different reasons.
Some time ago, the SNP argued that voters could be asked to vote separately on the union or on their desire for devo max. However, if independence won 51 per cent it would trump any result on devo max, even if 99 per cent of Scots voted for that, the SNP argued. The suggestion was laughable, and has not been heard much recently.
Salmond first argued that Westminster had no role whatsoever to play on the holding of a referendum, even though the current law keeps constitutional issues as a reserved function for the House of Commons and the House of Lords. Here, too, Salmond has moved, though his changing position has not been much noticed by voters. Now he accepts that Westminster has a legal role, but he insists that a Conservative-controlled government can have no part in deciding on the question to be put to voters.
Here, the majority of Scots would agree with him, but there was concern that Salmond had reserved the right to decide on the wording of the question himself. In January, he said it would be simply: “Do you agree that Scotland should be an independent country?”
Now, however, the role of the electoral commission in Scotland appears to be accepted. While it will not decide the wording, it will carry out weeks of testing to ensure that it is as fair as it can be. The wording, said the commission’s John McCormick, will be sent back if it fails.
Though it can be reasonably argued that there is no way in which a question of such importance can be asked neutrally, there is little doubt that Salmond’s wording would have skewed the result from the off, even if Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson initially described it as “fair and decisive”. Newly elected to her post, Davidson has since spent time trying to extricate herself from that act of naivety.
Not for the first time in this debate, Salmond is a politician blessed by his own undoubted skills and by weaknesses among his opponents.
Mark Hennessy is London Editor