Scotland will go to the polls on Thursday for the election of a new parliament. If Prime Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s Scottish National Party (SNP) remains the largest as expected, the Scots may be heading for a second independence referendum. What the outcome would be is currently highly uncertain.
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In a first referendum in 2014, 55% of voters voted against Scottish independence. David Cameron, then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, stated that the matter had been settled for the duration of a generation. Two years later, it turned out that the institutional calm was only short-lived: while a small majority of Britons opted for Brexit, 62% of Scots voted in favor of EU membership. As a result, the question about the future of Scotland within the UK became very topical again. The independence movement took on a decidedly pro-European character and the call for a referendum was raised again.
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Against this background, the Scots will go to the polls on Thursday to elect the 129 members of their regional parliament. Holyrood, as the Edinburgh assembly is called, is responsible for education, health care and transportation. Other powers, such as economic policy and foreign affairs, are administered by the House of Commons in London. Despite consecutive lockdowns following the corona pandemic and a painful episode in which Prime Minister Sturgeon had to admit that her government “may not have done everything right” when complaints of sexual abuse rolled in against her predecessor and mentor Alex Salmond, Thursday’s election reverses the future of Scotland.
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Sturgeon has promised the voter a new referendum if her party is allowed to lead the country again. This survey should take place in 2023 at the latest. If Sturgeon cannot convince British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to agree to the referendum, she wants to unilaterally vote a referendum bill in Parliament in Edinburgh and challenge Johnson to challenge the bill in the Supreme Court. The chance that Johnson will allow the referendum to go ahead and risk becoming the United Kingdom’s gravedigger is nonexistent.
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If it eventually comes to a referendum, the outcome is difficult to predict. Polls show that the pro-independence camp has the upper hand, but the no voters seem to be catching up. With a yes vote, Scotland and what remains of the UK may be gone for years of negotiation. These talks will be reminiscent of the Brexit saga, but risk becoming much more complex: the interdependence between Scotland and the UK is much greater than, until recently, between the UK and the European Union.
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But before we get there, we will of course look forward to the outcome of the elections. The key question is whether the SNP will remain the largest party or will acquire an absolute majority. Currently, Scottish nationalists occupy 61 of the 129 seats in Holyrood, putting them a street ahead of the Conservative party (30) and Labor (23). The Scottish Greens and the Liberal Democrats currently hold 5 seats each. A new player is Alba, Alex Salmond’s party, which is also on a pro-independence course. He wants to form a majority with the SNP, but threatens to steal important votes from his former party. According to Prime Minister Sturgeon, “(he) is playing with the future of the country”.
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Due to the corona measures, the electoral campaign is largely online. The unionist parties ask the voters to take into account the economic cost of independence. According to a study by the London School of Economics quoted in The Economist, 60% of Scotland’s exports go to the rest of Britain and independence could cut GDP by nearly 9%. Since a new entry into the European single market will create a hard border between Scotland and England, EU membership will not be able to make up for the losses it has made.
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The SNP maintains that an independent Scotland will also be a social Scotland. The party has been pursuing a generous social policy for years, but now also speaks of a basic income and wants to check whether a four-day working week is realistic. Yet a self-reliant Scotland is in danger of having to cut spending and increase revenues, warns University of Stirling economics professor David Bell. But thanks to its renewables and status as a financial center, Scotland may be able to manage on its own, Bell says.
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