Scotland’s High Road to Home Rule

Almost no one in Britain expected the electoral earthquake of May 2015. Twin shocks shattered expectations about the next government and left a yawning fissure across the United Kingdom.

The first was that David Cameron’s Conservatives won a majority in the House of Commons, after opinion polls had predicted a “hung Parliament.” The second was Scotland’s becoming a one-party state overnight, after the Scottish National Party took 56 of Scotland’s 59 seats in Westminster. The main victim was Labour, once dominant, now vanquished.

Labour’s unexpected collapse, under the leadership of Ed Miliband, was such that even if the party had held all its 41 Scottish seats (instead of losing 40 of them), it would have been doomed by its failure in England and Wales. Several motives drove Scots to desert Mr. Miliband’s party. It was not so much his policies; many of them were left-leaning enough to match Scotland’s tradition of state intervention and publicly funded welfare. Rather, it was a loss of faith in the Scottish Labour Party’s ability to fight for those policies.

Scotland’s High Road to Home RuleThe S.N.P. had more credibility after steadfastly blocking privatization of the National Health Service in Scotland through years when both Labour and Conservative governments were opening the English N.H.S. Scottish Labour, subordinate to its London headquarters, lacked the conviction to compete with the bursting confidence and energy of the S.N.P. as it promised to halt David Cameron’s austerity program and reverse his spending cuts.

The London connection was lethally damaging to Scottish Labour. Its first leader, Johann Lamont, resigned, complaining loudly that her party had been treated as “a branch office.” Then, her successor, Jim Murphy, made promises about maintaining benefits in Scotland — only to be brutally contradicted by Labour’s London-based finance spokesman. The S.N.P. used these gaffes mercilessly to bolster its claim to be the only “party of Scotland.”

Free of coalition partners, the new Cameron-led government intends to drive ahead with public spending cuts, repealing European Union-inspired human rights legislation and preparing for a referendum on Britain’s membership in the European Union. Yet Mr. Cameron’s first post-election trip was to fly to Edinburgh and sit down with Nicola Sturgeon, first minister of Scotland and leader of the S.N.P.

They talked calmly about transferring more financial powers to the Scottish government. But Mr. Cameron’s real need was to gauge how much damage Ms. Sturgeon might do to him.

In theory, the threat seems slight. Before the election, members of the S.N.P. thought they would hold the balance of power; now they are merely a powerful minority in Parliament. With Labour and the Liberal Democrats so reduced, where can the S.N.P. find the allies to challenge the Tory government?

A half-forgotten historical precedent suggests that the S.N.P. can make its presence felt. Between 1884 and 1918, a large bloc of Irish nationalist members sat in the Commons. Sometimes, they held the balance of power; sometimes not. But even when Liberals or Conservatives governed with a majority, the Irish party used filibusters and procedural tricks to press its demands for reform and, above all, home rule.

The S.N.P. invaders, though new to the Westminster game, are no novices. They are not from the promoted intern class that has made British lawmakers seem so out of touch. They include Alex Salmond, a Commons member before he was Scottish first minister, who is still regarded as a skilled political operator.

Mr. Cameron’s majority is small, his parliamentary party divided on big issues. If the Scottish party can enlist Tory rebels, as well as Labour and Liberal Democrat survivors, it could frustrate significant policies.

The S.N.P., though, faces challenges of its own. Ms. Sturgeon fought a fine campaign, but her nationalism is instrumental, not romantic — a means to achieve social justice and prosperity in Scotland, not an end in itself. Other nationalists may come to ask what the S.N.P.’s 56 members are achieving, if they win skirmishes in London but bring sovereignty no nearer.

After the S.N.P.’s lost independence referendum in 2014, Ms. Sturgeon cannot afford another. So she resists the pressure to set a date for a second referendum; she says it will happen only if circumstances change and when the Scottish people indicate they want one.

Her gradualism may be vulnerable to circumstances’ changing. An overwhelming S.N.P. victory in Scottish elections next year would create enormous pressure to put a new referendum bill before the Edinburgh Parliament.

Another altered circumstance could be Mr. Cameron’s referendum on British membership in the European Union, in 2016 or 2017. If the result was an English, Welsh and Northern Irish majority for leaving the European Union, but a clear Scottish majority for staying, a constitutional crisis would erupt. Again, Scotland’s government would be bound to consult the Scottish people once more on independence.

Breaking one union would surely lead to breaking the other.

The other trap for Ms. Sturgeon is the Quebec Syndrome: A national community votes for an independence party as its regional government, believing it to be the only party not subordinate to a distant capital. But when that party answers its calling and holds a referendum on independence, the voters narrowly reject it — only to return to the party enthusiastically at the next regional election. This dynamic — yes to “our party,” no to its core belief — caused a death spiral for the Parti Québécois.

Conceivably, this could happen to the Scottish National Party. Its victory this month was made possible partly by Scots who voted against independence last year but see the S.N.P. as sole defender of their values and interests. The big question is whether the contest between Edinburgh and Westminster in the next five years, which is bound to be bruising, will convert that group to independence.

For a generation, majority Scottish opinion was for limited home rule within Britain. But this election’s sensational outcome shows how disaffected Scots have become with British institutions.

Once again, Scots are governed from London by a party for which they did not vote and whose policies most find repugnant. Fostered by Conservative tactlessness and a new strain of anti-Scottish bias in the London-based media, the argument that real self-government may not, after all, be compatible with belonging to the United Kingdom grows only stronger.

Scotland’s nationalism is at the mildest, most civic end of the spectrum, yet the eventual emergence of an independent Scottish state looks inevitable.

Neal Ascherson, a journalist and writer, is the author of Stone Voices: The Search for Scotland.

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