17 May 2011
An independent Scotland could continue to share major public spending commitments with the remainder of the UK, under a radical re-definition of independence being floated by the Scottish National Party.
Nicknamed ‘independence-lite’ and backed by the party leadership, the scaled-down vision of sovereign nationhood is designed to ease public disquiet about the costs of full independence ahead of the referendum the SNP is committed to hold.
It might also have been put forward in the hope of healing the long-running, if well-disciplined, divide within the SNP on the approach to independence. On the one hand are ‘gradualists’ such as First Minister Alex Salmond – who see successful SNP government under devolution as a useful step towards independence – and ‘fundamentalists’, who insist that only a wholesale shift to independence will do.
Significantly, it was former MP and deputy leader Jim Sillars – a figurehead for the ‘fundies’ – who first aired the independence-lite concept in a newspaper article last weekend. He argued that continuing to share spending commitments such as defence and diplomatic representation could calm voter unease about breaking up the social union of the UK. His plan was then swiftly endorsed by the dominant gradualist wing, including by Salmond.
Even so, some activists are privately accusing the party of losing its bottle just when its landslide victory at this month’s Holyrood election affords it a mandate to be bold.
But the SNP’s growing credibility in electoral and legislative politics has not been matched by a corresponding growth in public support for its core aim of independence, which has been stuck at around 30% in the polls since the early 1990s.
SNP leaders know that public fears can be aggravated by opponents demanding costings for a Scottish navy or for 200-odd Scottish embassies. Opposition parties have also closed the devolution-independence gap by backing the additional revenue-raising and legislative powers in the Scotland Bill and hinting at further flexibilities to come.
Independence-lite is an attempt both to reduce the vulnerability of the independence case to spending hawks and to narrow the gap with rival propositions that might seem safer to the voters in harsh economic times. Internal SNP assent might be harder to guarantee.
