Scottish independence is dead… and good riddance

The dream shall never die” – that was the claim by former first minister Alex Salmond after the 2014 Scottish independence referendum. Ten years on, after the SNP’s shellacking at the general election, the dream of Scottish nationalists may not be dead, but it is certainly on life support.

With the SNP having lost 38 seats, and its Westminster delegation reduced to single figures, its much-vaunted claim to a mandate from the electorate for independence is over.

The failure of the nationalist movement in Scotland is a boon for those of us who want to move on to more practical, serious government across the UK – but it should also be a reminder that even the most impregnable political forces can be brought low, and sooner than might be expected.

For more than a decade, the SNP rode a run of good fortune that was scarcely believable. They reaped the benefits of unpopular and antagonistic Tory governments, ineffectual opposition and a nationalist movement that marched in lockstep behind one party. You really could not have asked for a better set of circumstances for the nationalists.

And yet now, their unity and their energy have been frittered away to nothing. What changed?

It would be dangerous to ascribe nationalism’s decline to a single factor, but step by step, it has become less and less of a priority for voters across Scotland. Whatever the varying fraction who might support independence in the abstract, in practice people care more about the cost of living, the state of the NHS and myriad other challenges. They want action on the issues which impact their lives right now.

There will always be people who want independence, and there will always be those who want independence before all other issues. The electorate as a whole, however, has now declared that it needs to take its place in the proper order of things. Voters want less of the blame-shifting and “symbolic” politics – and more practical action and localism. Less identity – more ideas.

Whether or not that lesson is taken on board by the SNP and the wider nationalist movement is another matter entirely. They are not really equipped to deal with a politics where independence is no longer the answer to all questions. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

That is why I was somewhat amused but not entirely surprised to hear the former SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon argue on election night that the SNP should have made the campaign more about independence. It was a bit like the pot saying that the kettle really ought to be more black.

Independence was “page one, line one” of the SNP manifesto, in 20,000-point font. It was “page one, line one” because one Nicola Sturgeon had put it there. I am not sure how much more central it could have been to the SNP campaign short of some Ed Davey-level stunts to raise awareness of their monomania.

The irony, of course, is that it is Nicola Sturgeon’s own failure to move on from independence when she took office in 2014 which led to this gradual disintegration of the nationalist movement.

Imagine that, when she entered Bute House, Nicola Sturgeon had told her troops that, however much she wanted it, the case for independence would be put on to the backburner. She could have taken on her own party much as Tony Blair did in relation to Clause IV, in order to deliver better outcomes for the people of Scotland who needed it most.

Instead, Sturgeon was unwilling to face down her own party and we were treated to years of campaign without end. Good governance in Scotland suffered as a result – but eventually so did the health of the nationalist movement. Nationalism remained mired in 2014 even as the voters moved on.

Independence is on its sickbed right now, and is unlikely to get back up any time soon. All indications are that the infighting that has consumed the nationalists will continue. With almost 40 MPs defenestrated on Thursday, there is a ready set of voices to mouth off against the SNP leadership from all directions.

That represents an opportunity for parties which reject nationalist polarisation – the Liberal Democrats and Labour – to gain more ground as we approach the next Holyrood elections. Even so, those of us on the liberal side of the argument cannot afford to be complacent.

Bad ideas never truly die. Liberal democracy, and the pluralist national community that this entails, is not simply something we have “completed” as a society – it is a set of values that we must renew with each generation. In the contest of ideas between nationalist division and liberal democracy, the liberals have the advantage – but we still have to tackle these arguments head on.

That is the deeper challenge to which we all must apply ourselves in the coming months and years.