FAQs on how the SNP might be able to win independence by using their leverage in a hung parliament

About a week ago, I published a blogpost setting out how there may be a 15-25% chance of the SNP holding the balance of power at Westminster after the next election and being able to use that to win an independence referendum.  As the 15-25% estimate implies, I do not think that's a particularly likely method by which independence can be won, but in circumstances where the SNP leadership have needlessly self-imposed almost impossible thresholds that have to be achieved before any other action towards winning independence can be taken, it may well be that a hung parliament is actually the most plausible remaining hope for progress in the relatively near future.

Even having clearly set out that major caveat, however, it was perhaps inevitable that some people were still going to be triggered by a post suggesting that independence could come about as a result of the SNP negotiating with Westminster parties, rather than by some madcap process involving Barrhead Boy stripping English people who live in Scotland of voting rights, "Liberate Scotland" sweeping to a landslide election victory, and then a grand march to the UN to beg them to decolonise us.  Consequently I received some rather colourful 'feedback', and I thought I'd respond to some of it here...

If using the balance of power at Westminster to win independence is such a wizard idea, why didn't the SNP do that in the 2015-17 parliament when they had 56 MPs?  Hmmm?  Hmmm????

Simple answer: because they didn't hold the balance of power in 2015-17.  There wasn't even a hung parliament during that period.  There was instead a Conservative government with a clear overall majority.  Doh!  Next...

Isn't the Section 30 route to an independence referendum dead?

This is an odd question because I didn't actually mention the Section 30 route at any point.  Because the UK parliament is sovereign, there are two ways in which an independence referendum could happen if the SNP hold the balance of power.  One is the Section 30 route, yes, in which Westminster would delegate powers to the Scottish Parliament to legislate for a referendum.  But the other way is simply Westminster itself directly legislating for a referendum.  The beauty of the latter option is that it means in theory a referendum could happen even if pro-independence parties fall slightly short of a majority in next year's Holyrood election.

But as far as the Section 30 route is concerned, that's only dead just now because the SNP have no leverage to bring it about.  A hung parliament is one of the few situations in which they might regain the necessary leverage.

If independence happened as a result of a Labour-SNP deal to form a government, the SNP seats at Westminster would disappear on independence day and the government would no longer have a majority after that point, so what incentive would there be for Labour to agree to a deal involving an independence referendum?

There are two answers to that.  First of all, Labour might well still think a referendum is winnable for the "No" side.  Secondly, the independence process - not just the referendum but the negotiations that would follow any Yes vote - might well take three years or more, so the SNP seats would remain in place for the bulk of a five-year Westminster parliament.

If the SNP were part of the government at Westminster, wouldn't that mean they'd be negotiating an independence referendum, and a subsequent independence deal, with themselves?

I struggle to see why that would be any sort of problem - it would actually smooth the process considerably.  But no, any governing arrangement between the SNP and Labour would be unlikely to involve the SNP taking up ministerial office in Westminster - it's much more likely to be a confidence-and-supply agreement with the SNP remaining on the opposition benches.  When it seemed possible in the run-up to the 2015 election that the SNP would hold the balance of power, I personally argued that there was no good reason for them not to get involved in a full-blown coalition if it meant holding the position of Secretary of State for Scotland.  But they seemed allergic to the idea at the time and I doubt if anything has changed since then.

But any referendum won by negotiating with Westminster parties would be another non-binding referendum - that's no use!

This objection makes absolutely zero sense.  The only way a referendum can be binding is if Westminster approves that principle in advance, so if that's the kind of referendum you want, you can only get it via negotiations with Westminster. Any informal vote we organise ourselves, regardless of whether it's a referendum or a scheduled election doubling as a de facto referendum, would by definition be non-binding.  Its purpose would simply be to produce a Yes majority that would pile moral pressure on Westminster to come back to the negotiating table.

Didn't the Tories and DUP in combination have a Commons majority of only one seat in 2017?  (This excitingly left-field question comes from a controversial and increasingly far-right Somerset-based blogger, universally known as "Stew".)

No.  They had a nominal majority of six, but to all intents and purposes it was actually thirteen due to Sinn Féin declining to take up their seats.  No idea why you thought it was only one, Stew - you must have been using your wonky abacus again.

Wouldn't the Tories and SNP in combination have had a much more robust majority of 30 seats in 2017?  (This one also comes from "Stew".)

Wonky Abacus Klaxon yet again: the Tories and SNP in combination would have had a majority of 56 seats in 2017.  So what?  The SNP did not hold the balance of power at any point in the 2017-19 parliament, as can be seen from the fact that the Conservative government successfully sustained itself in office even though the SNP consistently voted against it in no confidence votes.  (Although there was an early election in 2019, that only came about because the Tories themselves voted in favour of it.)  But the idea of the SNP trying to win a Yes vote in an independence referendum in the context of them propping up a Tory government at Westminster is certainly an 'interesting' one, Stew.

And as for Stew's hoary old claim that there was a more limited one-off deal to be done, with the SNP agreeing to vote for Theresa May's soft Brexit plan in return for an independence referendum, I've debunked that umpteen times.  May wouldn't have been interested in such a deal because she was a conviction politician on the issue of "Our Precious Union", and she would have known it would be counter-productive anyway - her own backbenchers would have been so outraged by a deal putting the Union in peril that she would have lost far more votes for the soft Brexit plan than she'd have gained.

No, the only way a deal at Westminster will ever result in an independence referendum is if the SNP are able to offer a stable governing majority to a centre-left administration.