There’s an irony in that it takes a move from Westminster to wake the world up to the fact that Scottish independence is more than just a wee glint in the First Minister’s eye.
The SNP has been in power in Scotland since 2007. It won the Scottish parliamentary elections for a second term in 2011 by an overwhelming and supposedly mathematically impossible majority. Its leader, Alex Salmond, has been showered in accolades, with everything from Briton of the Year to UK Politician of the Year. His Health Secretary, Nicola Sturgeon, has taken bold steps to eradicate some of Scotland’s worst health inequalities by introducing minimum pricing on alcohol and offering free prescriptions for all. It has taken a principled stand on free higher education for Scottish students and has been globally recognised for its world-breaking targets on climate change. It has consistently been at the top of UK opinion polls for good governance and leadership popularity and Salmond has strutted the global stage, attracting lucrative investment and wide-eyed wildlife with a reluctance to breed.
And all of this has not been for nothing.
Political opponents can argue the toss about the difference between populist and principled politics but by very dint of the SNP’s view of the world, the question of independence was always a possibility and a referendum an inevitability.
The First Minister promised a referendum in the second half of this parliamentary term. His party had already conducted one consultation on the issue of Scotland’s constitutional future with the National Conversation and produced a White Paper on the same. Its party faithful are working on a Prospectus for Independence which will spell out its vision for the future.
Hordes of civil servants, both in Whitehall and Edinburgh, have been separately working on the prospect of a referendum for months albeit to different agendas. And the Scottish newspapers have been filled daily with the drip, drip, drip of scare stories about how bad independence could be. So why is it that until last week, with the international media frenzy provoked by the Prime Minister’s words about the potential legal incompetence of the Scottish Government holding its own referendum on independence, it seemed that this was our own dirty little Scottish secret?
With little policy of their own to focus on, opposition MSPs in Holyrood have been trying to squeeze a date for the referendum out of the First Minister since his re-election last May. Former Labour leader, Iain Gray, sounded like a broken record on the subject and the obsession about process, timing, question, franchise has been interminable but still the FM has kept mum.
The UK Chancellor, George Osborne, and his chief secretary, Danny Alexander, claimed that Salmond’s prevarication about naming the day was costing inward investment although rather tellingly failed to say by whom and Michael Moore, the Secretary of State for Scotland, consistently argued that the delay was damaging Scotland’s economic future.
The SNP was accused of being obsessed with the constitution but it was every other politician that was talking about it while they got on with the job of governing Scotland.
There has been a growing impatience with Salmond and a political head of steam at Westminster that was bound to eventually build to taking some control. In the end it took the Prime Minister and his threat of legal incompetence to eventually lance the boil. As Westminster unexpectedly upped the constitutional stakes last week and risked the very real accusation that it is imposing a diktat on the will of the Scottish people, Salmond responded by asserting that the referendum would happen at a date of his government’s choosing, in autumn 2014.
Sooner rather than later, says Westminster, waving a legal clause which it believes usurps democracy, political mandate and moral decency. And it managed to unite all the main political parties against the SNP. Well, if I was Salmond, I would stick to my guns and have the referendum when I, as the duly elected leader of my country, promised and to hell with the powers that lord above me. For it would probably do my argument more good than theirs.
But this is not what really gets my goat. For me, it’s as if the last five years have been less of a dress rehearsal for this moment and more of a mime act waiting for the words to be formed.
This is the most important question Scotland has had to respond to for 300 years. For some, the answer will come easily but for others, it won’t.
They are not only answering for themselves, but for their children and their children’s children and Scotland’s politicians must do everything in their power to support them.
Last week, the rest of the world caught up with Scotland and yet we are still waiting at the starting blocks despite the head start.
Johann Lamont challenged Salmond at FMQs to accept his responsibilities as a national leader. And he should. But that applies to the contenders to his crown as well. If they don’t like the SNP’s vision for Scotland – of which we need more detail – then they have a moral imperative to articulate an alternative.
Scotland’s constitutional future is too important to be conducted like a game of tig so why did we wait until Westminster made the move and does that actually tell us where many still think power lies?
