AS Covid recedes from the front pages, the independence debate begins to fill the void. That there is a gap to fill at all is the SNP’s fault – they are doing so little in government there is nothing else to talk about. All the more remarkable, then, that the way in which we are starting to talk about independence so obviously favours the unionist side.

Nationalists want to talk about independence as an idea – as a loose concept to which we should simply aspire. They do not want to get bogged down in details. It is the poetry of the national idea that so compels them, not the prose of figuring out how to make it all, you know, actually work.

Many unionists would rather not talk about independence at all – they would prefer to talk about schools or skills or jobs or hospitals. But, when confronted with the constitutional question, unionists do not want to talk about abstractions: they want to focus on practical details, on logistics.

Thus, nationalists ask: should Scotland aspire to be a country that runs its own economy? Whereas, unionists ask: what will be the currency of an independent Scotland and, if it is to be the pound, how will that work, using the currency of a foreign power?

Of late, the focus has been less on currency and more on pensions and borders. That it was senior SNP politicians who started talking about pensions is astonishing. This is not fertile territory for them – the state pension would be a millstone around the neck of an independent Scotland – and the notion that English and Welsh taxpayers would pay for Scottish pensions despite the fact that Scottish taxpayers would no longer be contributing to the UK exchequer is for the birds.

And as for borders, I would have thought that more or less any other topic would be preferable, from a nationalist perspective, than to remind voters of the mess which leaving unions makes of borders. No aspect of Brexit has bequeathed such an alarming lesson for those who would see an international frontier separate Scotland from the United Kingdom.

Reading the commentary on the independence debate over recent weeks, one thing is clear. Both Yes-inclined and No-inclined commentators are united on one matter. The SNP have lost control of the narrative – it is taking place on territory that suits not themselves but their opponents. Yessers’ faces are furrowed in frustration; unionists afford themselves a wry smile.

I do not believe there will be a second independence referendum any time soon. I believe that the path to a lawful referendum has been blocked – at least, it has been blocked for any meaningful referendum. If indyref2 turns out just to be a somewhat glorified opinion poll, which half the population can safely boycott and ignore, so be it.

But the current debate about independence, with its focus on the practical realities of pensions, borders and currency, does serve one useful purpose. It reminds us that referendums do not have to be about loose or vague ideas. They can be quite different beasts – they can be about concrete plans. I wonder, if there is ever to be a repeat referendum on independence, whether it shouldn’t take this character, rather than be a re-run of 2014.

The 2014 referendum, like the Brexit referendum in 2016, was a referendum on an ill-defined idea. People who voted leave in 2016 knew that they were casting a vote to leave the EU, but they had no idea what kind of future relationship with the EU the UK would have. In or out of the single market? In or out of the customs union? The architects of the Vote Leave campaign resolutely refused to answer any such question before 2016. Take back control, was all they said. But control of what, precisely? On this they were mute.

Likewise those who voted Yes in 2014. They knew they were voting to leave the UK. But they had no idea what sort of future relationship Scotland would have with the UK. Would Trident remain in Scottish waters? If so, in return for what? Pensions, border controls, and currency are just three of the known unknowns in the great independence debate. We know there will have to be answers to these questions, but we have no idea until after it happens what those answers may be.

Except it doesn’t have to be like this. There is nothing in either law or logic to say that we have to vote first and discover only afterwards what exactly it is we have voted for. Remember the AV referendum in 2011 – or even the first devolution referendum way back in 1979? Those were not votes on vague ideas, but on whether schemes painstakingly legislated for by Parliament should be brought into force. Parliament figured out the details first and only then put the matter to the people, to say yes or no in a referendum.

In the event, in 2011 we said no to changing the voting system for elections to the House of Commons, so the relevant provisions of legislation were not brought into force and were repealed. Similarly in 1979 – the requisite majority did not vote in favour of the scheme legislated for in the Scotland Act 1978, so it was repealed.

This is not going to happen for independence. No UK government would sit down and negotiate the terms of independence with the SNP unless and until the nationalists had first won a referendum. But turning any second indyref none the less into a vote about a set of concrete proposals, rather than it being merely the expression of a preference about the idea of independence, has long been part of the unionists’ strategy. That the SNP have lost control of the narrative is exactly why this is now starting to happen.

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