Writing in The Herald last week, Andy McIver suggested unionists can kill nationalism stone dead by offering a middle way in a binding referendum.

On the face of it, it looks like he’s right. Any tasty-looking middle option tends to get selected against “extremes”. If it’s viable. And that’s the big problem with federalism, Home Rule or legally entrenched devolution.

Who now believes any offer, promise, commitment or legally binding pledge from a Westminster Government? The list of broken promises since 2014 is long. The biggest was the Tory pledge to stay in Europe. The most recent : Labour’s promise that HMRC jobs in Cumbernauld would be safe after a No vote. Pledge now, prevaricate later - it is the British way. No pledge from Boris Johnson’s government can be believed and every Scot knows it.

Take Priti Patel’s appalling plan to give “irregular” asylum seekers a one-way ticket to Rwanda, spending £120 million to deport vulnerable people without any chance of legal return, even though (or because?) 80 per cent of appeals against rejections currently result in the award of refugee status.

But it’s even worse than that. It’s thought Boris Johnson knows the Rwanda plan is unworkable and will be struck down in the courts and the Lords. But by then, it will have done its job - distracting from Johnson’s partygate woes, allowing the Daily Mail to reprise their enemy of the people line about judges, allowing him to attack “lefty ambulance-chasing, human rights lawyers” having a run-in with “unelected Lords” and thus “appealing to the Tory base” ahead of local elections. Never mind the terrifying spectre of deportation hung over every asylum seeker in the land.

Will it work though? A Savanta poll commissioned for the Daily Mail showed 47% for the Rwanda plans with 26% against. Of course, the wording was misleading: asylum seekers aren’t being sent to Rwanda for processing, they’re being sent for good. If successful in their claim for refugee status they’ll get to live there, not here. If unsuccessful they’ll be deported back “home”. It’s a lose-lose for people fleeing war and violence who’ve broken no law - unlike the Prime Minister.

But a Yougov poll shows that Scots oppose the Rwanda detention plans by almost two to one - the other “region” as opposed is multi-cultural London - but no other part of the UK actually supports the measure.

Which makes it all the more astonishing that as things stand, most of England will vote Tory again at the next General Election.

So there’s the second big problem with the idea of a tasty middle way offered by unionists to kill nationalism stone dead.

The Tory Party don’t care and the Labour cavalry ain’t coming. Even if Keir Starmer does manage to form a government after the next election, the odds are stacked against federalism being a priority, against English voters tolerating any curbs on Westminster sovereignty to guarantee Holyrood autonomy, and against Labour winning more than one or perhaps two highly constrained terms in office, before another right-wing Conservative Government gets in and undoes whatever what little Labour has been able to achieve.

And undo progress the Tories certainly will. Look at their disdainful response to Scottish Government suggestions for resolving the current clash of electoral mandates.

According to the Sunday Herald, UK ministers have accused the Scottish Government of playing “constitutional roulette” with devolution for daring to suggest five ways to incorporate the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child into Scots law - a move deemed beyond Holyrood’s scope by the Supreme Court.

No government seriously prepared to share power would treat a problem-solving move as an audacious bit of trouble-making.

But then we know the Tories would cancel the entire devolution settlement given the chance. So, let’s not be naïve.

What about Labour? No matter what its leader really feels about devolution, he must get elected by voters in Brexit England who show no signs of wanting to “give back control” to any other parliament - Brussels, Belfast or Edinburgh.

Will this outlook dematerialise any decade soon?  If not, the middle way will never get a government of any political hue elected in England.

It is nonetheless comforting for some to believe compromise can work. With Liberal-voting Highland parents, I understand the attraction of the Middle Way. But it’s an illusion.

At a weekend protest in Glasgow against deportations to Rwanda, two Labour MSPs made strong, impressive speeches. But former Glasgow Girl and SNP council candidate Roza Salih took issue with them, arguing that only independence will give Scotland a fair, humane and stable immigration policy.

It rocked the boat - but she’s absolutely right.   Many ex-Labour voters now back independence to create a state that does not and cannot ignore international law or eight mandates for constitutional change. That state will never be Britain.

Of course, in the next independence referendum, folk may still decide Scotland is better off as part of Britain. Warts and all. But please don’t pretend a Middle Way is viable. Please let’s not demean the debate with another fraudulent version of the Vow.

The Commons just doesn’t have the stomach for it, or the political ecology. 

Just as New Labour felt unable to undo the damaging privatisations of Margaret Thatcher, so a Starmer government will be strait-jacketed by the God, Queen and country-supporting nature of the English voters that elected them.

It’s not in my upbringing to be intransigent or closed-minded. But nothing will persuade me that the union offers better prospects for Scotland than independence.

I’ve seen too much. Lived too long. Felt appalled by “my” state too many times and impressed by same-sized neighbours with a fraction of our resources.  I’ll act on those realities when the time comes. No matter how glittery the Middle Way.

 

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