Scotland’s constitutional referendum options

Much has been made of the ‘revelation’ that Alex Salmond is willing to consider a third option on an independence referendum ballot, it was a notion mooted some time ago and no doubt being reiterated now given the Lib Dems one day (behind closed doors) conference on the singular issue of where they should stand on the issue of the referendum, to be held at the end of the month.

I guess that the SNP’s current goal then is to attempt to win support in parliament for the three option ballot – given the near impossible nature of passing a two ballot option through Holyrood.  Of course attaining agreement for three option ballot won’t exactly be a walk in the park either. 

To pass the bill the SNP need the support of the fickle Lib Dems, the arithmetic would then be:

47 (SNP) + 16 (LD) + 2 (Greens) + 1 (Margo McDonald, probably, although who knows)  = 66

to the unionists:

46 (Labour) + 16 (Conservative) = 62

In this event I imagine we’re looking at something vaguely along these sorts of lines:

Should the Scottish parliament receive additional powers?

• Yes, it should be entirely autonomous, i.e. Scotland should become independent
• Yes, it should receive additional powers as detailed … elsewhere
• No, the Scottish parliament does not require any further powers

Others, elsewhere, have pointed out that it would be virtually impossible for any option to receive decisive backing from the electorate given that the vote would likely be split, with no option achieving a 51+% share of the vote.  This really beggars the question as to what the point of the referendum would be given the wooly nature of the results.

If we must have a three (or more) option ballot on the issue of independence constitutional reform then I would argue that it must employ the single transferable vote (STV) so that any outcome is decisive and can be seen to be decisive.  STV allows the voter to rank their preferences from most prefered to least, not a system I agree with given it may disenfranchise those who suffer literacy and /or numeracy problems.

My own preference is for a two option ballot, the archetypal yes/no answer to a simple question.  It does seem unlikely though that such a ballot will occur (given parliamentary arithmetic) and as such the SNP are likely to take what they can get, surely a flawed policy given that those who support the union will use the flawed ballot to keep the issue at arms length for “at least a generation”, a quote that yet may come back to haunt Salmond and his party.

The outcome of the ballot will therefore be hailed as ‘the end of the SNP’ and ‘the end of the independence movement’, whilst proclaiming that the union has been strengthened by devolving further powers to Scotland.  It may be that the SNP has become even more gradualist than most of us would actually like, would further powers be another stepping stone?  If this is the current goal then why not endorse Calman, unless the notion is that the SNP can extract some sort of Calman+ using the first genuine poll of independence to gain some more leverage.

Of course, as much as the unionists may disagree further devolved powers may well further undermine the union by increasing the level of asymmetric devolution of power that sees different countries and regions within the UK wield different levels of power and authority over there own affairs.  Would this bolster support for the English nationalists desire for a devolved or independent English parliament - a fledgling movement to be sure, but growing.

I’ve been asking the following question recently:

What is the point of Westminster?

I’ve been asking it a lot, I’ve been asking it of people who should be able to give a clear and decisive answer, people like David Mundell MP (Shadow Scottish Secretary), I haven’t had an answer from the latter and the other answers I’ve had have been fairly wishy-washy.

So if Holyrood pulls yet more powers away from Westminster won’t it simply become even more irrelevant and is this the real goal of the SNP, to undermine Westminster by delivering it into irrelevance, irrelevant to the day-to-day lives of the Scots? 

Alex Salmond recently made a comment about hanging Westminster from a Scottish rope, a poor choice of words perhaps … but what if the rope was Scottish devolution.