The Commons: Scottish and Welsh parties push for independence ahead of May elections
This May the UK heads to the polls, with England holding local elections, whilst Scotland and Wales each will be voting for their own respective devolved parliaments - Holyrood in Edinburgh, and the Senedd in Cardiff. As such, the nature of the debate has been somewhat different in both these regions.
Whilst various parties and commentators have generally attempted to portray the upcoming contests across the whole of the UK as a referendum on Keir Starmer's leadership, rather than simply being about local issues, the SNP in Scotland have explicitly portrayed the election on the basis of their calls for independence. Speaking at the SNP conference earlier this year, the Scottish First Minister and SNP leader, John Swinney, told his supporters that “at this election, we’re not just in it to win government. We are in it to win independence for Scotland. Our goal is nothing less than transforming Scotland into the country we know in our hearts it can be.” Swinney went on to add that a vote for the SNP “delivers independence. It secures a majority that will lay the path to a referendum. A referendum that we will win.”
With the SNP having been in power in Scotland for 19 years, holding a majority in Holyrood since 2007, SNP leader John Swinney has gone on to argue that a further majority for his party would be a clear mandate from the Scottish people for another independence referendum, after the last resulted in a narrow vote in favour of remaining part of the UK in 2014. Swinney has described independence for Scotland as “within reach,” stating that people in Scotland could see that the Westminster system was broken “beyond repair,” and claiming that “momentum is once again building behind the knowledge that independence offers the chance to escape a broken Westminster system and a chance to build our own country anew. The key question in May is now clear – we can either stay stuck to this broken Westminster system, or we can build a future beyond broken, Brexit Britain.”
Meanwhile, Wales, which historically has been dominated by Labour for the past century, seems likely to switch to Plaid Cymru, following their recent by-election win in Caerphilly and their leading over Labour in the polls. This may well mean that the cause of Welsh independence may soon be given the kind of strong voice that Scottish nationalism has enjoyed over recent years. Moreover, even should these parties not attain an absolute majority within their respective assemblies, as recent polls have shown, they are no longer the only voices calling for the different regions of the UK to be granted independence. The Green Party has also indicated that they would support the people of Scotland and of Wales having their say, describing the attitude of the Westminster government as “sinister.”
“What I think the Westminster Government should do is to recognise the democratic will of the Scottish people,” stated Zack Polanski, leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, when speaking at a press conference in Glasgow recently. “I think there’s something unstoppable about a movement happening in this country, and I think the conversation is starting to happen in Wales, too. They're a few years behind the conversation, but it’s certainly starting to bubble away. There’s only so long you can keep people in a system or in a process that is against their will before people understand – they get more resentful, more angry, more frustrated.”
The Green Party in Scotland have had a policy of independence for Scotland since their formation as an independent Green party back in 1990, campaigning for this during the 2014 referendum. Therefore, whilst recent polls indicate that the SNP may in fact fall short of the majority they had been hoping for, an alliance between them and the Greens could well mean that pro-independence voices still have the majority in Holyrood.
In light of this apparent surge towards independence in both Scotland and Wales, the Scottish Independence Convention and Yes Cymru, two separate groups backing independence, released a joint statement last week, welcoming the prospect of nationalist wins in both countries, alongside the dominance of Sinn Féin in Northern Ireland, as “a strong challenge to the British state."
"The cooperation between Scotland and Wales will become more important than ever after the May elections," the two groups stated. "The May elections can present the British Government with a multi-polar demand to reconfigure the power structures in these islands. An independent Scotland, Wales and England is a real prospect to replace an incompetent, paralysed British state and create new democratic energy."
The statement went on to confirm that the two groups would be "happy to support each other" in their upcoming campaigns, stating that “our co-operation sends the important message that we are not alone in asserting our distinctive social and cultural identities and our economic interests.
This has been echoed by John Swinney, who indicated that he would be ready to work with both Sinn Fein and Plaid Cymru, stating that the prospect of three nationalist administrations in Edinburgh, Cardiff, and Belfast would mean the UK would be "changed irreversibly."
“In May, for the first time ever, we could see First Ministers in Scotland, in Wales and in Northern Ireland elected, who are all committed to independence from the UK,” Swinney had stated previously. “That would be an absolutely seismic moment. For people watching around the world, there could be no clearer sign that Westminster’s time is up. Each nation of the UK, of course, has its own history and its own future to determine. But what we have in common is the desire for a new and truly equal partnership with people living across these islands.”
However, the decision of whether to allow a referendum on this issue, either for Scotland or for Wales, still rests with Westminster; something they seem set against for the time being regardless of how the May elections pan out. Keir Starmer had previously ruled out any independence referendums whilst he was Prime Minister, stating that this was not the priority for ordinary Scots, and to make such demands showed arrogance by the SNP. This line was echoed earlier this April by the Health Secretary Wes Streeting, who insisted that there would be no independence referendum under the current Labour government. Streeting went on to state that, "we had an independence referendum not long ago and honestly, let’s just think about what the UK has been through. We’ve had the financial crash, we had years of Tory austerity, we had the catastrophe of Brexit, we’ve had the war in Ukraine, the war in Iran, the Covid pandemic. I think this country has had enough of chaos.”
Whatever the results this May, it seems the most likely outcome may well be deadlock. As it stands, there is no way to force the issue, regardless of what Swinney and others demand, and with the Labour government already mired in crisis, there is little incentive for a change in policy on this. They have already drawn criticism from politicians in Scotland and Wales for their dismissiveness towards such calls however, and if there is indeed a win for nationalist parties across the UK, this will raise serious implications for the stability of the UK as a whole going forwards.
When governments in Scotland and Wales were first devolved by the Blair government in the late 1990s, this was seen as perhaps the best means of satisfying calls for greater independence, whilst still maintaining the unity of the UK as a whole. More than ever though, this seems like a genie that will not be put back in the bottle, and even if demands for independence can simply be dismissed after the May elections, it is an issue that may well prove pivotal come the next general election.
