Labour's biggest mistake

“...But on the issue of the United Kingdom, if they want to hold a referendum, I will campaign to keep our United Kingdom together, with every single fibre that I have.” So said David Cameron the day after the election.

Music; beautiful, sweet music to Alex Salmond’s ears. The stage is set: let the play begin!

But first of all, let’s rewind to pretty well exactly three years ago (was it only three years?) when Wendy Alexander said: independence referendum? Bring it on!

Wendy Alexander was probably the last person with any vision left in the Scottish Labour Party. But, hey, she was a girl and a radical thinker and neither of those go down very well with the boys from West Central Scotland or with Gordon Brown.

Brown and the Labour old guard slapped her down. The idea that Labour should support the referendum and then campaign hard against independence was buried without ceremony.

As today’s much diminished Labour Party in Scotland licks its gaping wounds, it may well look back on this as the single biggest mistake it ever made.

At that stage Alex Salmond must have breathed a sigh of relief that might have been felt several continents away. Three years ago, in the good times (if you can remember them), there was zero public appetite for independence. Alexander and Salmond both knew it. But if Labour had supported the concept of a referendum, he’d have had no escape route.

Salmond would have seen exactly what was coming but would have been powerless to stop it. Labour, Tories and the Lib Dems (then untarnished by playing gigolo to the Tories) would have piled in on the ‘No’ side, aided and abetted by the Tory press. The referendum would have been lost, resoundingly and humiliatingly. The SNP’s flush would have been well and truly busted and independence would have been off the political agenda for at least a couple of generations.

Come the 2011 election, Alex Salmond would have looked like a complete loser. His political opponents would have mocked him at every turn. His party would have been riven with internal wars and power struggles leaving turmoil in their wake.

Had the intellectually-challenged mummy’s boys who run Scottish Labour listened to Alexander at the time it is my belief that they, not the SNP, would currently be flying in to posh hotels in helicopters and popping open the Dom Perignon.

But look at the way things are set now. It’s the SNP, not Labour, that has been returned to power on what has variously been described as a landslide, an earthquake or a tsunami. Salmond’s personal capital has never been higher.

Meanwhile, the UK’s recovery from the world financial crisis is being badly mismanaged by what appears to be a Keystone Cops tribute alliance of the Tories and Lib Dems.

Ever since Thatcher, Scots have hated and despised the Tories. And with good reason.

Towards the end of the current parliament, when Salmond has said he’d like to see his referendum held, many, many Scots will be suffering very badly under the UK government’s ill-thought-out policies. The reasons for that loathing will have been reconfirmed and David Cameron’s personal popularity should be lower than a snake’s belly.

As I’ve said here several times before, I don’t feel particularly strongly about independence one way or the other. I don’t value the Union but I also have a deep unease with Nationalism which I see as being just a little too close to racism for comfort.

In my view Salmond cannot win the referendum, but Cameron can easily lose it. Already there is talk of retribution amongst some of the more swivel-eyed in the Conservative Party. In their attempts to ensure the Union survives they intend to get their retaliation in first, possibly by introducing a bill to reduce the power of Scottish MPs.

Whatever. But this kind of thing will be grist to Salmond’s mill.

The backdrop is set and Salmond knows it. This is his opportunity. The circumstances are better than they could ever be for a ‘yes’ to independence.

And David Cameron’s pledge to campaign against independence with every sinew can only aid Salmond’s cause.