A FORMER Labour government adviser has claimed that independence is “deferred rather than defeated” after the results of the General Election.
David Clark, who was a foreign office adviser to Robin Cook – foreign secretary in Tony Blair’s government – said the results of July 4 did not seem to suggest that the UK would not “break up in the next 10-20 years”.
It comes after Scottish LibDem MP and former Scottish secretary Alistair Carmichael wrote in The Independent that “independence is on its sickbed right now, and is unlikely to get back up any time soon”.
“After the SNP’s shellacking at the General Election, the dream of Scottish nationalists may not be dead, but it is certainly on life support,” Carmichael (below) said.
The claims have been rebutted by figures such as Clark, who pointed out that although Labour won more seats in Scotland, the main opposition came from pro-independence parties.
“This boast will age badly, I suspect,” Clark said in response to Carmichael’s comments.
“Beneath the headline figures, the politics of England and Scotland continued to diverge last week, leading me to conclude that independence has been deferred rather than defeated.
"On the surface of it, the results north and south of the border looked strikingly similar. Labour made big gains in seats on similar shares of the vote - 35.3% in Scotland and 34.4% in England.
“However, Labour has never increased its vote share at the end of a full term in office.”
Clark added: “I hope I’m wrong, but experience suggests that this is Labour’s peak for the current political cycle, so we need to consider what the downswing of the cycle will look like.
“Here the figures are stark. In England, the combined Tory/Reform vote was 41.2%, leaving the populist right as by far the most likely focus of serious opposition to Labour when it emerges as a vaguely united force.
“In Scotland, the combined Tory/Reform vote was only 19.7% and the main non-Labour force was a pro-independence block polling 34.3%. With support for independence persisting at much higher rates than that, the likely shape of future opposition to Labour in Scotland seems clear."
Clark said that “although Scotland and England made what appeared to be very similar choices about who should govern”, they made “radically different choices about who should oppose”, adding that this lays the groundwork for “an even sharper divergence between the two nations in the years ahead”.
“It would be an error to think of these differences in voting behaviour as some kind of quirk,” Clark continued.
“They reflect the fact that voters in Scotland and England now see the world, and their place in it, in fundamentally different and irreconcilable terms.
“This is illustrated by the fact that the SNP campaigned for EU membership and a liberal immigration policy knowing them to be in line with Scottish opinion. These views remain taboo in England, hence Labour’s decision to tack close to the populist right position on both.
“I’m not a determinist. Perhaps Labour can engineer a realignment that will confound precedent and render these assumptions irrelevant. I’d like to think so, but I see little in its declared programme to believe it.
“I still expect the UK to break up in the next 10-20 years.”
