Hold out, Wendy

Maybe it was too good to be true. Seizing the initiative, capturing the headlines, putting the SNP on the defensive – Wendy gave us all this last week. The greatest shock of this proposal was the fact that it issued from a political party widely viewed in the media as exhausted and subservient to Brown’s half-interested wishes. The SNP didn’t know how to respond to it: they paradoxically refused Wendy’s olive branch of support for a referendum and instead noted the disparities between her position and that of Brown . This was going to be the start of the fightback. This was going to shoot the SNP fox. So what happened?

Not only has Brown publicly withheld his support for Labour participation in a referendum on Scottish independence before 2010, but there are now rumblings among Labour MSPs that the Scottish party should revert to a refusal of support for a referendum, and focus on the SNP’s failure to meet bread-and-butter manifesto proposals. But there’s no going back now, unless we want to guarantee ourselves no seats at all in the next elections for the Scottish and UK Parliaments.

Wendy intended to bring Labour support for a referendum, on the well-founded premise that the SNP would lose it. As Peter Preston argues, this was an excellent step forward, in offering to democratically demonstrate the strength of the Union, ridicule the SNP, and establish a new reputation for Wendy as a farsighted risk-taker. As Ideas of Civilisation points out, the fact that it was unlikely that a Labour referendum would proceed very far down the legislative process is beside the point. The key images to regain from the SNP were those of developing devolution and the democratic process; empowering citizens; and demonstrating assertive and innovative leadership.

Until we see some solid commitment of the MSPs and Brown (although this seems less likely in the case of the latter now), this unique moment and opportunity will be lost, and Wendy may have to resign. The Union is not threatened by this referendum, which the SNP will lose; it is threatened more by Labour continuing to be cast as the party that seeks to restrict debate on this increasingly salient issue, ceding to the SNP more opportunities to shape the Scottish political discourse.