Keir Starmer and the Scottish independence conundrum

In January, Sir Keir Starmer told Border Television’s Peter MacMahon that, look, of course an SNP victory in next year’s Holyrood elections would plausibly constitute a mandate for a second independence referendum. It might, indeed, be argued that the SNP have such a mandate already, there being a pro-independence majority in the current Scottish parliament, to say nothing of the next one.

Yesterday, in a series of interviews including one with Sky News’s Beth Rigby, Starmer reiterated this obvious point. There comes a moment when election results must have consequences and an SNP majority or an SNP-Green majority, next May seems an obvious time for such a moment to arise. This was not a controversial view until recently. Ruth Davidson, before she stepped down as leader of the Scottish Conservatives, allowed that a new SNP, or pro-independence, majority at Holyrood would clearly change the game all over again.

Starmer, it should be noted, does not *want* another referendum and not just because he’d rather see the SNP deprived of the parliamentary votes needed to demand one.