It will take more than a court ruling to stop Nicola Sturgeon’s dream of an independent Scotland coming true

The Supreme Court’s decision to strike down laws Holyrood tried to enact could prevent the country making decisions on sovereignty, but that doesn’t mean future independence is impossible

The only good thing about Britain’s current economic multiple organ failures is that it demonstrates quite graphically exactly how badly Scotland’s economy would be hit by secession from the United Kingdom. As has been well-noted, and not least in Scotland, much of the labour and product shortages, supply chain disruptions and other commercial stresses and strains in recent weeks have been caused or exacerbated by Brexit messing up UK-EU links built up over decades. Only now are some of the more malign unintended consequences of Boris Johnson’s half-baked deal coming through.

The analogy with Scotland is obvious, the main difference being that her economy (and society) is even more closely integrated with the rest of the UK, with linkages built up over centuries. As one of Nicola Sturgeon’s economic advisers, Professor Mark Blyth, remarked, it would be like “Brexit times 10”.

Although, being fair to the pro-independent Blyth, that doesn’t mean that Scotland could not in due course prosper mightily outside the UK, but to borrow a phrase, it does highlight the excruciating pain in the short to medium term. Need I mention the messy Northern Ireland protocol? Or changing the currency?

Which brings us to the Supreme Court’s recent decision to, in effect, strike down a couple of harmless laws that the Scottish parliament tried to enact to entrench human rights. The UK government didn’t object to their content, but argued that it wasn’t the job of the parliament in Edinburgh to be doing this stuff, and the 1998 devolution laws made that clear. The Supreme Court agreed. In doing so the Supreme Court also gave a strong indication that Holyrood could not determine the scope of its own competence and develop certain of the legal sinews of sovereignty. There was never much chance of the Supreme Court ever allowing a unilateral referendum on independence its blessing, but it seems even less possible today. Sturgeon has said she’ll hold a vote that’s going to be accepted legally at home and abroad, and the EU and the European Court, now the UK is outside its legal frameworks, isn’t in any position to argue the toss any longer.

So we’re back where we started, with Sturgeon gravely informing her parliament that, pandemic permitting, the second independence referendum will be held by the end of 2023, something that is not in her gift to determine. It’s no doubt infuriating to Sturgeon that it’s not even a UK parliament but an unelected UK court that has the audacity to defy the democratic will of the Scottish people and parliament but there’s nothing she can do, legally, about it, or about the British government’s refusal to entertain the idea of it.

Indeed, the Secretary of State for Scotland, Alister Jack, has ruled out a referendum for 25 years, his definition of a “generation”, and added that even then the opinion polls would need to show a consistent degree of support of 60 per cent for breaking up the union. He may as well have proposed a bill to grant a new referendum when hell has not only frozen over, but has stayed icily inert for a quarter of a century.

All said, though, it just doesn’t feel sustainable. There is a case - strengthening surely - that Scotland would be better off in the long run integrating itself into an economic superpower, the EU, rather than the new sick man of Europe, the English Tory-dominated UK, rapidly collapsing around us. In any case, no voluntary union of nations can be bound together, harmoniously and constructively, by legal edicts. Nor, for that matter, by adamantine rulings by a union government that lacks legitimacy and authority, and can’t actually be bothered to make the political, social, cultural and economic arguments for the UK behind some fatuous phrase about “the Fab Four”.

As Joanna Cherry, an SNP MP points out, the parallels with the treatment of Ireland a century and more ago are not encouraging. She has also pointed out that it was an unlawful Irish parliament that declared its separation and adopted its own constitution; and that even today Northern Ireland has a right to a vote on leaving the UK and joining Ireland every seven years, if it wanted it.

What happens if the pressure in Scotland for a vote on its future leads to government non-cooperation, to widespread peaceful disobedience and other claims or right? Johnson is a notoriously lazy man who seems to think he can just tough it out, and, as ever, he is gambling. Just saying “no” is not enough.