Policy Research Media Morhamburn

From a Scottish point of view, the fact that the SNP’s promised referendum on independence has taken centre stage from the UK conferences speaks volumes. Firstly, it shows how little else now comes out of these UK conferences that is directly relevant to Scottish politics; and secondly it shows that this issue features large on the agenda of nationalist and unionist alike.

The last war to be fought on Great British soil was at Culloden in 1746, where a decisive ‘no’ vote in the shape of defeat for the Young Pretender’s pretensions put an end to armed Scottish nationalism for good.

But as the great Prussian military strategist Carl von Clausewitz observed, ‘war is politics by other means’; and if this is true, then it seems the pieces are being set for what one side at least will hope is the last war ever to be fought by Great Britain anywhere in 2011.

With First Minister Salmond cast as the Bonnie(?) Prince, and messrs Scott, Goldie and Gray cast as the arrayed forces of the Duke of Cumberland, they will clash aggressively and surely conclusively across Holyrood, and across Scotland. The rhetorical battlefield of the debating chamber will be shrouded in the musket-smoke of half-truths, mis-truths, age-old arguments about oil and economic subsidies; about Barnett, Thatcher, and covered-up reports from the 1970s. Expect reinforcements from the south, as freshly unemployed political casualties from the 2010 UK General Election are drawn in to bolster their Scottish counterparts. And most of all, expect a propaganda war to be viciously fought out in the Scottish and UK media.

The prospect is an exciting one; a quite literally nation defining battle fought out over wee Scotia. And just as after Culloden the cause of Scottish nationalism was slain for generations, expect the political cause of nationalism to suffer a similar fate should the SNP-led nationalist coalition lose.

And if they win? Well, if the nationalist underdogs pull off a victory it will mean that in a couple of hundred years, historians will look back on the end of the first decade of the 21^st century as a watershed moment in Scottish and British history, every bit as important as Culloden.

And just as we have watched the opening skirmishes and shots being fired from the south coast of England, we will watch the battle unfold and conclude around us. As we approach St Andrew’s Day and the introduction of the SNP’s Referendum Bill, expect the phoney war to stop and the fight for Scotland’s constitutional future to begin in earnest.

Clausewitz’s treatise On War also introduced the world to the idea of the ‘fog of war’; the difficulty of having reliable real-time information about a battle, and the unreliability of intelligence and analysis gathered while it is fought.

Once Bonnie Prince Alex introduces his Bill that metaphorical fog will be thick and it will take sometime for it to clear; and only then will observers be able to accurately judge which side has won the day. But when it eventually does we will have a definitive answer to what has become the great political question of a generation.