A lot has been said in recent weeks about the SNP breaking up the union. Nicola Sturgeon has said that if the UK leaves the EU, the important constitutional change this creates will legitimise another referendum. The Conservatives have been warning about the dangers of an SNP-Labour coalition. Labour have ruled out a coalition with the SNP (though not an informal agreement on a case-by-case basis). And even the Lib Dems have weighed in, with Nick Clegg urging Scotts to vote tactically (i.e. for the Lib Dems) to keep the SNP out of power.
In other words, the three main parties are all scared, or at least playing on the electorate's fear, that the SNP can capture enough seats to force a coalition partner to let them have another referendum, which they could plausibly win.
So the question I want to answer is, will this happen; is the union really under threat?
No, and here's why.
Firstly, Alex Salmond promised there would be no second referendum on Scottish independence for a generation. Now, you might say that because he is no longer the leader of the SNP, he carries less influence than before, or that Sturgeon can maneuver around his pledge because she was not the one who personally made it. This is unlikely to be true. Salmond will win the seat he is contesting in the Gordon constituency at the general election. Sturgeon, meanwhile, is not contesting a Westminster seat, meaning that Salmond will effectively be in charge of the SNP's Westminster delegation. When a party has only has two politicians that are known nationally, as the SNP does, it is inevitable that there will be tension between them (so Salmond will not capitulate to Sturgeon any more than Brown capitulated to Blair). Why else would Sturgeon have felt the need to say that she, and not Salmond, will lead coalition negotiations in the event of a hung parliament?
In other words, Salmond will be in charge of the Westminster delegation. He has also not ruled out (to my knowledge) becoming leader of the SNP in the future. What we could be seeing now is an SNP equivalent of when UKIP was led by Lord Pearson, but Nigel Farage was obviously still vocal in the wings, and returned to become the leader of the party.
Obviously politicians do occasionally go back on their word. However, this does not happen very often as they typically obfuscate and caveat their initial commitments to such an extent that any 'U-turn' is not an outright overturning of earlier pledges. And when they do overturn earlier pledges, they are typically not ones related to the entire purpose of the party. For example, the Conservatives may have failed to deliver on cutting immigration, but they never went back on their commitment to austerity, which they fought the 2010 election on. And fiscal policy is far less central to the Conservative party than independence is to the SNP.
Secondly, even in the event of Sturgeon being able to dominate Salmond, she will not pass an independence referendum. An independence referendum will only occur if the UK agrees to leave the EU. In January this year, a YouGov poll found that 43% of the UK public want to stay in the EU and 36% want to leave. Assuming, as is typically reasonable, that the undecided 21% are more likely to be conservative in their choice (and therefore chose the status quo), we can safely assume that the UK would not choose to leave the EU.
And this assumes that an EU referendum would even occur. Sure the Conservatives have promised one, but they will not get a majority. UKIP will not get enough seats to prop up a Conservative majority either. On top of that, many in the Tory party are against leaving the EU, including David Cameron. So if he has any excuse for dropping his commitment to an EU referendum (such as being forced into a coalition with another party, which he will be), then he will. And this all assumes that the Conservatives will be the largest party at the next general election, which is far from clear as many polls have found Labour to be leading, and they actively oppose holding an EU referendum.
To summarise; the conditions that Sturgeon has outlined for holding a referendum will not be met, and Salmond has said that another referendum will not happen 'for a generation'.
In other words, even if the SNP win lots of seats, Scotland will definitely, unequivocally, not leave the union.
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