Scottish National Party and campaign activists are planning a summer of action after Nicola Sturgeon announced plans to hold a second independence referendum in October next year.
SNP sources said that in the coming months they will revolve around “galvanizing the base”, with local officials tasked with drawing up plans to increase the visibility of the yes campaign and reach undecided voters.
The estimated 119,000 members of the SNP received a personal email from Sturgeon on Tuesday evening following his statement to the Scottish parliament, telling them that “the referendum campaign begins here”. He directed them to contact their local branches to see if they can help with the campaign this weekend.
Sturgeon revealed on Tuesday that his government has formally sought a decision in the UK Supreme Court on whether Holyrood can legally convene a referendum without Westminster’s permission.
But there will be a long pause in parliamentary and legal activity over the summer as the Scottish parliament goes into recess this week and the UK Supreme Court rises for its summer break on July 29, pressing yes activists to keep the momentum going.
The SNP and the wider movement are also facing major challenges to change public opinion beyond their activist base: recent Ipsos Mori polls showed that only 32% of voters wanted a new referendum. at the end of 2023. Yes support continues to hover below 50%, excluding the uninitiated, after reaching 58% during the Covid crisis.
Scottish democracy will not be “prisoner of Boris Johnson” says Sturgeon in referendum – video
The SNP, backed by its pro-independence partners the Scottish Greens, needs to push for support for independence and an early referendum well above 50% to bolster its political argument.
Sturgeon said Tuesday that if the court refuses to authorize a referendum in Holyrood, as many constitutional lawyers anticipate, it would try to use the upcoming general election as a “de facto referendum” on independence. She would claim that Scotland’s will had been thwarted by Westminster rules.
That message was marred by a false step by John Swinney, Scotland’s deputy prime minister, after he had to post a correction on Twitter on Wednesday to clarify what a pro-independence mandate would look like in the election.
Swinney told the BBC on Wednesday morning that the SNP only needed to win the majority of Westminster seats in Scotland to have that term. But Sturgeon told the BBC in a separate interview that they needed a majority of all votes cast in Scotland to secure that mandate.
The SNP came very close to getting a majority in 2015, with 49.97% of the vote, but has not done so in any other election.
Sturgeon’s announcement yesterday saw an immediate rise in online activity: digital channels SNP and yes reached more than 4 million people with pro-independence content on Tuesday via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok.
Party sources, who privately raise concerns about what they say is the “hostility” of conventional media to independence, stress their history in digital activism and expect social media messages to focus much more. .
The party’s pro-independence Yes campaign has produced short films about the mandate for a referendum and the Scottish government’s first newspaper on independence, as well as showing personal testimonies from committed activists and those who have changed from yes to yes since 2014.
A Yes spokesman said: “Yesterday’s announcement by the Prime Minister really turned the world’s attention back to Scotland. We saw a significant increase in online traffic and we have big plans: online and offline for in the coming months “.
Women for Independence (WFI), one of the most prominent grassroots groups in the 2014 campaign, is holding its first national face-to-face convention in Dundee this weekend, focusing on abortion rights and independence.
WFI is now planning a “big push” during the summer months, said committee member Suzanne McLaughlin. “We are targeting women who were in a bad mood or undecided in 2014, and also women who voted yes and immersed themselves in activism last time, encouraging them to get more involved,” she said. .
Sign up for First Edition, our free daily newsletter, every weekday morning at 7:00 BST
Pat Kane, a member of the Scottish Independence Convention and a veteran independence activist, said “the yes movement today is both a lifestyle and an infrastructure”. In practice, this meant that debates were already underway on great campaign narratives to bring people together, as well as tips for influencing conversations at a store counter.
Legal experts believe the Supreme Court will rule that only the UK government can legislate on changing the constitution. Lord Sumption, a former Supreme Court judge, told the BBC the prime minister had drawn “a very difficult path” for herself.
“The problem is that the constitutional relationship between England and Scotland is a reserved matter under the Law of Scotland, which means that the Scottish Parliament has no power to legislate for anything that affects the constitutional relationship between two parts of the Kingdom. United, ”he said. .