Not a vote has yet been cast in the Scottish Parliament elections, scheduled for May 5th. So confident that a nationalist majority is already in the bag, however, the pro-independence campaign is already planning life after victory. An 11-point plan has been published on how to take forward a referendum. We are told that the as yet un-won majority the SNP expects to win will be evidence of Scotland’s desire to leave the United Kingdom. It shows – or will do, once it happens – that Scots want another referendum immediately. The SNP contend will be a democratic outrage if a British Prime Minister refuses to agree to one.

The polls suggest the SNP is not wrong to be confident; a pro-independence majority is what impartial observers currently expect too based on current polls. But is the pre-emptive reading of the outcome correct? In this uncertain world, the truth is that the picture in Scotland is less clear-cut than the SNP tries to claim. Of course many pro-independence Scots believe a 2nd referendum cannot come soon enough. They see the Union is a dead marriage. They therefore want a vote to confirm divorce immediately. Yet other, less certain independence voters are not so gung-ho. Some feel that the SNP should stick by its promise that the 2014 was once in a generation. Others, like former SNP MP Jim Sillars, do not think it’s a good idea to have a referendum any time soon, not when there’s a pandemic on. Many worry about the economic uncertainty and the social division that independence would bring with it, in addition to everything else. Indeed, it’s hard to avoid the sense that many are open to waiting a little, to let the dust settled, and see if something else might turn up. As one lady said in November: “I think we need time to heal. I think we should wait to see if there is changes to Westminster. We gave our word (on once in a generation) and said we will wait. Although I’m a Yes voter, if there are changes in Westminster surely that’s good for us.”

So as we head towards the elections, the question turns to how the UK Government should speak to these wary, sceptical voters. The Prime Minister has already made it clear he does not intend to support a 2nd referendum. If the SNP does indeed win a majority in the elections with a pledge to hold a referendum it will, as sure as night follows day, make political hay with that. So what should Ministers do to reach out to those voters in Scotland who are hoping for some kind of middle way?

A good cautionary tale from the recent past here might be the process that eventually led to Britain’s departure from the EU. Our decision to leave the EU was never pre-ordained; it was the result of a series of mis-steps by Remain-supporting politicians, and the European Union, which both failed to respond to the growing desire for real and radical change. The most obvious example came in 2015 when David Cameron undertook to seek a better deal for Britain and then put that to the referendum. As we all know, that renegotiation with the EU fell short of what was required. It failed the “smell test” back at home, convincing Boris Johnson and others to campaign for Leave. Mr Cameron’s offer looked phoney. Millions of British voters agreed, and the Brexit result followed.

This cautionary tale should be heeded with regard to Scotland too. Over the last two decades, Scots voters have been offered several renegotiated deals within the UK, from the delivery of a Scottish Parliament in 1999 to the extra powers provided in two more Scotland Acts since. These have been sold as a way to “kill nationalism” for good. But just as Mr Cameron’s tweaks to the UK’s relationship with the EU failed to convince people to remain in the EU, so the deals in Scotland haven’t stopped the appeal of departure from the UK too.

There are plenty of good reasons for pushing more power out of Westminster to the more outlying part of the UK beyond the M25  and, in my view, it’s a process that should continue.  But the clear evidence of the last two decades is that stopping the appeal of Scottish independence is not one of them. Just as with the Britain’s relations with the EU, the reform that’s required is deeper. Scots (and many others across the UK) are looking for evidence of real and genuine change from the institution that lies at the heart of the problem: not the distant and unresponsive European Union in this case, but the distant and unresponsive Westminster machine, and a political culture which – despite devolution – still centralises power, seizes too much control for itself, and dodges accountability, making many people in Scotland (and elsewhere in the UK) feel powerless, disrespected and ignored.

Unionists may not want to admit it, but this deal currently fails the same “smell test” to many Scots (as well as many people across the UK too) as Mr Cameron’s EU deal did six years ago. Little wonder their response to it, to coin a phrase, is “No, No, No”. It follows that if all the UK Government does in response is to shout ever louder about the benefits of the United Kingdom and warn Scots about the costs of leaving the British single market, then they risk repeating the exact same errors made by the UK establishment who fought for Remain. And if all they do is diminish “Leave” voters in Scotland, then they should not be surprised when such people dig in their heels and stick up two fingers. There’s a great irony in all of this. In this battle, it’s Boris Johnson’s misfortune to be playing the role of the pro-Remain establishment. He is cast by the SNP as Jean-Claude Junker, or Jacque Delors. He, more than anyone else alive in British politics, should be aware of the perils of being cast in such a part when there are skilful political campaigners on the opposite side waiting to take merciless advantage.

None of this is say that the UK Government should not set out the risks of Scotland leaving the UK; of course, it should. It should also, of course, seek to demonstrate the very real benefits of the Union to Scotland – benefits which have been so vividly demonstrated in recent weeks by the government’s vaccination programme. Only that more is required than a reheat of Remain style tactics from 2016. To continue the EU analogy, Mr Johnson needs to learn from Mr Cameron five years ago. As former Prime Minister Gordon Brown has set out in detail, we need to be prepared on behalf of the entire nation to reflect and look again at how we “do” Britain. We need to see a sign that the UK political establishment “gets it” – that it understands peoples’ sense of alienation from the UK and wants to remedy that. That’s unlikely to be through a formal federal system which, given the UK’s uniquely complex nature, won’t work, but by creating better inter-governmental structures, reforming outdated institutions, and switching Whitehall on to life outside SW1.

Many Scots, in my experience, would welcome a more nuanced conversation about Scotland and the United Kingdom than the Black and White, Yes v No framing of the debate as engineered by the SNP. They saw Manchester mayor Andy Burnham protesting about the centre of power last year and noticed he expressed many of their own frustrations. They accept therefore that this is a more complex picture than the SNP would like to suggest. The UK Government should “lean in” to the SNP’s diagnosis of the United Kingdom. It should commit to going out to listen to voters in Scotland – and elsewhere in the UK – about what they want. In this regard, as well as learning lessons from Mr Cameron’s failed attempts five years ago, Mr Johnson might want to borrow ideas from the SNP as well. Back in 2007, when it was still trying to turn the fringe notion of independence into a mainstream concept, Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon began what they described as a “National Conversation” – an attempt to consult people across Scotland prior to the publication of a white paper on a proposed referendum. Perhaps it’s time to take a leaf out of their book, with a new UK wide National Conversation to be held this year. It would acknowledge how the last few years have caused upheaval and uncertainty for many communities and created division across the United Kingdom. It would seek to involve all political parties, including the SNP, in setting it up – indeed Sir Keir Starmer and Mr Brown are already pressing ahead. As with Citizens Assemblies in Ireland, it might try to gain an understanding of that division and to discover the kind of change they want in the years ahead. In order to acknowledge the depth of the problem, it should accept that nothing is off the table, including – in time – the possibility of another Scottish referendum.

Such a UK wide conversation would send a clear message that the UK Government is responding to what is a UK wide problem, felt most deeply perhaps in Scotland, but certainly not exclusively. It would ask how, and whether, Britain can go forward, together. Many of us across the UK are looking to see whether our country is prepared to change. We’re looking to see whether Britain is a still a country that can hold such a conversation.

As we begin 2021, Scotland is a nation questioning whether it needs to become a state. The answer may lie in whether the UK state can show it’s still a nation. That starts not with phoney change, but by accepting the need for real and lasting reform. When Eurosceptics began their campaign for a new relationship with the EU, they settled on a slogan: “Change or Go”. Their point was clear and principled: either we had proper reform of the EU, or it was time to accept that Britain had to leave. The change offered was piecemeal, so we decided to go. The same message applies now to Scotland and the UK. We need to change our own Union, or else Scotland may decide it’s time to go too. No matter what happens in the Holyrood elections this year, that’s the choice on offer.

This article appeared originally as part of Policy Exchange’s new series on the Future of the Union.

Early on the morning of May 6, 2011, David Cameron lit the touchpaper that has led to nearly a decade of constitutional upheaval for Scotland. He signalled acceptance on the part of the coalition government that the majority won by the SNP in the Scottish parliamentary elections held the day before was effectively a mandate for a referendum on independence for Scotland.

He, like many others, believed that a decisive outcome to that referendum would settle the question for a generation. Little did he anticipate that his other ill-starred referendum venture would re-ignite the constitutional question and ten years later leave Scotland still staring into an uncertain future.

That uncertainty is not going to disappear any time soon. The SNP might so succumb to internecine conflict that the party loses its chance of a majority in this May’s elections. The UK government might come up with such a compelling offer to the people of Scotland as to reconcile a fair majority to a continued future within the United Kingdom. One outcome is perhaps more probable than the other, but neither can be relied upon.

This leaves all who crave some sort of stability in an unsatisfactory place, not least the world of business as it grapples with the fallout of the pandemic and seeks to get to grips with the additional burdens that come with the UK’s new trading relationship with the EU.

Many will be tempted to wish a plague on all political houses in the hope that uncertainty will go away. It won’t. The times are uncertain because too many of us, not just in Scotland but in the rest of the UK and much further afield, are out of temper with the world as we find it. Politics is a mirror in which we see our own discontents.

Politicians will of course play hard to their own advantage, even if that means equivocating on the consequences of the position they advocate. We saw that in spades on Brexit and we have seen it constantly in the debate on independence. We are asked to buy not only the ideological belief but faith too that in its realisation will come all sorts of improbable benefits.

Is it too much to expect of politicians that they have the honesty to build on the value of their core proposition, be it leaving the EU or independence for Scotland, without larding it with false promises? Almost certainly it is, which leaves it to the rest of us to be sceptical of their promises and plan as best we can for an uncertain future.

Earlier this week, Henry Hill delivered a robust critique of what he termed Scotland’s “devolutionaries” – of whom I’m one, I suppose. I work for the thinktank Our Scottish Future, which wants to see reforms of the UK to encourage greater co-operation across the country. These ideas were spelled out a few days ago by the think-tank’s founder, Gordon Brown. It’s fair to say Henry took a rather dim view.

Henry ended his piece by calling for ‘devocrats’ to admit our faults. The famous comments made by George Robertson 25 years ago, that “devolution would kill nationalism stone dead” hangs around their necks. Wouldn’t it show some humility if we finally accepted they had been flat out wrong?

OK, Henry, I’ll admit it – the devocrats were flat-out wrong.

That devolution has provided the SNP with a platform from which to push their vision of an independent Scotland is a simple point of fact. Michael Forsyth and Tam Dalyell were right. Alex Salmond was right, correctly seeing how a Scottish Parliament would provide the SNP with the platform it needed, and lacked on the green benches of Westminster. Devophiles can, I suppose, argue the counter-factual and talk up a world in which a Scottish Parliament wasn’t created, to claim that would have led to more support for secession. But nobody knows. All we do know is that devolution was introduced, has given the SNP a huge leg-up, and taken them from the margins of Scottish politics to its front and centre.

So if devolution was only ever meant to be an experiment in “killing nationalism” then let’s all agree it has conclusively failed. But, of course, it wasn’t. I was not around in the 80s and 90s when the campaign for devolution was running hard, but veterans from that time point out it was never pursued as a way to head off nationalism. Rather devolution was seen as a way, across partisans of all parties (including a significant number of Tories) to – as one campaigner puts it – “remedy the position whereby government played a part in public life never imagined in 1707, yet Scotland continued to have its own law but not its own legislature”.

Politics, of course, played a part, specifically, the desire on the left to provide against Thatcherism, but there was a principle here. It was that a nation like Scotland, while remaining part of the British family, should be able to take markedly different decisions from Westminster, and have some democratic accountability around them. The Parliament was created to fill that hole.

This it has done. And that enshrining principle of autonomous Scottish decision making and greater democratic accountability is one that voters in Scotland overwhelmingly support. Despite rocky beginnings, people in Scotland have consistently declared their approval for devolution. Scots like it still, and are proud of the parliament they voted for.

If democracy is about making people feel in touch with their decision-makers, and giving them a sense of accountability, then devolution has been a success.  Of course, the policy agenda should be bolder – and our thinktank is planning to set out our own priorities for action over the coming weeks. But that lack of ambition isn’t devolution’s fault, it’s down to the conservatism of Scotland’s political establishment.

So rather than bemoan devolution as if the Union is already a dead duck, I’d argue that the delivery and the development of the Scottish Parliament is something Unionists should be proud of. It has demonstrated we are a nation keen to reflect our multi-national character. It suggests we’re a country still trying to push power down and out to communities across the country.

The appeal of nationalism in Scotland – and the growing restlessness of regional leaders in England and in Wales – now means we need to see more work done to coordinate and manage that effort. We need to improve the governing infrastructure of the UK. We need to improve the relationship between the centre and the new devolved nations and regions, with new institutions.

This isn’t another “concession” to the Scots by “appeasers”, as we keep being told. Nor is it about handing more powers to the Scottish Government, as has been done in the past. It’s simply a suggestion we build a better, more responsive, system than the one we have right now.

In his piece, Henry argues that it’s a fool’s errand to seek to improve this system when you’re faced with a nationalist administration which only acts in bad faith. I couldn’t disagree more. Only working with devolved administrations you agree with strikes me as a pretty shallow form of Unionism. It’s precisely by seeking to work better with your opponents in Edinburgh or Cardiff that the government of the UK demonstrates its good faith in the Union, and its commitment to making it work.

Nor is it just a matter of constitutional good practice. Better working arrangements on, for example, vaccine delivery and testing matters to me and my family in Glasgow a great deal just now.

The United Kingdom should be proud of the devolved institutions it has created across the nation over the last 25 years. We should always be seeking to improve the way our country is run, with better mechanisms to promote cooperation, more structured ways to resolve disputes, and a more inclusive political system. None of us has a monopoly of wisdom on how this might be achieved, hence the reason a Commission on the Union should be convened.

The blame game is a backward-looking and ultimately futile sport. Let’s instead imagine a new British way forward.