Bernard Ingham: Three polls that will change politics, but do our leaders even have a plan?

I refer to the three polls we face within the next 15 months – the European Parliamentary elections in May; the Scottish independence referendum in September and the general election in May 2015.

All three are linked, though nobody is making much of it.

Indeed, the Euro elections are dismissed as of little account. Ukip will do well, they say, but will not necessarily repeat their performance in a general election. Voters will have more to think about when it comes to electing MPs rather than MEPs.

That would be true if we were not governed to a large extent by Brussels. Sooner or later, we are going to have a referendum on our membership of the EU.

The Tories at least are pledged to hold one before the end of 2017 after an attempt to renegotiate the terms of our affiliation.

It is a moot point how long Labour, as distinct from the Liberal Democrats, can stand out against public opinion.

This being so – and in the absence of an early referendum to test the water and raise the stakes – we need to send to Brussels (and Strasbourg) a thoroughly Eurosceptic bunch of MEPs.

Vote for Europhiles and you undermine the national interest in maximising our negotiating position.

It is said that Ukip is attracting votes from Labour as well as Tories, but if I were a member of the Tory Party, I would be worried about its performance in May. It is true that there would still be another 12 months to go to a general election, but any Ukip momentum disproportionately hitting the Conservatives would be unhelpful and contrary to the national interest in controlling the budget deficit.

It could so easily install Ed Miliband in No 10, with or without Nick Clegg, God help us, cementing in our subservience to Brussels until at least 2020. The politicians are curiously reticent on all this. But they are even more backward at coming forward on a Scottish referendum. Oh, everyone from the Governor of the Bank of England to the most obscure think tank is making life difficult for Alex Salmond.

But do we know the terms on which the UK would agree to a divorce from Scotland?

Have we any idea of what would be regarded as an acceptable price? Do we know how our borders and defence interests would be safeguarded?

We haven’t an inkling, even though the English have subsidised the Scots for decades. It is outrageous that our agreement to whatever is settled after the outcome of the referendum is taken for granted.

We are being presumed upon when we have as direct an 
interest in a Scottish settlement as we have in the re-negotiation of our EU membership. The silence is an abuse of power. Which brings me to the next general election.

If the Scots vote for independence – and to be fair I don’t think they are as silly 
as Salmond – what will happen to Scottish MPs, predominantly Labour, sitting in the Commons?

True, they were elected to a five-year Parliament but they will have no moral authority to influence British events from September to May, 2015 because their homeland has opted out of the union.

And what arrangements are to be made for the 2015-2020 Parliament by way of re-configuring the Commons if Scotland is no longer qualified to send MPs to Westminster? Search me.

Which is what the Queen must be thinking, as Whitehall dreams on. How does she, as head of state, work her way through this constitutional mess without causing offence?

When I toiled in government, I was only too well aware of the tendency to shelve awkward issues if they could be avoided. Least said, soonest mended, they hoped. After all, they might go away.

Indeed, they might. Ukip may blow it in May. The Scots may decide to hold on to nurse for 
fear of something worse, such 
as the EU.

But that could mean that Labour’s advantage in the electoral system, perpetuated by Clegg out of pique, will carry Miliband into No 10 in spite of Ed Balls’s continuing abysmal economic policy performance.

All this is in the hands of the people. But the clarity of the choices to be made over the next 15 months is in the hands of the government. Do yer know what yer doing?