Welcome smolins9@gmail.com
Subscribe
Your account
Site tour
Sign out
Scots who support the union will have second thoughts if England heads for the door
©Ingram Pinn
The other day Alex Salmond set out his stall for an independent Scotland.
It was a bravura performance. Had the Scottish people been asked
straight afterwards they would surely have voted to break with the UK.
Europe teems with politicians hiding from the storms. Scotland’s first
minister is that rare thing – a leader intent on changing the political
weather.
Britain’s Conservative-led coalition government is in trouble. Popular anger with ever-rising household energy prices
has marked a shift in the political mood. Capitalism survived the great
crash of 2008, but years of falling living standards have left voters
attuned to the flaws of liberal economics. They have spotted that, as in banking so in energy,
the market can be rigged to favour the few. They have noticed that
senior executives have been unscathed by austerity. They are fed up with
politicians who wring their hands. Scotland has long stood to the left
of England. Mr Salmond hopes to catch a rising social democratic tide.
More
On this story
- Grangemouth workers reject Ineos demands
- UK fires warning shot at SNP over defence
- In depth Britain in Europe
- Britain and France clash over regulation
- Salmond faces test on Scottish Yes vote
On this topic
- Salmond mediates over Grangemouth shutdown
- Hammond challenges SNP on defence policy
- CBI alert to costly Scottish independence
- Scotland independence threatens deterrent
Philip Stephens
Scotland will vote on independence in September next year. If David Cameron’s Conservatives win the UK-wide election in 2015, Britons will then be offered a referendum on whether to stay in the EU.
The polls would be separated by time, but the two sets of relationships
are intimately connected. Were Britain to fall out of Europe – and it
might – Scotland sooner or later would wave goodbye to Britain.
Received wisdom has it that Mr Salmond’s Scottish National party
will fail in its first bid for separation. A pro-union alliance of
Labour, Conservatives and Liberal Democrats has notched up successes in
challenging the SNP’s prospectus. Alistair Darling, the former
chancellor leading the unionist side, has proved a formidable
interrogator of the nationalists’ claims.
Mr Salmond has been put on the defensive about how an independent
Scotland would manage the economy. He wants to keep sterling, but is
embarrassed by the implication that interest rates would continue to be
set by the Bank of England in London. The SNP case that control of North
Sea oil and gas would more than compensate for the loss of hefty tax
transfers from Westminster is less than watertight. The SNP is hazy
about how it would run foreign and defence policy.
The calculation in the unionist camp is that such
arguments will carry the day. When the moment arrives, the canny Scots
will vote with their pocketbooks. Sticking with the union is safe.
Better to press for a new transfer of power from Westminster to the
Holyrood parliament. Devolution has already given Scotland a fair measure of control over its own affairs.
Mr Salmond might argue that this week’s threat of closure by Ineos of its large petrochemical plant
at Grangemouth underscores why Scotland must take control of its
destiny. Opponents could counter that the union with England provides a
cushion against inevitable economic setbacks.
The arithmetic is on the side of the unionists.
Opinion polls show that a substantial majority of Scots are unconvinced
of the case to scrap the 300-year old Act of Union with England. They
suggest barely a third of Scots favour full independence, while about
twice that number would favour more devolution. Yet to think the battle
is won is to make two grave mistakes.
The first underestimates the force of Mr Salmond’s personality.
When the Scottish parliament was set up in 1999, its electoral system
was designed to remove all possibility of an outright SNP victory. Mr
Salmond smashed the system in 2011 when he swept back to power with an
overall majority. Weeks before polling day, unionists had judged such a
victory impossible.
There is no mystery to the SNP’s success. Mr Salmond has discarded a
separatism once rooted in grievance against the English for a
nationalism that promises cordial relations with the rest of the UK.
Queen Elizabeth can keep her palace at Balmoral and remain titular head
of state. Citizens of an independent Scotland would be at once Scottish
and British.
Reassurance is twinned with confidence. In Mr Salmond’s words,
independence would be “an act of national self-confidence and national
self-belief”. The argument is thus framed as one between hope and
despair – between those who are optimistic about Scotland’s future and
the pessimists who think it must forever be shackled to England.
The second mistake is to assume that a No to independence in the 2014
referendum would be the last word. It would be followed by an argument
about the transfer of more powers and then, possibly, by a plebiscite on
the EU. Assuming the SNP had won a decent share of the vote, eventual
independence would remain an option.This is where Britain’s relationship with Europe is critical. A referendum that took the UK out of the EU would transform the argument in Scotland. Pro-union Scots would think again were England to detach itself from its own continent.
The case for Scotland staying in the UK is much the same as that for Britain remaining in the EU. Globalisation has eroded the capacity of nations to exercise sovereignty. Sharing sovereignty is a way to reclaim power. Nationalism is escapism that ends in a cul-de-sac.
Were England to cut itself off from its own continent the intelligent response of Scots would be to swap union with a diminished England for independent membership of the EU. There lies an irony. Eurosceptics say they are marching in defence of a sovereign UK. Nothing could be more calculated to shatter the union of England with Scotland than Britain’s withdrawal from Europe.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2013. You may share using our article tools.
Please don't cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web.
Please don't cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web.
Post your own comment
Sorted by newest first | Sort by oldest first
Preying on people's fears and trying to kill two birds with one stone is unworthy. Besides which it would be interesting to know what moral or political justification the author might find for it, other than the fact that it is the general line coming out of Fleet Street.
A pity since up to the last paragraph, one might have thought one was being to a fairly impartial and rational critique.
Scotland is a better run country than England. In almost all areas it scores higher. It is also more socially cohesive. By contrast England is a mess as demonstrated by any number of examples of maladministration.The irresponsible press, the unresolved House of Lords, the poor provision of affordable justice, the BSkyB bid, Plebgate, the voluntary regulation of the Press, the woeful condition of the education and exam system, the botched NHS computer ( £10bn loss ), the botched ID card ( loss £100 ), the disgusting abuse of the tax system by multi-national companies and household names, the underfunding of HMRC and inability to recruit and prosecute tax evasion, the disastrous loss of control of national borders, and abuses of immigration and social benefits. The list goes on and on.
When the Scots look south of the border, they have reason to wish to have greater control over their own country. However, perhaps the greatest loss England has suffered apart from the gross mismanagement listed above, is that England has destroyed in all significant quarters the social democratic model which used to unify ordinary people in their Britishness and sense of practical fairness. Scotland still has this and Alex Salmond knows this very well. The two countries are no qualitatively and philosophically different.
For a more apt exposition this article fills in the details at the webpage referred to below.
http://www.theguar...rendum-snp-economy
One suspects also that if there were a no vote in the slated 2017 referendum, then perhaps some of the egregiously un-British modes of government, then perhaps with time control could taken back of proper law-making and consultation. It might then mean that Scotland might happily choose to remain in an independent United Kingdom.
It is very hard with a straight face to describe Scots as a separate nationality - it was once upon a time (when nationality often did not matter), but these days? No separate language, no separate religion, no separate ethnicity, no very separate location (such as e.g. Iceland), a strong common set of experiences with other parts of the UK (various revolutions, empire, litterature etc) - so what is left apart from a unique affectation for grievances - which certainly Salmond's party is peddling strongly?
And how can Salmond be so popular with his own crowd - from a distance he seems to be about the oiliest politician around - and the various contradictions presented by PS underpin such an impression.
Finally, I wonder to what extent this article by PS is really about Scotland, and to what extent it is yet another article peddling the eu to the English?
Time for Lionel to clear out some of his old hacks and get in some fresh blood.