Think Again: Let go of the United Kingdom
By Sam Richardson
Did you know that the Scottish Nationalists have recently come to power with a huge majority? Probably not, given that we’re talking about the Scottish Parliament. But commentators across the country have been predicting and lamenting the end of the UK as we know it. I think the union, like the empire before it, has run its course. Let it die peacefully.
Here is an important fact: we never conquered Scotland. Following a crackpot get-rich-quick scheme in Panama where all the nobles lost their money they joined us. This puts them in a completely different ballpark to Wales or Northern Ireland. However much we may like to, we are unable to stop the Scotland leaving the Union if they vote to do so. And you can be sure the SNP will push for a referendum, and that a fair few Scots will vote for separation.
So why defend the union? It’s half dead anyway. Devolution has granted Scotland its own parliament with law courts, its own health service and control over income tax. In fact, the only thing they really lack is a separate foreign policy, which their first minister Alex Salmond is trying to create by appointing an ‘external affairs’ minister. They’ve even got different banknotes, different sporting leagues, and a different language.
What does the UK really mean to us anymore? It’s something on our passports and is wheeled out for royal weddings. Here in England you would barely notice if it was gone.
Scottish unionists have pointed out that devolution without independence has brought massive benefits to Scotland, a point I would agree with. Free tuition fees anyone? Not to mention much more investment in the NHS. But fees don’t grow on trees (a problem our present government has yet to come to terms with) and, due to the notorious Barnett Formula, the extra money comes from England. I’m trying hard to avoid satisfying a Daily-Mail reading, angry taxpayer, ‘southern softy’ stereotype here, but don’t you think that’s a unfair? I know plenty of places in London and the North-East every bit as deprived as a Glasgow slum. Non-Scottish residents are already being treated as second class citizens in the present system. Let’s remove this spending disparity by letting the Scots pay for their own services.
Scotland is a very, very long way from Oxford, both geographically and of course culturally. Their social issues and politics are very different to ours. And Scotland is following a fundamentally different path of development to us. While we have become a service economy, the Scots have considerable natural resources, including fisheries, timber and the North Sea oil reserves. Their political aspirations are also dissimilar to ours. How exactly does the election of only one Conservative MP North of the border give the Conservative-led coalition a mandate to govern Scotland?
The truth is we’ve got few connections left. We used to go up there on holiday, yet the substantially warmer beaches of France and Spain have tempted us southward, while surprisingly few Scots have made the journey down to London. The same situation applies to Ireland, which is fully independent. An independent Scotland, under EU law, would still have open borders, at least for us, and you would still be able to settle there if you wished.
Maybe it would be helpful to see Scotland as part of our declining empire. We unified in 1707, the same century in which we fought over America, discovered Australia and began laying the foundations of the Indian Raj. Since then we’ve lost all three, and our borders have slowly receded back to our own shores. Surely Scotland is next on the list?
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Stephen Gash
26/05/2011 at 13:16
Yes let’s end the United Kingdom now with a referendum in England on English independence.
Why should the rest of the UK hang around while Scots make up their mind whether THEY want to be in a union with US? What’s so special about them that we must be excluded from the decision-making?
Let’s examine recent elections in Scotland.
1. The 2010 general election saw no change in Scotland. Scots gave Labour a landslide victory and returned a derisory six SNP MPs to Westminster. In anybody’s parlance that was a thrashing for the SNP and an overwhelming rejection of independence.
2. The 2011 Holyrood elections gave the SNP an overall majority with just 22.9% of the total Scottish electorate voting SNP. This was the Barnett blackmail vote.
So, for the UK, the Scots voted for the money-givers and for Scotland they voted for the money-grabbers.
Before the previous Holyrood elections Salmond’s SNP put back the independence referendum to 2010. Then blamed the opposition parties for preventing one. Now he has an overall majority what does he do? Put back the referendum for another three years at least. This is just to give him more time to extort even more money out of England. If people are offended by the word “extort” then I would point out Salmond reckons England is “filching” oil revenues.
Devolution has brutally exposed that fairness is an English characteristic, not a Scottish one. There has not been one Scottish MP who has said that only students from England (out of the whole of the EU) paying full tuition fees while studying in Scotland is even remotely unfair. I for one find it incredible that students from England are not organising mass civil disobedience at the flagrant apartheid being perpetrated against them.
Add to this all the other disadvantages dumped on England such as, lack of cancer drugs freely available in Scotland, toll roads and bridges, abolished in Scotland, elderly people selling homes to pay for care, but not in Scotland, inferior cancer screening in England compared to Scotland, precription charges only in England etc etc, there can be no possible reason for England staying in the UK. It is England subsidising the rest of the UK, but receiving no benefit at all from being a member.
At the very least students should be joining with the Campaign for an English Parliament demanding equal democratic rights to Scots.
The only reason British MPs oppose an English Parliament is because it would make them redundant just as the devolved chambers have made them pointless in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Their opposition is more about preserving their grubby expense-claiming jobs than preserving the Union.
If students in England can’t see that backing an English Parliament is the most powerful political weapon in the armoury, then there is little hope for them. An English Parliament is the only thing that threatens MPs’ cosy existence. Well, that and English independence of course.
Fred
26/05/2011 at 14:40
Let them go?
They will have to be prised away from such a lucrative partnership.
It will not be Scottish nationalists that administer the coup d’état it will have to be the English and I hope that we give them the same consideration that the Scottish nationalists that infiltrated the British government gave us.
E Justice
26/05/2011 at 17:25
Let go and the sooner the better ,the Union is a goner,England gains nothing from it,quite the reverse the English Taxpayer is keeping it in the manner it has been accustomed to, time to go time!
RolftheGanger
27/05/2011 at 06:30
I agree with S Gash – but for completely different reasons. I disagree with his interpretation of the elections in Scotland.
Thatcher trashed Scottish industry (some needed it) but did so with such hearless enthusiasm that it killed the Conservative party in Scotland.
Labour have been given chance after chance to deliver promises and meet Scottish needs and aspirations. They won the last UK General Election in Scotland not as a vote for them, but as a vote against the threat of another Thatcherite London government again trashing the Scots economy. The tactical voting did not work. Scots got a UK government the reverse of their wishes, Labour are a futile broken shield so the voters are turning overwhelmingly to the SNP.
The UK government statistics are obscure and (many think deliberately) complexified however, in the interests of accuracy here is the opposite argument – that the reality is a nett subsidy from Scotland to the rest of the UK.
http://www.newsnetscotland.com/economy/861-world-renowned-economist-says-scotland-subsidising-rest-of-uk
http://www.scottishindependenceconvention.com/Blogs/NiallAslen-111008.asp
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/stats
Despite being an economist and economic historian, that is not the prime logic for independence for Scotland. As the article says the ethos, culture, political traditions, needs and aspirations of the Scottish electorate (Note the electorate in total in Scotland, not “the Scots”) are very different to and increasingly divergent from those in England et al. Increasingly that difference is seen as needing expression through a Scottish Parliament exercising full power and control of both internal and external affairs. Nothing to do with doing down England and the rest of the UK.
The economics of independence are being argued about primarily because the Unionist/neo-imperialist side have pushed “you are too poor/too small/ too stupid to run your own affairs” as reasons for Scotland staying in the Union. It is the classic bully argument to the ‘battered wife’. That is why that argument is rightly resented and resisted by the Scots. Reducing the complexity to who subsidises who is depressing, lowest common denominator politics. Both sides should be above that.
I argue that both countries will speedily adapt and be better of for dissolving the Union. Scotland, as the smaller, easier to manage and change country will be able to implement a faster shift to sustainable energy, reindustrialisation of high tech products and cash in on the high rate of technical innovation from research that does not convert to new businesses under the current regime. As a few examples.
England will have a window of opportunity to use the need for change and adaptation to redress severe structural imbalances. Redress the over-concentration of population, growth, investment, institutions, bureaucracy and expenditure in the SE. Versus the current investment, growth and development relative destitution outside the SE.
Balance immigration and population growth to natural and financial resources.
Shift the British Brainwashing Corporation to anywhere north of Nottingham and make all the staff stand outside and re-apply for the (much streamlined and better targeted) roles and functions, to deliver to and on behalf of the whole audience, not just the London chatterati’ favourite pc subjects.
Shift from prestige project expenditure – Trident, Dome etc type spending – to infrastructure and modernisation of the whole economy.
There are other suggestions, but these are examples of the issus that will not be addressed unless the centralist, hierarchical and metroparochial views of the self-satisified “London is the be all and end all of the universe ‘ brigade are challenged successfully.
Long may both Scotland, England, Wales and NI flourish as future independent countries!
Alex Tunad
28/05/2011 at 13:56
According to Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland 2008-09 – (GERS) – including a ‘Geographical share’ of North Sea revenue, the estimated net fiscal balance is a deficit of £3 billion. This rises to a deficit of £3.8 billion when a share of UK Government’s financial sector interventions is included.
Since it is UK oil, excluding North Sea revenue increases the estimated net fiscal deficit to £15.5 billion (including a share of the UK Government’s financial sector interventions).
Assessing Scotland’s revenue contribution is, necessarily, based upon estimates and “GERS therefore uses a number of different methodologies to apportion revenue to Scotland” (p35 GERS 2008-09).
Tony
28/05/2011 at 14:30
your hanging on too tight, how much do you people want to pay so the royals can feel mighty, they practically have to completely demoralize everyone just to stay relevant, just gauge how demoralized the people in the U.K. (see where it says freedom means 100% 24/7 cctv surveillance)
Philip R Hosking
28/05/2011 at 16:06
Good god! Scottish independence? Leaving the Welsh and the Cornish, not to mention the people of Yorkshire and Northumbria, at the mercy of London and its fossilised halls of power? Well I suppose I can’t blame them for wanting to leave. The UK was nothing but an English empire anyway. Good luck to the Scots, and here’s one Cornishman hoping to follow them soon.
JoolsB
30/05/2011 at 15:49
Totally agree with Stephen Gash. Why should England wait around to see if Scotland decides to leave the union or not which of course they won’t. Meanwhile England has to sit and watch UK taxes providing Scotland (and Wales to a lesser extent) with all the things denied to England. I too can’t understand why English students aren’t rioting on the streets regarding this blatant discrimination. Yes they rioted in December but that was against the charges generally, not against the fact the hike would only apply to them because they are English. Meanwhile, Scottish students pay no tuition fees and the Welsh students are heavily subsidised all thanks to the skewed Barnett Formula and to add insult to injury, it is only students in England who have seen their educational maintenance allowance abolished whilst it still continues to be available in Scotland, Wales & NI. It’s an old cliche but it’s true that people in England are beginning to realise the only thing England gets out of the Union is the bill!
Jamie
14/07/2011 at 16:18
‘Devolution has granted Scotland its own…law courts.’
I think you’ll find Scotland has had its own legal system for a considerable period of time…
Watta Tadger
29/07/2011 at 19:09
Well said RolftheGanger at least one educated posting on which way the money flows – actually for 9 of the last 10 years.. Well up to 2010, I dont have anything more recent.
As for Stephen Gash, he pops up everywhere spouting his bile, he’s an idiot and the trouble is he knows it..
American Airways Junk Mail Free Tickets
04/06/2012 at 14:25
Good info and right to the point. I don’t know if this is actually the best place to ask but do you guys have any ideea where to hire some professional writers? Thanks