So no separation!
I’ve waited a couple of days
before trying to compose my reactions. Time to let the dust settle – and
identify the best of others’ responses…
In the meantime I updated the preface of my little E-book,
changed its title to “The Scottish Argument”, had it printed and bound (back in
Bucharest) and read it over in the manner only a physical book allows. Forthcoming
months will, inevitably, see several books about the campaign but they will be
for a British audience. And I think it would be good to try to put the Scottish
debate in the wider context of discussions about democracy and good government
in Europe…… So I may well have a stab at that in the months to come.
It
was only as I discussed the result with my Romanian partner that I realised how
few had been the respected Scottish voices speaking reasonably for continued
union. Our cultural elite supported independence so strongly that the minority
who were for continued union seemed to have lost its voice – JK Rowling’s was
an exceptional voice. Gordon Brown seem to have found his voice only in the
last few weeks – until then only a couple of left politicians had dared to take
to the streets and halls with arguments for continued union. The business
sector also seemed cowed – although Tom Hunter had a Foundation through which
some balanced papers were published.
The media was for union and increasingly attracted nationalist fury. And
the academic community by and large maintained its academic distance. Religion
is no longer the force it was – although the Catholic Church had noticeably
softened its anti-independence stance…
Sunday gives time to read the Sunday newspapers -
and get a bit of distance via its essayists. But first let me pay tribute to The Guardian which had a very good campaign. For me it was essential reading - with articles from both sides.
Andrew Rawnsley, the Guardian's political correspondent, has the most measured piece in today's paper. But two of the big Scottish names –
novelist Irvine Welsh and intellectual Neal Ascherson – also contribute powerfl bits of writing. Both
were “yes” supporters – Welsh more recently but it is his article which has the angrier tone. It also, to my mind, gives a better sense of alternative scenarios than I’ve so
far seen (apart from Rawnsley). His argument, basically, is that
·
It
is not just the Scots who have been activated by this campaign – but many
people in the rest of the UK (rUK)
·
The
British Prime Minister – who was panicked into promises in the last week of the
campaign - will be unable to deliver a credible package which will satisfy both
Scots and English
·
The
Labour party lost most credibility in the campaign – they were exposed for many
undecided as the neo-liberals they are
·
The
campaign allowed the genie out of the bottle. Apathy and cynicism have been
rampant in Britain since New Labour disappointed so many hopes – the Scottish
campaign has shown a new spirit and the democratic urge will not be repressed
There was
much talk of how ineffective the no campaign was. In some ways this is unfair:
you can only go with what you've got and they simply weren't packing much heat.
The union they strove to protect was based on industry and empire and the
esprit de corps from both world wars, and you can't maintain a political
relationship on declining historical sentiment alone. With the big, inclusive
postwar building blocks of the welfare state and the NHS being ripped apart by
both major parties there's zero currency in campaigning on that, especially as
they're only being preserved in Scotland by the devolved
parliament. The boast of using oil revenues to fund privatisation projects and
bail out bankers for their avarice and incompetence is never going to be a vote
winner. Going negative was the only option.
Neal Ascherson’s article emphasises the last point and then tries to capture what actually happened in
the last week of the campaign -
So this long
campaign has changed Scotland irrevocably. Campaign? I have never seen one like
this, in which it wasn't politicians persuading people how to vote, but people
persuading politicians. At some point in late spring, the official yes campaign
lost control as spontaneous small groups set themselves up and breakfast
tables, lounge bars, bus top decks and hospital canteens began to talk
politics. What sort of Scotland? Why do we tolerate this or that? Now, in
Denmark they do it this way…
It was at this
moment – 7 September – that the famous poll suggesting a yes victory appeared.
Ironically, this may have ensured the yes defeat. It wasn't so much the
scrambling panic at Westminster, the stampede of cabinet ministers and MPs for
seats on the next train north out of Euston. It was the spontaneous initiative
of thousands of Scottish voters, who realised that they could be out of the
United Kingdom within days unless they took action. "No thanks"
posters appeared everywhere in windows in the last week of the campaign and the
undecided, suddenly under pressure from anxious relations and colleagues, began
to veer towards a decisive no.
The weakness
of the unionists, and of their Better Together outfit, was terrifying.
Defenders of the union from south of the border almost all did their cause more
harm than good, either by displaying ignorance about Scotland that made
audiences laugh, or by imperial bullying. George Osborne's threat to throw the
Scots out of the common currency if they dared to vote yes was perceived as
shameless bluff by most Scottish viewers and nearly cost him the referendum.
The Better
Together leadership, including Alistair Darling, relied on negativity and fear,
issuing constant scare-statements that often proved to be misleading or even
mendacious. Worse, they seemed unable to set the union to music, even though
some of their unofficial followers could make a positive, emotional case for
"Britain" which didn't have to rely on either "glorious
history" or fancied threats from "forces of darkness". The no
case, in other words, won by default; yes ran out of steam and became
vulnerable almost within sight of triumph.
Welsh looks at the some of the political
consequences already taking shape -
The
referendum was a disaster for Cameron (UK PM) personally, who almost lost the
union. The Tories, with enough self-awareness to realise how detested they are
in Scotland, stood aside to let Labour run the show on the basis they could
deliver a convincing no vote. But for Labour, the outcome was at least as bad;
when the dust settles they will be seen, probably on both sides of the border,
to have used their power and influence against the aspiration towards
democracy. Labour voters caught this ugly whiff, the number of them supporting
independence doubling in a month from 17% to 35%. In the mid-term, the
leadership may have simply acted as recruiting sergeants for the SNP.
As Cameron
was at first absent and uninterested, then finally fearful, so the Leader of
the Labour opposition looked just as ineffective and totally lost during this
campaign. He became a figure of contempt in Scotland: Labour leaders have
generally needed a period in office in order to achieve that distinction.
As social
media came of age in a political campaign in these islands, the rest of the establishment will be for
ever tarnished in the eyes of a generation of Scots. The senior officials of
banks and supermarkets dancing to Whitehall's tune, their nonsense disseminated
by the London press, was not unexpected, but the BBC extensively answered any
questions about their role in a post-independent Scotland……
This vote
ensures that Scotland will remain central on the UK agenda. The union was on death row and the no vote
earned it a stay of execution; the establishment parties are now in the process
of organising their appeal. That has to involve real decentralisation of
power and an end to regional inequities. Do the political classes have the
stomach and the spine for this? A devo max that gives Scotland the power to
raise taxes to pay for welfare programmes, but not reduce them by opting out of
Trident and other defence spending, while maintaining the oil flow south of the
border, without even an investment or poverty alleviation fund, is a sham,
especially as it was denied at the ballot box. It may be perceived as setting
up the Scottish parliament to fail, and undermining devolution.
However, it's
probably the case that anything more than that would be unlikely to be
palatable to the major parties or the broader UK electorate. The biggest
problem for the Westminster elites now is not just to decide what to do about
Scotland but, crucially, to do it without antagonising English people – who
might justly feel that the tail of 10% is now starting to wag the dog of the
rest of the UK.
The fact is
that the majority of the 25 million who live in London and the south-east are
perfectly fine with the bulk of tax pounds (to say nothing of the oil revenues)
being spent on government, infrastructure and showcase projects in the capital
– why wouldn't they be? The problem is that in a unitary, centralised state,
the decision-making and civic wealth of the nation – and therefore practically
all the large-scale private investment – lies in that region.
So how can
you square the two? Scots are showing
they won't go on committing their taxes or oil monies to building a London
super-state on the global highway for the transnational rich, particularly when
it's becoming unaffordable to their Cockney comrades, driving them out of their
own city to the M25 satellites……
The yes
movement hit such heights because the UK state was seen as failed; antiquated,
hierarchical, centralist, discriminatory, out of touch and acting against the
people. This election will have done nothing to diminish that impression.
Against this shabbiness the Scots struck a blow for democracy, with an
unprecedented 97% voter registration for an
election the establishment wearily declared nobody wanted. It turns out that it
was the only one people wanted. Whether this Scottish assertiveness
kickstarts an unlikely UK-wide reform (unwanted in most of the English
regions); or wearies southerners and precipitates a reaction to get rid of
them; or the Scots, through the ballot box at general elections, decide to go
the whole hog of their own accord; the old imperialist-based union is bust.
Ascherson shows the same scepticism as Welsh about
whether the centre will hold in Scotland
Where does
Scotland go from here? The last few days have produced a jostling mob of
half-promises, most of them provoked by
the 7 September poll panic. David Cameron, borrowing a cliche, states that
staying in the United Kingdom is now "the settled will of the Scottish
people".
Even SNP
figures say independence won't return to the agenda for a generation. This is
unlikely to be true. Scotland is being carried along on a process of steady
institutional, political and social divergence from the rest of the UK, which
will continue.
The case for
full self-government will make increasing sense in the next few years. The
latest hasty suggestions for increasing the powers of the Scottish parliament
are little more than a rehash of existing proposals judged some years ago to be
hopelessly behind the curve. Anyway, Mr Cameron now proposes to embed them in a
vaster constitutional reform for all Britain. This is unlikely to get anywhere
serious, and would take many years if it did. If the Westminster system has one
real expertise, it is for gently enfolding radical ideas, like a jellyfish with
its prey, and dissolving them to transparent mush.
In the past
three days, Scots have looked at one another and asked: "What do we do
with all that joyful commitment, with the biggest surge of creative democratic
energy that Scotland has ever seen?" For many, perhaps thousands of people,
it has been the most important public experience in their lives. Must it go to
waste?
