One week to go
Sep. 10th, 2014 10:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rich_jacko...and the Scottish referendum seems to be dominating the news and half of all conversations at the moment.
I will be very sad if, as looks increasingly probable, the Scots vote to leave the UK. Much as the "Yes" campaign likes to pretend we wouldn't really become two foreign countries, that is what independence means. It's not just about showing that Scots are "fed up with the effing Tories" as David Cameron put it surprisingly candidly today. Among so many other things, why turn your closest trading partner into a competitor?
This "It's all about Westminster" mindset is not helped by an increasingly negative "Yes" campaign doing little more than snipe endlessly at Westminster politicians. This is shooting fish in a barrel (which is why they do it), but I can't see that the Holyrood lot are any better. Politicians are politicians the world over. The SNP's current lies and scaremongering that the NHS in Scotland - despite being fully devolved already - can only be saved by a "Yes" vote being a case in point. That the SNP has the audacity to claim they have a positive message and some sort of moral high ground in the campaign beggars belief.
The last-minute love-in from the other parties is hardly inspiring or particularly convincing either, but at least they're (very belatedly) trying. I am actually quite excited by the potential prospect of further devolution immediately after a "No" vote (even if the timetable was announced in a bit of a panic and in flagrant breach of purdah guidelines...). Especially since there seems to be actual recognition that there would need to be a fair settlement for all parts of the UK. We might finally see some much-needed decentralisation within English politics at long last. A "yes" vote, on the other hand, would knock all other considerations aside and the next couple of years of politics would almost certainly be dominated by bitter negotiations on how separation would work.
A couple of realisations I've had since my last post on the subject (which several of you were kind enough to tell me you got a lot out of, even if the online comments I got were mainly on facebook! :op):
Whatever happens in the vote next Thursday, there are going to be an awful lot of people very disappointed in the result. Can we all agree that the winning side, whichever it is, gets no more than one day to gloat before we move on productively?
I will be very sad if, as looks increasingly probable, the Scots vote to leave the UK. Much as the "Yes" campaign likes to pretend we wouldn't really become two foreign countries, that is what independence means. It's not just about showing that Scots are "fed up with the effing Tories" as David Cameron put it surprisingly candidly today. Among so many other things, why turn your closest trading partner into a competitor?
This "It's all about Westminster" mindset is not helped by an increasingly negative "Yes" campaign doing little more than snipe endlessly at Westminster politicians. This is shooting fish in a barrel (which is why they do it), but I can't see that the Holyrood lot are any better. Politicians are politicians the world over. The SNP's current lies and scaremongering that the NHS in Scotland - despite being fully devolved already - can only be saved by a "Yes" vote being a case in point. That the SNP has the audacity to claim they have a positive message and some sort of moral high ground in the campaign beggars belief.
The last-minute love-in from the other parties is hardly inspiring or particularly convincing either, but at least they're (very belatedly) trying. I am actually quite excited by the potential prospect of further devolution immediately after a "No" vote (even if the timetable was announced in a bit of a panic and in flagrant breach of purdah guidelines...). Especially since there seems to be actual recognition that there would need to be a fair settlement for all parts of the UK. We might finally see some much-needed decentralisation within English politics at long last. A "yes" vote, on the other hand, would knock all other considerations aside and the next couple of years of politics would almost certainly be dominated by bitter negotiations on how separation would work.
A couple of realisations I've had since my last post on the subject (which several of you were kind enough to tell me you got a lot out of, even if the online comments I got were mainly on facebook! :op):
- Currency union (I see we're still banging on about that) was dead the instant Salmond conceded that his "plan B" was to carry on using Sterling without a formal union. If plan B offers all the same ease of trade and travel, without the risk of potentially having to bail out a foreign government, why on Earth would England, Wales and Northern Ireland agree to plan A?
- Independence won't happen in March 2016 following a "Yes" vote. It might suit the SNP to stitch everything up before they get chucked out of Holyrood six weeks later by disgruntled "No" voters, but unpicking a 300-year-old union is likely to take a lot longer than 18 months and there is absolutely no reason for anyone else to agree to their timetable. It's one of the many things that would have to be negotiated. This isn't a reason to vote one way or the other, but from a democratic perspective I reckon it's a good thing that voters get to choose both the UK and Scottish governments again before a final settlement is reached.
Whatever happens in the vote next Thursday, there are going to be an awful lot of people very disappointed in the result. Can we all agree that the winning side, whichever it is, gets no more than one day to gloat before we move on productively?
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no subject
Date: 2014-09-11 07:09 am (UTC)I don't agree that you can achieve greater consensus and be better served by fragmenting into smaller and smaller states. Not only do you lose economies of scale and vastly increase the number of government bureaucracies, smaller states have far less clout when it comes to standing up against the self-interests of global corporations.
Looser multi-state treaty organisations tend to become paralysed by internal wranglings between their members - just look at the EU and, to a lesser extent, the UN. That's not to say those organisations don't have a role in the world. There are certain things they are very good at (see NATO), but they can't do everything that an integrated nation state can.