Well Done, Nine Years of Labour
Telegraph - England wants its independence
The United Kingdom should be broken up and Scotland and England set free as independent nations, according to a huge number of voters on both sides of the border.
A clear majority of people in both England and Scotland are in favour of full independence for Scotland, an ICM opinion poll for The Sunday Telegraph has found. Independence is backed by 52 per cent of Scots while an astonishing 59 per cent of English voters want Scotland to go it alone.
There is also further evidence of rising English nationalism with support for the establishment of an English parliament hitting an historic high of 68 per cent amongst English voters. Almost half – 48 per cent – also want complete independence for England, divorcing itself from Wales and Northern Ireland as well. Scottish voters also back an English breakaway with 58 per cent supporting an English parliament with similar powers to the Scottish one.
The poll comes only months before the 300th anniversary of the Act of Union between England and Scotland and will worry all three main political parties. None of them favours Scottish independence, but all have begun internal debates on the future of the constitution.
My Irish friend will be green like a leprechaun.
I’d say that killing the Black Watch was a last straw, but honestly at that point it was probably meaningless.
Update (11.28):
Perusing this, not going to link to it, but then came across the last paragraph:
The Times - Meet Mr SNP and his fantastical snide-show, by David Aaronovitch
The strange unrealpolitik of Alex Salmond, MP
But what a strange, backward-looking argument to be having as we contemplate massive population mobility, technological advances, Islamist terrorism and international environmental crises. Or perhaps that’s exactly why such an argument is happening now. The argument for Scottish independence is essentially an argument for avoiding hard choices; which is why Alex Salmond is so well qualified to make it. If there were a parallel dimension it would be fun to watch him win. But there isn’t.
I blame Dave. Mark Steyn’s always saying that’s what the Global Warming hoo-hah is all about, about avoiding the hard topics. But now Dave’s Global Warming Number One Worrier, which makes Global Warming a Truth as far as all of Britain is concerned, so they’ve got to go dig up some Scottish Independence to argue about.
November 26th, 2006 at 1:37 am
rising English nationalism with support for the establishment of an English parliament
Ha! Hahhahhhahahahahahahaha! Or I could cry I guess….
November 26th, 2006 at 2:15 am
At last they agree on something. I wonder who gets the North Sea oil?
I can’t see Wales making a go of independence. The silliest thing is that, as the survey notes, the Scottish Parliament can vote on English laws but not vice versa. Perhaps if that was canned, there would be less interest in Scottish independence on the English side.
November 26th, 2006 at 6:35 am
Hmmm. This is something I’m afraid I know just a bit too much about. So I can’t not write. Sorry folks. Mr Seat will correct me where I’m wrong, I assume.
North Sea oil revenues are of very secondary importance when compared with the scale of the wealth created by the City of London. Every year the government conducts a survey into where the money’s gone in Scotland called GERS which pretty well always comes out with the result that Scotland’s a net recipient of public expenditure.
Devolution was originally shemed up by Labour to dish the Nationalists, who were commanding about a third of the Scottish vote in the 70s - more or less their natural vote when they’re doing well. Scotland - and its army of Labour-voting public sector workers - would be spared the ravages any future Condervative government in Westminster. Labour would get to keep its battalion of MPs at Westminster as well, and the English would pay for the whole scheme.
As a deal it was predicated on the idea that the Scots would carry on seeing it as being in their interest to keep voting Labour. For a variety of reasons - Iraq obviously, but also the natural boredom after all this time with Blair in London, and also a simple curiosity about what could happen under proportional reperesentation - this assumption no longer holds good. (My own theory is that Scotland it too small a country to produce 200 decent full-time politicians, particularly when the people who run business in Scotland have more or less boycotted the place.)
This research will probably give the Nats a bit of a lift, but in the longer term might work in favour of the Union. Discussion of independence has always been cast in the same emotional language as a wife telling her husband that unless he treats her better she’s packing up and going. (Yes, I know, but emotion’s always been more important to Nationalists than policy.) As a gesture, flouncing out of the Union will carry rather less weight, and be a good deal less satisfying, if the English have shown themselves to be not too bothered either way.
In the long term, of course, both Scotland and England are increasingly under threat from the crazed bureaucracy in Brussles that’s expanding particularly quickly in Scotland. If we don’t get that sorted out we in Scotland could have all the oil in Alberta and still decline into a picturesque but ignorant and violently clannish xenophobia - Saudi Arabia with kilts.
November 26th, 2006 at 8:00 am
Which would be bad, because you’d have to execute yourselves for being immodest.
November 26th, 2006 at 8:19 am
Hahahaha!!! I think the deal is that we’d drink ourselves to death on Scotch, just like the posh Saudis based in London.
November 26th, 2006 at 11:06 am
See, you should do as Les Quebecois do. No flouncing for them, oh non! They demand, demand! financial remuneration should they go, for lo, these two hundred years under the English boot. Otherwise the rest of Canada would be rather happy to see them go. So they don’t have to risk actually leaving, they don’t lower themselves to undignified flouncing, and should they actually take off they might do so with a bit of extra pocket money. Like what might come from the City of London.
November 26th, 2006 at 1:46 pm
Effete Quebecois Snootiness and a Scottish accent just doesn’t go together in my mind.
Good points, Red. The Poms want to be careful not to let Brussels sneek in via Edinborough.
November 27th, 2006 at 2:07 am
It’s easy to flounce in a kilt. So the Quebecois demand money, otherwise they’ll stay? Eh? Gotta hand it to them Frenchies.
It already happens, Brett. Every month the Health Committee in the Scottish Parliament rubber stamps a thing called a “statutory instrument” proposed by an agriculture minister to ban scallop fishing off areas of the west coast of Scotland. This is because the EU has the power to ban fishing under health and safety regulations concerning something called “amnesic shellfish poisoning”, a disease which causes memory loss that can in theory be caught from scallops (though no-one can remember that ever happening). The minister has the job of making sure this happens. The MSPs on the Committee can, as elected representatives, refuse to rubber-stamp these regulations but, as the minister is always at pains to point out, they would be immediately overruled by a bureaucrat in Brussels.
To impart the truly Kafkaesque spin, the sampling of scallops is considered on all sides (including Brussels) to be deeply flawed, and the Irish use a different system altogether, which the EU finds acceptable. So we’re left to conclude that the EU issues regulations for one reason only: because it can.