Why London is too busy admiring its own reflection to care about what is happening in Scotland
- From: The Highlander <micheil@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 06:34:04 GMT
Why London is too busy admiring its own reflection to care about what
is happening in Scotland.
Sunday Herald
by Iain Macwhirter.
(I feel this article's undertones is actually anti-independence.)
IN LONDON last week a Guardian columnist, Jonathan Freedland, told me
that when he filed his copy from the Scottish election campaign, his
desk editor him asked what dateline to put on it, as though it were a
foreign report. A telling illustration, perhaps, of London's attitude
to Scottish independence: a lot of people already seem to think
Scotland is another country.
This may explain why most metropolitan political commentators were
more interested in the French presidential election last week than the
Scottish one - even though the Holyrood outcome would arguably have
greater impact on Britain. On the 300th anniversary of the Act of
Union, Scotland appears to be on the verge of tearing it up by
allowing the Scottish National Party to share power.
But if my observations are correct, England is unfazed - dreaming on
in the long, hot spring. The prime minister may believe Britain itself
is in danger, faced with a Nationalist party leader, Alex Salmond, who
is determined to foment trouble and strife. But London isn't exactly
donning a hard hat and digging a trench. Constitutional crisis? What
crisis?
There is, of course, that strand of rabid English nationalism on the
internet, which believes a Scottish raj is running England and
draining it of treasure. Its supporters are looking to a fight, as
always. But most London people I spoke to last week aren't
antagonistic to Scotland; mostly, they just don't care. And why should
they? Scotland is a cold northern territory, with large land mass but
few people, which doesn't really have much to do with the southeast of
England. Even the climate is different now global warming has really
arrived.
The City of London was congratulating itself last week on becoming the
world's number one financial centre, having relegated even New York as
the place to do the business. Billions are raised and spent on stock
markets every day, and private equity houses are tearing up the
corporate structures of the world. London is a global economic hub,
with intergalactic house prices and apparently limitless wealth. Why
should it be bovvered about Scotland?
We have a strong financial sector in Edinburgh, but it isn't in any
obvious sense a rival. We don't have any industry and the oil is
generally assumed to be running out. We are not strategically
important, except of course for Trident, and England doesn't need
Scots to fight colonial wars any more - it's got Prince Harry to do
that.
It is often said that Scotland has reassessed the union, now that the
ties of empire that bound these two nations together have weakened.
That Scots don't have a stake in the UK any longer. But the same is
true for England. The sentimental attachments have gone, consumed in
the fire of globalisation. If Scotland wants to be independent, as
David Cameron put it recently, then it would be unfortunate, but no
national disaster.
I still detected mild irritation at the Scottish propensity to consume
public spending, but I think most people in England have this in
proportion. The sums involved may seem large to us - perhaps £1000 per
head in public spending - but to a stupendously wealthy country like
England, £5 billion is a drop in the bucket. Lost in the national
accounts of £1.5 trillion.
ANYWAY, as the Financial Times noted last week, if oil is taken into
account, the deficit - or "union dividend" as Labour call it - shrinks
dramatically to 1.2%, which is half the deficit Gordon Brown is
running for the UK. The Scottish press, true to form, reported the
Financial Times analysis as a warning to Scotland that an independent
Scotland would be unviable as the oil runs out. But the report was
actually pretty potent propaganda for the SNP.
The FT concluded that "the current high level of oil prices would
allow Scotland to declare independence from the rest of the UK without
having to cut public spending". It went on to warn that oil is a
declining resource, and that there may be little scope to build up a
substantial oil fund in future. You can't build an economy on one
natural resource, and Scotland would have to diversify and grow its
economy.
Incidentally, the FT also endorsed the SNP's claims about Scotland's
poor performance under Labour. After adjusting for inflation, FT
figures show Scotland's "gross value added" - workforce incomes and
profits - grew 17% between 1997 and 2005, against 25% in England. And
a lot of this was down to increased public spending. The Scottish
private sector grew by only 11.6%, a miserable annual rate of 1.6%,
against the English rate of 2.8%.
But that's Scotland's problem. From a London point of view, the
falling future oil wealth merely confirms Scotland's marginality to
the UK economy. I find that most people in England who know anything
about the history of Scottish oil accept that the UK did pretty well
out of it, and that it more than justified any Barnett premiums on
Scottish public spending.
But again, this all has the air of an old argument, an intellectual
relic from the days before devolution, and when the failing UK economy
depended on oil revenues. This is now, and whatever else happens,
England is certainly not going to go to war over oil or Scottish
demands for more autonomy.
Where conflict may break out over the SNP factor is in parliament, in
the wake of Gordon Brown's coronation as Labour leader. An SNP victory
in the chancellor's heartland would embolden the Tories to play the
English card in Westminster. If the SNP are the largest party, the
Tory leader David Cameron will say Brown is fatally undermined by this
rejection in his own homeland.
The Conservative press will say the new PM has no right to dictate
policies to England when he sits for a seat in a "foreign" country.
The Conservatives will demand "English votes for English laws" - for
Scottish MPs to withdraw from votes on purely English legislation. And
Alex Salmond, if he is first minister, will be egging them on.
This will no doubt lead to some constitutional wrangling. There will
have to be some kind of constitutional commission to review the
situation in Westminster, West Lothian question and all that. The
Scottish parliament will certainly demand more powers if an SNP-LibDem
coalition is formed. However, my own view is that the Tories will stop
short of demanding that Scots MPs be thrown out of Westminster.
I BELIEVE they will see it as important to keep Scottish
representation in what is becoming, de facto, a federal parliament in
London. This is England, after all, and the English are too mature and
sensible to want to provoke needless conflict over abstruse
constitutional anomalies. A way will be found to muddle through. As
the temperatures rise in the hottest April London has ever seen, it
will be in everyone's interest to cool it.
So, if my visit south is any guide, England is - right now - pretty
sanguine about the rise of Scottish nationalism. Probably, like most
Scots, they don't really believe that Scotland will ever be
independent in a formal sense. Fused at the hip on this island on the
edge of Europe, Scotland and England have a common destiny that they
cannot avoid. We are "in and out" of Europe, speak the same language,
share a common currency, have close family ties.
Many of those English families who have their sons and daughters still
living at home in their late 20s can well understand the argument that
it might be good for Scotland to go it alone economically. That you
can't live on subsidies forever. It doesn't mean that the family is
broken up or that they start going to war with each other. Both
countries would just have to learn the art of living apart, together.
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