Britain: the cost of separation

From today’s Guardian: Scots and English would pay dearly for ending the union

This article expresses a number of my own concerns about the prospect of Scotland becoming independent from the UK, or rather, the UK simply ending with the secession of Scotland. There are a whole lot of unanswered questions not mentioned in this article - such as the status of Northern Ireland, which according to David Clark “might not relish the idea of being a mere appendage”, but the situation is more complex than that. The Protestant population there is loyal to Britain, not England, and are mostly Presbyterians of Scottish origin. There is also the thorny situation of Scots living in England and English in Scotland - it’s possible that a situation like that of Ireland might emerge, but it cannot be taken for granted.

A better solution would be to establish a proper federal power structure with England gaining its own parliament (and the same for Wales) with powers similar to those of Scotland’s parliament. This is unlikely to be implemented under Blair, however, because of fears of permanent Tory government in England, which I think are ungrounded because a party cannot remain in power forever when it does a bad job. When the Tories were riding high in the mid to late 1980s, I’m sure nobody imagined that ten years later, they would be wiped out in Wales and Scotland and lose seats previously considered safe, to say nothing of their record over the next eight years.

Possibly Related Posts:

• So much for “war on the NIMBYs”
• Desperate Tories, shameless lies
• It’s Islamophobia, thank you
• Seething with anger
• Rochdale and Rishi Sunak’s hunt for ‘extremists’