If Scotland wants partition, the British cannot deny it

[Ultra]

Simon's key point in this article, as I see it, is as follows:

"Partition is the new politics, despite being the hobgoblin of centralism. It is through partition that Ireland is booming, Slovakia reviving and the Baltic states prospering. The British government is in favour of it for everyone else, even forcing it on the former Yugoslavia and Iraq/Kurdistan. This year it welcomed Montenegro to Europe's community. By what hypocrisy do Westminster grandees ridicule Scotland's ambition?

Big federal states were fine when governments were small and unobtrusive. Today's governments are elephantine and unresponsive to local sentiment. That is why Spain, France and Italy have all opted for constitutional devolution in the past two decades, fending off separatist pressure. Anti-federalism is why European public opinion revolted against Brussels last year, and why there is no more talk of a Scandinavian union. As for size being crucial to viability, this is corporatist rubbish. If Denmark is viable, why not Scotland?"

Indeed.

Now, the article......



Many nations have prospered after gaining independence from their neighbours. Why should the Scots be different?

Simon Jenkins
Wednesday November 29, 2006
The Guardian

I think the word is panic. Last week the prime minister, chancellor of the exchequer, home secretary, defence secretary, trade secretary and Scots ministerial expatriates galore travelled in a posse north to a Labour conference in Oban, like a bunch of Spanish hidalgos racing back from the fleshpots of Madrid to quell a revolt in their home province.

Their objective was to suppress one man, Alex Salmond, leader of the Scottish National party. An opinion poll had shown support for Salmond's crusade, an independent Scotland, rising to 52% of the electorate. Those regarding themselves as Scottish had risen from half to three-quarters in 25 years, while those saying "British" had halved to just 20%.

This is raw politics. Labour desperately needs its 40 or so Scottish seats at Westminster. Gordon Brown, probably the next prime minister, wears his distaste for England on his sleeve, and English voters sense it. Already devolution has subverted the legitimacy of Scots MPs in voting on English bills. Just when the 300th anniversary of the 1707 Act of Union is about to be celebrated, it seems to be falling apart, and Labour's electoral fortunes with it. Battle will be joined next May in the Scottish parliamentary elections.

The Scottish debate shows British politics at its most conservative. Any sign of a desire for local autonomy, in any part of the United Kingdom, is seen at Westminster as uppity insubordination by people ignorant of their best interests. Unionism may have disappeared from Britain's industry, but it is the ruling ethos of its politics. Big is beautiful if British. The prevailing wisdom holds that anyone, be they Scots, Welsh, Northern Irish or, for that matter, Iraqi or Afghan, must be better off under the benign custodianship of London. Imperialism is still Westminster's default mode. Surely nobody could be richer, safer or freer than with a British soldier on every corner and a British subsidy under every belt.

Scotland's pooling of sovereignty with England was, as Christopher Whatley points out in his new history of the union, always pragmatic rather than popular. The English wanted protection from Catholic incursion. The Scots Presbyterians wanted the same, plus a share in England's colonial expansion. It was moot how long the union would survive imperial retreat and the opening up of continental and global trade.

Margaret Thatcher's opposition to devolution was that of a Tory paternalist, and is reflected still in David Cameron's metro-centralism. But the paternalist tradition is now fiercer on the left than the right. (In the current Prospect magazine, the Tory Michael Fry even declares his switch to the SNP.) Speaker after speaker in Oban declared the union in the best interests of Scotland and crucial to the Scots economy. What would the place do without the £25bn subsidy from London, enabling public spending per head to run at 30% above England? To the predominantly Scottish Labour cabinet, this socialist statelet to the north must be saved from reverting to its dark, tribal past - and their Westminster seats must be saved too.

I would not lose any sleep if the Scots voted to repeal the 1707 act. Independence need not end the United Kingdom: Scotland and England shared a monarch before 1707, as Britain and Canada do today. Separation need be no more radical than the partial autonomy of a dozen European countries from their neighbours. Borders were not sealed or passports cancelled under the Government of Ireland Act 1920. If eastern Europe can handle partition, so can Britain.

The phased withdrawal of the subvention would be traumatic, but it would do Scotland nothing but good to learn that public money does not grow on English trees. If economic history teaches anything, it is that huge inflows of aid rot an economy, while "unearned" wealth, as from oil, is usually wasted. The phased end of the subsidy would be thoroughly good for Scotland, not bad.

Partition is the new politics, despite being the hobgoblin of centralism. It is through partition that Ireland is booming, Slovakia reviving and the Baltic states prospering. The British government is in favour of it for everyone else, even forcing it on the former Yugoslavia and Iraq/Kurdistan. This year it welcomed Montenegro to Europe's community. By what hypocrisy do Westminster grandees ridicule Scotland's ambition?

Big federal states were fine when governments were small and unobtrusive. Today's governments are elephantine and unresponsive to local sentiment. That is why Spain, France and Italy have all opted for constitutional devolution in the past two decades, fending off separatist pressure. Anti-federalism is why European public opinion revolted against Brussels last year, and why there is no more talk of a Scandinavian union. As for size being crucial to viability, this is corporatist rubbish. If Denmark is viable, why not Scotland?

All such considerations must anyway bow before self-determination. If the Scots want to repeal the 1707 act (as some Britons want to repeal the European Union's treaties), the British cannot deny it. The story of the past quarter-century is that states enjoy no legitimacy without the consent of their territorial minorities. Britain went to war for this principle in Kosovo.

The British union is now afflicted by the same self-doubt as most of Europe's states. Scottish devolution was precipitated by the crassness of Tory rule in the 1980s, but it was bound to come in time, as did Irish home rule half a century earlier. Under the 1998 act Brown ensured that fiscal policy was never devolved and the golden handcuff of the subvention remained in place. Yet no visitor to Edinburgh today can doubt that Scotland is a far more coherent country and culture than it was before. For all the sneers hurled at the new parliament, its return after 300 years of absence is surely permanent.

The concept of national independence within a global political economy is everywhere debated. In Scotland the concept has passed from the realm of the unthinkable to that of common discourse among politicians, lawyers, academics and the press. It reflects the same aspirations as those of Basques, Bavarians and Bosnians. One day it may reflect those of independent Latvians, Slovenians and Irish. Whether or not because of the insensitivity of modern central government, the world is going that way. In the multi-tiered sovereignties of Europe only one thing is for sure, that the tiers will argue. In that argument power will always be centripetal and democracy always centrifugal. I prefer democracy.

simon.jenkins@guardian.co.uk

[Stephen M]

"Huzzah" for a good read.

If I look at my two decades-old globe, I see lots of blobs that have since been split along tribal lines, one blob that probably should be, and only two blobs that have joined together ( a former tribally-unified blob that was split for political reasons in the mid 40's ).

One can argue the relative virtues of globalism vs. tribalism, but it's much harder to argue where the current trend is.

-Stephen M

[Ultra]

The Tories need to become Scots nationalists. Honestly

Catalonia, from where I write, occupies the top-right-hand part of Spain. Abutting France, it includes the Mediterranean end of the Pyrenees and the Costa Brava. Its capital is Barcelona and the country (for it feels itself to be a country) is modern, industrialised and populous — but its heart and soul are still in its wild, empty scenery, rural hinterland, and long and intermittently abused national history.

Catalonia has a lesson for the Tories in their attitude to Scottish nationalism in the year ahead. You will be hearing a lot about Scotland as the March elections to the Edinburgh Parliament loom. Parallels with Catalonia, though inexact, are striking. So whenever I say "Catalan" or "Catalonia", think "Scottish" or "Scotland". Come with me on this short Iberian excursion even if you know nothing of Catalonia. To see why, let us start with two used-to-be's.

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There used to be a serious centre Right in Catalan politics. Now it stands no earthly chance of forming a government in the devolved Catalan parliament. The reason is simple: the Partido Popular — a staunchly conservative party that formed the previous Spanish Government — has turned its back on the reality of Catalan nationhood. The PP stand (in British terms) for the "Union", and against further devolution. Its support has sunk below 20 per cent in Catalonia. Many Catalans would feel it a betrayal to vote for it. The Socialist Party of Spain has performed a balancing act on Catalan nationalism but (in power in Madrid, and sharing power in Catalonia) it is stuck on the fence and vulnerable.

The second used-to-be is this: Catalans used to be a rather conservative people. Underneath, they still are. Sober, even sombre, self-respecting, ingenious and self-reliant, their lives are bound up with saving, investment, work, community, family and their culture. They can be a little dour. The rest of Spain may call them grasping, provincial and tediously fixated on their nationhood, but should acknowledge that Catalans have contributed disproportionately to the achievements of the united kingdom of which they have been part.

So much for used-to-be's. Now for two should-be's. There should be a Catalan Conservative Party. It could win. But only progressives and independents ever embraced the Catalan identity and cause with any courage. This identity is so precious to Catalans that many persuade themselves they are leftish free-thinkers, though they most assuredly are not. Others vote for a mainstream nationalist movement called Convergència, vaguely populist, a centrist-opportunist party and repository for Catalan conservatives too attached to their nationhood to vote PP.

Secondly there should be in Madrid a Spanish national party on the centre Right, combining forces under a conservative banner with a Catalan sister-party. The PP needs the brains and the guts to tell its supporters elsewhere in Spain that the only way to stop Spain fragmenting is to back a union of nations-within-a-nation, ceding to peoples like the Catalans and Basques the autonomies they yearn for. Step by step this is coming anyway. Nothing will stop it.

So why, by persistently (and unsuccessfully) pouring cold water on the nationalisms of small nations, should conservative politics lose the affections of millions of inherently conservative people? Why hand the initiative to opportunistic single-cause nationalistic movements? When, as a conservative party, you have so few votes to lose in a devolved part of the kingdom, why not surrender to reality and embrace what no conservative should have difficulty in embracing: a people's sense of nationhood? I have slipped unintentionally into talking about Scotland and the Tories. Good. Other columnists, too, have been writing about the apparent rise in separatist sentiment there. They rage entertainingly against Alex Salmond and the SNP. It is not difficult to rage against Mr Salmond but it is not enough and it will not do.

Among English commentators the default position (never quite stated but never far beneath the surface) is that separatist politicians are dishonest opportunists and it is about time the Scots grew up and realised which side their bread is buttered on. Among Scottish commentators in our national British media the view tends to be that separatist politicians are dishonest opportunists and it is really rather sad that they want Scotland to turn its back on so much that we in the United Kingdom can share.

The Conservative Party should arm itself against both approaches. We should ask why, if the Scots Nationalists are such transparently dishonest opportunists, they are doing so well. Naturally a separatist party will pick up what grievances it can find lying around and make hay with them. Naturally it will sow mischief and trade on resentment. Naturally it will gloss over inconsistencies in its vision for the future, fudge logic, shun hard choices and play to emotion. That is what independence movements do. If Mr Salmond is to be indicted for rabble-rousing, playing up the promise and playing down the difficulty, he must share the dock with George Washington, Jomo Kenyatta and Nelson Mandela.

If a people are treated like children, we must not be surprised if their politicians do not always play politics like grown-ups. Until a people start visualising themselves as a country — not just in the realms of the patriotic imagination, but at the practical level of tax, law and administration — there will of course be a romantic unrealism, and a negativism too, in the attitudes they strike.

But rather than bewail its aggression or pick at its obvious inconsistencies, we Conservatives should consider the possibility that separatist politics in Scotland appeals to something real and deep in the electorate: a need that cannot be answered by scorn, or wished away.

If we sense this, we must ask ourselves a second question: can Conservatives, consistently with our own principles, try to answer this need in a way that reconciles it with our own hopes for Britain? I think the answer to both questions is "yes". A Conservative vision of the Union could be of a deep and permanent alliance of equal nations within a common economy, each with the dignity of self-government, each raising taxes for what they did alone, and sharing taxes for what they did together. The disparities in population between England and Scotland will be fatal to this structure only if we want them to be. Other federations and unions take such problems in their stride.

Disparities in wealth will only prove a stumbling block it we want the Scots to stumble; there is otherwise no reason why the richer parts of the Union should not voluntarily help the poorer parts, as they always have, as makes sense in any common market.

When we English mutter that the Scots should not expect us to subsidise them if they don't want us to rule them, we should ask ourselves what we mean by this. That the justification for subsidy is that it purchases subjection? What are we saying here? Is this really England's motive — to buy a nation off? Conducted at that level the argument is more imperialist than unionist, and destroys itself by inviting the response "save the money and let the ingrates go".

"Save the money and let them go" will prove the natural (though unintended) destination of unreconstructed Tory unionism. By deploying in England a poisonous argument about subsidy and ingratitude, it will poison itself when the English draw the obvious conclusion.

If the Union is to be saved, Tory unionism must be reconstructed. The time to begin is this year when, as seems likely, the Labour Party loses power in Edinburgh. A tremendous row will follow, and persist. It may be for the next generation to decide where the devolutionary road ends; what's important for today's Conservatives is to be pushing forward in Scotland rather than pulling back: to be seen as part of the engine, not the handbrake. Unfamiliar as the ground may seem, the Conservative Party will soon have the chance to get on the right side of this argument. They should take it. They have nothing to lose.