In 1603, Elizabeth I died heirless and James VI of Scotland became James I of England (the Union of the Crowns). Then in 1707, in a meeting on Edinburgh’s North Bridge (apocryphally now a Bella Italia restroom), with protesters thronging the Royal Mile, the Acts of Union were signed, uniting the Scottish and English Parliaments in Westminster, London.
Oh, also, Wales and Northern Ireland are a thing. But honestly, we don’t have the time for that now. So!
After a bit of foot-stamping and refusing to eat our greens, Scotland got its own parliament again in 1995, at Holyrood, Edinburgh. We now balance our own budget for local government expenditure independently and a bunch of other stuff, but for some this was only ever a stepping stone to the ultimate goal: Scottish independence.
The main political proponents of Scottish independence are the Scottish National Party (SNP henceforth). Their aim: a Scotland-wide, legally binding vote on the future of the country’s governance. To get that referendum, they needed a mandate — a majority government — and since the Scottish Parliament was set up with a Proportionally Representative electoral system, which tends to produce coalitions and minority governments, that seemed like a pretty distant dream.
The plot twist
Then the 2008 credit crunch happened, followed by the 2010 General Election.
The bulk of Scotland’s citizens are lefties (Labour = Democrats, very roughly) or centrists (Liberal Democrat) with a side helping of SNP (who aside from being pro-independence are pretty flexible on their political leaning week-by-week). Very few Scots are Conservatives.
Labour was in power when the 2008 credit crunch happened and were largely blamed for it. Then the 2010 UK General Election produced no overall majority, resulting in the Liberal Democrats, as the biggest ‘third party,’ going into coalition with the Conservatives, who got the most seats (but not enough for a majority). The Lib Dems promptly forgot every promise they ever made (note: may contain lefty bias and pith) and so when the 2011 Scottish Parliamentary Election rolled around, pissed-off Scots everywhere voted SNP (mainly to give Labour and the Lib Dems a kicking), leading to an historic event which honestly I have real trouble convincing most people was as exciting as it was: an SNP majority under a PR system (for real, guys, this was super exciting).
Basically the SNP’s first announcement: a Referendum on Independence. Were you surprised? I was so surprised.
So three hundred years after our parliaments united, in autumn 2014, Scotland will vote on whether to break away from Westminster altogether.
So what would independence mean?
That’s the question gripping the nation at present, and the short answer is: We’re not sure. Will we get oil revenues from the North Sea oil in Scottish waters? Will we keep the pound, adopt the Euro or mint our own currency? Will we be able to join the EU? Will we hang onto the Queen?
A few things we’re pretty agreed on: nobody in Scotland likes nukes (problematic since the UK’s nuclear deterrent, Trident, lives here). Most agree that an independent Scotland would likely be fairly socialist because we’re all rabid, ginger lefties. There’s also a perception (I have no idea how accurate that is) that we’re less xenophobic than the rest of the UK and would favour looser immigration policy (we have so much space, you guys, castles for everybody).
Public sentiment is that there’s a lot of speculation and not many facts. Smug types (me) would make the observation that the Yes/No campaigns aren’t actually equipped to predict what would happen in the event of independence, what with us being a parliamentary democracy and getting to vote on who gets to lead us into our brave new world and what shape that world might take.
But nobody ever listens to me.
So how is Scotland leaning?
A lot of voters are ‘undecided’, and that’s unlikely to shift much until well into next year, but among decided voters there’s a strong lead for the Nays. Unsurprising: the status quo is a lot less scary than an earth-shattering change like this, particularly in economically tough times.
True to the national stereotype, Scots are motivated more by their bank balance than anything else, and most would apparently swing ‘yay’ or ‘nay’ based on being about £500 a year better or worse off either way.
Mostly folk are griping about the lack of a concise ‘what to expect when you’re expecting (independence)’ cheatsheet, simultaneously complaining about the various campaigns shoving propaganda and rhetoric down their throats. Why yes, I do loathe humanity sometimes, why d’you ask?
No, tell us what you really think, Morag
The urge to look to one’s own prosperity and security is understandable, but I find this angle short-sighted, blinkered and selfish in the extreme.
At the end of the day, the question of Scottish independence is, for me, one of self-determination and fair representation. It’s the opportunity to decide not WHAT we want the country to be in years or generations to come but WHERE we want that decision to come from: Holyrood or Westminster. I think that’s a decision worth making without concern for my own wealth or financial situation, and if I am convinced in the next year that a ‘Yes’ for independence would truly make for a better, more progressive (and yes, lefter) Scotland for my children (who am I kidding, my nieces and nephews), then I’d like to think I’d be prepared to risk an income hit and some hard times to make that happen.
Erin Hardee and Morag Hannah live in Scotland.
Tags: castles for everybody, do i dare put a braveheart tag in here, hang onto the queen…or hang the queen, politics, scotland, scottish independence, scottish lesbians
Okay, I think I’m gonna have to do this in bits. 1/several…
Hm. This is a pretty complicated question. In the long term, none of us can afford to keep going on the way we do due to a combination of our ageing population and an inability to actually give a duck about the young un(der)employed (beyond an apparently fervent desire to punish and persecute and demonise them, presently).
We’ve been balancing a (perfectly reasonable) budget of our own for some time now – we don’t pay for prescriptions or tuition fees because our government saw the will of the people and chose to protect those things, and made savings elsewhere. If we became independent we’d struggle a while (a bridging currency union with Sterling to build up an independent credit rating would help with this). Oil revenue is absolutely a factor but to be honest I don’t like to take it into account too loudly because should we really be pinning our future on encouraging the destruction of the planet with fossil fuels?
2/3
The solution is the Scandinavian model, of course – higher, more progressive taxation and a welfare state that gives back to all, supporting and subsidising private enterprise as well as those less fortunate and creating a socialist utopia (*stops to salute the red flag*). There are a couple of issues with the idea of going forward with this. Firstly, Scandinavians are happy with their system because they have had it long enough that everyone, rich and poor, is reaping the benefits of their system. It’ll take some convincing to get rich Scots to believe that they will see a real-terms benefit from their hard-won money. Secondly, most land in that part of the world is state-owned, whereas Scotland has a _massive_ amount of privately owned property (a long-lived legacy from feudalism, thanks David I) which limits the state’s ability to benefit from it somewhat. The key would be pouring heavy subsidy into private enterprise, so that start-up companies see strong state support to shore them up so they can become wealthy and starting paying back said subsidy in lovely lovely taxes.
3/3
Anyway, the truth is, we can’t support our ageing population anyway – anywhere; nor can we boost employment without changing the basis on which we run our economy – and honestly if you want to become more agile and more flexible, there’s an argument that smaller is better. At the end of the day, hard financial times are ahead regardless, and while I try to avoid the financial arguments (for reasons described in my article), if I WAS going to take them into account I’d say that on balance I’d rather be a wee scrapper than a hulking big tank hurtling toward yet more disgusting levels of social inequality driven by a combination of punitive austerity measures and a wool-over-the-eyes ‘growth’ agenda.
The other option: 18-25 year olds burned for heat. Thoughts?
~Morag
Look, if we give the Scots their own country, then EVERYBODY’S going to want one.
what’s next,. the welsh? And then cornwall?
And before you know it, Norfolk has seceded and everyone suddenly remembers that Boudicca was a Norfolk girl and runs screaming as we torch London.;
we can do it, you know. Revenge for all those webged-feet jokes. And our twelve fingers make our weapon-hands more nimble.
This has been your weekly episode of Jokes That Don’t Make Sense Without Cultural Context. Tune in next week for: Somerset.
How could you torch London when you haven’t discovered fire yet?
We’ll wait for lightning to hit a tree.
You’re not giving it. We’re taking it back.
SCOTLAND
i just moved back to nyc after a year in scotland and i miss it so much. i even miss the haar, as our wimpy fog just does not cut it anymore.
<3 u rabid ginger lefties
A nation of rabid, ginger lefties, you say? I’ll be in my bunk/researching plane tickets.
So if Scotland gains independence, I might be allowed to move there?
Yes. Please do make that happen. I will eat all of your delicious breakfasts and I promise not to bother the sheep.
I just love, love, love the name Morag so much.
Thank you! Alas, I did not pick it myself.
Well said, Morag! I lean toward independence and have a close friend who is very strongly in favor, so I’m not exactly unbiased, but you present a good outline.
Am I allowed to ask an actual, real, serious question? South of the border, we always hear about Scotland’s free prescriptions and lack of tuition fees. My question is, can Scotland afford to keep itself in the style to which it has become accustomed without financial support from English tax payers? Or is political independence not linked to economic independence? This isn’t a narky question at all – I genuinely don’t know the answer.
this entirely depends on who we count the oil revenues as belonging to – “the south-east of england is subsidising scotland” is a meme deeply beloved of england’s right-wing press but, well, when has that ever been a good indication of factual basis.
Oh, actually there’s another note on this. Unless I’m misremembering, if you remove London from the equation basically everyone else in the UK is doing about the same as Scotland – and NI and Wales are doing worse. Sparser population = higher cost of living – lower class sizes, more teachers, more doctors, smaller more scattered hospitals, MPs with smaller constituencies… it all adds up.
Hm. This is a pretty complicated question. In the long term, none of us can afford to keep going on the way we do due to a combination of our ageing population and an inability to actually give a duck about the young un(der)employed (beyond an apparently fervent desire to punish and persecute and demonise them, presently).
We’ve been balancing a (perfectly reasonable) budget of our own for some time now – we don’t pay for prescriptions or tuition fees because our government saw the will of the people and chose to protect those things, and made savings elsewhere. If we became independent we’d struggle a while (a bridging currency union with Sterling to build up an independent credit rating would help with this). Oil revenue is absolutely a factor but to be honest I don’t like to take it into account too loudly because should we really be pinning our future on encouraging the destruction of the planet with fossil fuels?
The solution is the Scandinavian model, of course – higher, more progressive taxation and a welfare state that gives back to all, supporting and subsidising private enterprise as well as those less fortunate and creating a socialist utopia (*stops to salute the red flag*). There are a couple of issues with the idea of going forward with this. Firstly, Scandinavians are happy with their system because they have had it long enough that everyone, rich and poor, is reaping the benefits of their system. It’ll take some convincing to get rich Scots to believe that they will see a real-terms benefit from their hard-won money. Secondly, most land in that part of the world is state-owned, whereas Scotland has a _massive_ amount of privately owned property (a long-lived legacy from feudalism, thanks David I) which limits the state’s ability to benefit from it somewhat. The key would be pouring heavy subsidy into private enterprise, so that start-up companies see strong state support to shore them up so they can become wealthy and starting paying back said subsidy in lovely lovely taxes.
Anyway, the truth is, we can’t support our ageing population anyway – anywhere; nor can we boost employment without changing the basis on which we run our economy – and honestly if you want to become more agile and more flexible, there’s an argument that smaller is better. At the end of the day, hard financial times are ahead regardless, and while I try to avoid the financial arguments (for reasons described in my article), if I WAS going to take them into account I’d say that on balance I’d rather be a wee scrapper than a hulking big tank hurtling toward yet more disgusting levels of social inequality driven by a combination of punitive austerity measures and a wool-over-the-eyes ‘growth’ agenda.
The other option: 18-25 year olds burned for heat. Thoughts?
Burn the 18-25yos, then soak their shell suits in chip fat and burn them!
No, but really. London & the SE subsidizes the rest of the UK… and London is full of all kinds of people, including people who come in from the subsidized regions temporarily or permanently to work, be taxed, and subsidize their home communities.
So there is that.
And yeah, that Thatcherite-holdover theme of “Scotland is a welfare state that is on welfare on the back of England…” Yeah. During those years, the bulk of the N. Sea oil money bypassed Scotland and went to multinationals and their shareholders. Market forces, you know.
I can appreciate the concerns raised about not WHAT and WHERE, but WHO. Who will have the right to participate in self-governance. Will the people who see moving to London to work for five or six years before being able to return to a home city with qualifications that will get them a paying job have a stake? What about Non-Scottish people who move there to work for a while and don’t intend to live and work there forever. And immigration from outside the EU- resident workers & reunited families?
Not that these things don’t have answers. But when social and political changes occur in ways that shift around the power of enfranchisement, some people lose and some people gain. Will the new laws be sure to not accidentally exclude some people who might rightly have a stake?
(Hello! Scottish Electoral Politics Watcher Here! Wooo!)
The other aspect, of course, is whether the rest of the UK os politically able to contend with it’s elites abd their wealth extraction and capital flight.
It must be remembered that Britain’s balance sheet woes are not down to a poor economy, or a poor country, but a problem with channeling enough of the wealth that is generated into public services.
If an independent Scotland is more able/willing than a larger UK to absorb the fruits of it’s own economy into state stewardship then there’s a reasonable chance that we absolutely can. But that is the nub of that question.
Interesting article here that might answer some questions on this: http://www.businessforscotland.co.uk/where-does-s…
It will be less well off economically cos the oil revenues apparently won’t pay for the higher public spending in Scotland
If Scotland goes independent I am marching in to annex Dundee, possibly as far west as Perth and as far northeast as Aberdeen for the Canadian Digital Culture Initiative. From there, we will conquer Berlin, Amsterdam, and possibly London although who can be bothered with a lot of empty condominiums and reunification anyway that’s a long way from here.
but if you leave then south of the border will be stuck with the Tories forever! Have a heart, Scotland, don’t abandon us to the mercy of the home counties.
That’s actually a myth, though – in truth, only twice since WWII would the lack of Scotland actually swing the vote away from Labour, and the most recent of those is 40-odd years ago. Source with references: http://wingsland.podgamer.com/?p=13513
I thought Liberal Democrats were like libertarians…? or maybe that’s the English Lib Dems. Not sure.
I love this day of international stuff on The Toast! Golly, Canada, Scotland, New Zealand… what’s next, something from the Caribbean?
The Lib Dems are principally centrist, but they’re definitely not Libertarian. Or… didn’t used to be. They might be this week.
~Morag
Ha!
They were the left-leaning party before the Labour Party became a serious competitive power in the early-mid 20th c. When Labour became viable as a majority party, taking the left leaning members of the Lib Dems with it, the remaining party was more centrist than it had been, and less conservative than the Tories were.
For a while, before it looked like the Lib Dems might have a chance to do… something… in the 2010 election, some Lib Dem policies looked positively progressive next to New (Neo-Liberal) Labour. What comes to mind for me is the asylum and immigration policies of the mid-oughts. But some folks would suggest they could afford to have socially liberal policies with fiscally more conservative foundations because they were never going to be in power and could therefore afford to be as idealistic as they liked.
Comparisons: Blue Dog Democrats & Minnesota Republicans when the state party was called the Independent Republicans and before it spawned Michelle Bachmann and Tim Pawlenty.
There’s also, of course, the big furore over tuition fees, where a whole shit-ton of Lib Dems pledged to support the thoroughly progressive and lefty idea of a graduate tax rather than tuition fees, and then right after they got into power next to the Conservatives helped vote through a truly massive hike in fees. The resulting scheme, of course, actually _does_ amount to a tax… so why not call it one and work it that way? Oh yeah, because we don’t like tax; we like oppressing young poor people. That’s what we do now.
~Morag
Sigh. I wish it wasn’t so hard to emigrate, or at least get a long-term leisure/work visa for the UK. Actually, I wonder – if you did all your work remotely, and were paid in your home country currency, would you just need a leisure visa? Off to research…
I always figured I would have left Scotland by the time the independence vote rolled around, but as it turns out I might actually be staying. They need to just give me a boring list of pro/con facts compiled by a boring independent agency.
Pro: No Tories
Con: Alex Salmond might crown himself king.
Scotland on The Toast! Very happy to see this. Though two things; Labour are not quite as far to the right as the Democrats (no, really, even now) and I would say Scotland is a big step further to the left than the bulk of Democratic voters in the US. In that all of us generally hate guns and are fans of putting our taxes towards important services like the NHS and the whole tution free universities. It’s really hard to compare.
I also think the parliament came about in 1998? But could be wrong with that.
I loved the message at the end of this – the only real reason I think Scotland needs to be its own country is to make a progressive state. That and I have an American husband and foresee fortress UK becoming an actual thing in the next few years.
You are correct, it’s 1998 – my bad.
Absolutely, the Democrats are right of Labour, and the Republicans are right of even the wingnut Tory backbenches, but I wasn’t so much trying to map UK politics exactly to the USA’s as give people a quick reference guide (I was already over wordcount!). And in terms of the two-party system (so far as it still exists in the UK, which ‘eh’) Democrats are on the left of the Republicans.
~Morag
True true. It’s so tough to explain the system. And the issue. I’ve heard that stupid saying about how we shouldn’t have borders at all way too much from outside Scotland- and it’s always said by people from the big countries that wield all the clout. Thank you for writing this, making things that bit clearer.
The referendum of the Parliament was in the summer of 1997 (and holy crap I have never been so tanked in my life. I was in Glasgow then and… I can still smell the single malt fumes from here).
The parliament was opened in 1999 on July 1. And, after the referendum of the parliament in 1997, June 30 1999 might be my other bestworst hangover night.
No “might” about it. I was so, so, soooo hungover the next morning.
Seconded. More Scotland on the Toast, our braes are bonny.
Back when I was a wee boy growing up in Scotland I used to think the Tories were a lot like the Republicans, and consequently Labour must be a lot like the Democrats, but after living in Utah for the past few years I realise now that Thatchers Tories would scare the crap out of today’s Republicans as some sort of Socialist protectionist monster. Of course Scotland will always think something different of Ole Maggie.
Seeing newspaper coverage of the Independence debate from afar I see mostly the negative. I hope its not all that’s being seen back home, but being a realist I suspect it probably is. Och no, Nato won’t have us! We won’t be able to pay oor bills without England! That’s BS or course. If Scotland is willing to provide the men and women, Nato will gladly take the cannon fodder in a heartbeat. England, like every other country in Europe, is in such poor financial shape after the recession that it can’t carry anyone (if it ever did), nevermind Scotland. The debt that has been run up the UK’s name will have to be paid partly by the Scottish people whether Scotland is part of the UK or not. Choices have been made by the Scottish parliament for the Scottish people but none of that was English coin, it was made by sacrificing expenditure elsewhere, something that is always under reported.
Unfortunately I no longer live in the country of my birth so I can’t take part in the vote next year, nor will I live there for a very long time sadly so I can’t tell other people how to vote. But I do hope that whatever decision people make they do so not through fear but by looking forward towards a confident Scotland whoever is in charge.
Personally though I am fed up seeing my countrymen blaming England for the ills of Scotland, maybe if all decisions were made in Edinburgh the politicians would have no choice but to be that bit more ambitious with their ideas for the direction of Scotland, or at the very least would be more accountable to the people if they couldn’t say “it wisnae me, it was the big bad Labour / Tory Prime Minster in London that wouldn’t let me do anything!”
I hope the Scottish people can see past the negative reporting and see that confident future I talked about. Because it reminds me of Chile under Pinochet (my wife is Chilean), who gave his people the choice (after worldwide pressure) to continue to support his Military backed government dictatorship or go a new direction. A direction that was Pinochet propaganda put out to be some sort of economic Armageddon. Turned out the Chilean people saw past that and voted him out and Chile has a growing economy. Not saying Scotland going independent will have the same effect but a new direction doesn’t have to be as scary as is being reported in some quarters. In fact it might help to rid the country of some of those doom monger MPs and replace some of them with more positivity.
Anyway my flu has diverted me from the points I was initially intending to make, and my typos have been adding up aggravating me further so I’m bringing this comment to an end.
There's also, of course, the big furore over tuition fees, where a whole shit-ton of Lib Dems pledged to support the thoroughly progressive and lefty idea of a graduate tax rather than tuition fees, and then right after they got into power next to the Conservatives helped vote through a truly massive hike in fees. The resulting scheme, of course, actually _does_ amount to a tax… so why not call it one and work it that way? Oh yeah, because we don't like tax; we like oppressing young poor people. That's what we do now.
~Morag
“pissed-off Scots everywhere voted SNP (mainly to give Labour and the Lib Dems a kicking”
I’d love to circulate this article, but that’s total keech. The SNP were already the government. People voted for them because they thought they’d done a good job, because they liked their policies and because the alternatives were too awful to contemplate. You don’t protest-vote for the government that’s already in power.