Scottish Secession could be Splendid

Self Determination Series 001.

Originally posted on Facebook 18 Sep 2014

As a Scot whose family have lived in England and India for three generations, I have always had warm feelings about the Union. It has seemed natural and right. But now, Scotland’s secession could be even better. For all the reasons that the supra national EU is bad, secession would benefit both populations. It would bring the government of Scotland, and of the rest of the UK, closer to the populations being governed. It would create competition among England and Scotland in terms of tax rates, business infrastructure, and public services. This competition would drive up standards, and encourage governments to try new things. Successful experiments would be copied, and the pressure to cure failures would be intensified by the inevitable comparisons with better outcomes on the other side of the border.

I suspect that it is a mistake to see independence as a pro-English Vs anti-English debate. I rather like North America, Australia, and India, but I don’t want them to send MPs to Westminster (or Edinburgh!). I have southern Irish friends whose innate republicanism coexists with a liking for the English that I suspect would be tried to breaking point by the constitutional order before 1922. Most of the Scottish feelings that are summarised as ‘Anti-English’ are, on closer inspection, anti-Westminster. Just as those English feelings that are lazily characterized as ‘Anti-European’ are anti-Brussles/Strasbourg. If your neighbour becomes your ruler, you are likely to hold them in lower regard than if they are just a friendly trading partner that allows you to do your own thing. In the early decades of the twentieth centuary Irish republicans were killing not only Brits but also any Irishmen that did not support independence; by the 1980s Stan Gebler Davies was standing as a Unionist candidate in Cork. He failed to get elected, but also failed to get killed for his troubles, which might not have been the case 60 years earlier.

The downsides of an independent Scotland could include a duplication of bureaucracy. Separate embassies across the world would be a tedious extra expense. But these are matters about which civilised friends should be able to come to mutually advantageous arrangements. The process of independence would be fraught with complications, but none should be insurmountable. Military bases? A 100 year lease might be the answer. These complexities could have been avoided had Westminster made a real attempt to give Scotland the government it wanted. The pressure to secede and the international/military complications would not exist if Scotland’s domestic policy had been entrusted to Scottish institutions. But Westminster has shied away from this, perhaps because one logical implication is similar English institutions, which would neuter the ‘federal’ element of pan-UK government: after devolving most power to individual counties, and signing away almost all of the rest to the EU, what would be left?

Peaceful separation of parliaments, while maintaining the same crown, could provide a useful precedent that might help in un-doing some of the damage caused by our Imperial administrators who defined countries without regard to people or geography. Africa and the Middle east in particular are blighted by straight-line borders whose only logic was a ruler placed on a map. Breaking up such countries into units each having a coherent demos could bring many benefits. A world of mini and micro states would be less congenial to those like David Milliband who want to have ministers of ever larger units so that they can ‘stop the traffic’, but traffic is people going about their work and play, and I would rather have citizen-legislators that queued with everyone else. But then, unlike David Milliband, I don’t aspire to a position in which the traffic is being stopped for me.