The Union rides again…
…but what can we learn from the vote?
Jonathan Galbraith, 19 September 2014
“We came within a few thousand votes of losing the greatest country in the world.”
Who said that? David Cameron? Alastair Darling? Her Majesty? David Bowie? Clearly not Nicola Sturgeon… None of the above as it happens: Warren Kinsella, former spin doctor to the Liberal Party of Canada. He was talking about the 1995 Quebec secession referendum, where there were indeed only a few thousand votes in it, but the message is just as relevant here in what is still, thankfully, the United Kingdom. In the end, things was looking a little bit ropey in the last couple of weeks, but the “Better Together” campaign comprehensively won the day, with only four out of 32 local authorities delivering a majority for “Yes Scotland”. The turnout was high at almost 85%, and the margin of victory (55% to 45%) means we are, gratefully, far from the hanging chadlands of Florida in 2000.
The No team deserves many congratulations, especially in what became an increasingly unpleasant campaign atmosphere. Behaving like sore losers even before they knew the results, some less scrupulous individuals on the Yes side (or “Team Scotland”, as Alex Salmond inclusively called it) have allegedly indulged in threats to business (Jim Sillars’ “day of reckoning”), online and offline bullying, and a less than courteous response to those who dared to take up their democratic right to support the No campaign. Behaviour of this nature has no place in modern Scotland, “independent” or otherwise. I want to pay tribute to those, on both sides of the debate, who conducted themselves with courtesy and respect throughout.
But I also want to salute every Conservative in England who supported the No campaign. It’s no secret that, minus Scotland’s 59 constituencies, Prime Minister Cameron would have won the 2010 election with a majority of 19, and kept Nick Clegg firmly on the Opposition benches. However, despite the arithmetic, these southern supporters of No put country before party and recognised that we don’t lop bits off our nation state simply for a temporary electoral advantage.
As the dust begins to settle, acres of newsprint and gigabytes of data will now be devoted to analysing the referendum. What is clear is that while the Union lives to fight another day, all is not entirely well on this sceptred isle. In this piece, I set out my thoughts on what the referendum has exposed about the UK as it stands and how it might be tackled.
The British political model is broken and needs reform
Scottish devolution was meant, in the words of then Shadow Scottish Secretary George Robertson, to “kill the nationalists stone dead”, and yet they now have a majority in the Scottish Parliament and brought us to the brink of break-up. Depressingly, all three leaders of the UK parties panicked last week and have promised more powers to Holyrood: in essence turning the No option into the “DevoMax” option that was to be kept off the ballot papers. The anomalies of Barnett and West Lothian remain and there is a growing sense in England that, either way, Scotland winds up with more public money and more powers. Indeed, the existing proposals to extend devolution will allow the Scottish Parliament to set income tax rates in Scotland: how then can Scottish MPs have a vote on the levels of taxes that will apply in England?
In fairness to the Prime Minister, he did note this morning that further reforms to devolution cannot ignore England as they have in the past. Some kind of constitutional convention may be needed here (a Royal Commission?) but my solution would be to devolve to England’s counties the powers that the devolved assemblies currently enjoy, especially around the delivery of public services. Ultimately, the British state needs to do fewer things, but do them better—maintaining our borders, responding to the threat of terrorism—rather than trying to deliver one-size-fits-all public services from the Scilly Isles to the Solway Firth, if not quite all the way to the Shetland Isles. Such an approach has two pleasing outcomes: if MPs find they are now underemployed, they could try to regain more powers from Brussels or see a reduction in their numbers. And if the people of Scotland realise that their councils could now do the job of the Scottish Parliament just as effectively, they may wish to dispense with the Holyrood chamber and effect real devolution at a more local level.
The Conservative Party still has work to do in Scotland
Despite it now being some 17 years since the great Scottish Conservative wipe-out of 1997, the party still holds a solitary Scottish seat at Westminster and lost ground at the last Holyrood elections. From the outset, David Cameron has appeared reluctant to engage in the debate on Scottish independence, recognising that if he were to make this some kind of presidential contest between himself and Salmond, the separatists may have won the day. Instead, the cross-party Better Together campaign was entrusted to former Labour Chancellor Alastair Darling – with the Prime Minister recognising in his recent Aberdeen speech that his party is still known as “the effing Tories” in most places north of Carlisle. Scotland—the land of Adam Smith, no less—is crying out for a credible right-of-centre alternative to Salmond’s leftist populism and Scottish Labour’s tired brand of municipal socialism. One of the more depressing elements of the independence debate was how much of it was focussed on which outcome would deliver higher public spending to deliver greater “social justice” – if decades of this haven’t worked before, why will more money make a difference now? The Scottish Conservatives cannot limp along for the next twenty years as they have done for the last twenty: nature abhors a vacuum, and if they cannot develop a successful model of free-market conservatism with a distinctly Caledonian flavour, then someone else will. There are UK elections in eight months’ time and Scottish ones a year after: it’s quite possibly the last chance saloon.
We won the day, but Britishness remains under threat as never before
Tell people that you believe in Scottish nationalism, and (the nastier parts of the Yes campaign aside) this means that you are outward-looking, modern, progressive, enlightened and support our old friend “social justice”. Tell them you are a British nationalist…and you’re a shaven-headed racist thug. There remains a certain squeamishness about being proud to be British: perhaps former US Secretary of State Dean Acheson’s famous words—“Great Britain has lost an empire and has not yet found a role”—still ring true today. Either way, the Better Together campaign clearly felt that it had to focus on technocratic arguments regarding the economy, currency and the rest rather than making the proud, emotional, romantic case for Britain and the United Kingdom. Salmond clearly had no qualms of this nature when making his argument for an independent Scotland.
The referendum delivered the result that the Unionists wanted, but we are naïve to believe that this secures our country in perpetuity. There are too many other challenges to list: the migrants illegally trying to enter the UK via Calais, the charade in deporting Abu Qatada from our shores, the ghastly Julian Assange cocking a snook at us from the sanctuary of the Ecuadorian Embassy, right down to the long-term threat posed by ISIS (or whatever they call themselves this week) which has, allegedly, led to a nominally British citizen decapitating other Westerners in the name of a perverted ideology. The SNP have been seen off—for now at least—but Britannia still needs to look over her shoulder.
However, it seems foolish to end on a sour note: the good people of Scotland have spoken, and have decided that they will remain, also, the good people of our United Kingdom. In the words of one of Mr Cameron’s predecessors, “just rejoice at that news”. Amen to that.
Jonathan Galbraith is a Fellow of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries and a member of the Conservative Party. Born and educated in southern Scotland, he now lives in Warwickshire and works in the pensions industry. He writes in a personal capacity.
