Yes or No? A collection of writing on Scottish independence

Neal Ascherson, Menzies Campbell, David Marquand, Linda Colley, John Kay, John Kerr PROSPECT 2014 2

Introduction

he vision of an independent Scotland will not disap- articulate a compelling case for the Union other than one based pear, even with a No vote in the referendum on 18th on prophesies of doom for Scotland if it goes it alone. This is September, which opinion polls suggest is likely. As partly because the question that David Cameron chose to pose Neal Ascherson argues in “Why I’ll vote Yes,” that in this referendum—full independence, or no change at all—is idea, now that it has taken root, will not go away. the wrong one. There should have been the option on the bal- TWhen Scots looks south, Ascherson writes, they see little of lot of “devo-max”—full autonomy, minus responsibility for for- themselves there. And all the while, the internal voice which eign policy and defence. Yet Cameron ducked that, wanting muses that “my country was independent once” gets louder. to force Scotland into a No vote; even though that is the likely Like many countries before it, Scotland sees independence “as result, the tactic has backfired by forcing serious consideration the way to join the world, modernise and take responsibility for of the Yes option. their own actions and mistakes.” Whatever happens on 18th September, Britain will have to Yet for all the feelings of national identity and self-assertion rethink the way it runs itself. The writer and former Labour MP that the referendum campaign has stirred up, economic ques- David Marquand imagines a federal future for the UK which tions—particularly concerning the currency and membership of grants autonomy to the constituent parts of the Union, short the of European Union—have dominated the debate. However, of outright secession. A vision which is shared by Sir Menzies as the campaign enters its final weeks, there is still an alarm- Campbell who discusses his reports on home rule and shares ing lack of clarity on these key issues. The arguments have not his thoughts on how a cross-party consesus could be achieved developed much since January 2013, when John Kerr argued after a No vote. And Linda Colley, the distinguished historian, that it would not be quick, easy or cheap for an independent argues that one effect of the referendum campaign has been to Scotland to rejoin the EU. As for the economic benefits of inde- put the case for a written UK constitution firmly back on the pendence, these too remain unclear, as John Kay shows in his agenda. article “Give me liberty or £500.” Whether the result is independence or not, this historic vote If the economic arguments are inconclusive, then what is left is likely to be the trigger for fundamental constitutional change is vision. It is regrettable, therefore, that the Better Together in Scotland and beyond. The United Kingdom will never be the campaign, alternately complacent and tentative, has failed to same again.

PROSPECT 2014 4

Why I’m voting Yes neal ascherson Published in the August 2014 issue of Prospect

y uncle was an officer in the Royal Scots, “the adult population put their names to this painfully polite doc- First of Foot.” The tartan trews on his long ument, which began, “We, the people of Scotland...” Nothing legs made him magnificent. As a child, I once happened. The then Labour government, concealing its alarm, asked my mother, his sister, “But what are the told the stupid Scots to go away and learn that British politics Royal Scots for, if it’s peacetime?” “They’re worked through decisions by sovereign parliaments, not by ref- Mthere to stop the English taking away the Loch Ness Monster,” erendums or petitions. she said. Married to a naval officer and fiercely loyal to the Later, I saw a lot of the empire in terminal decay, in Africa White Ensign, speaking a cut-glass English she’d learned in and Asia. Everywhere I met people who saw national independ- London at Miss Fogarty’s drama school, she was also the touch- ence—even in nations recently invented by the colonial power— iest Scottish patriot. as the way to join the world, to modernise and take responsibility “Breathes there the man with soul so dead/ Who never to for their own actions and mistakes. In Britain in those first post- himself hath said/ This is my own, my native land!” As children, war decades, “nationalism” usually meant that struggle from we often heard that ringing round the kitchen. From Miss Foga- colonial status towards independence. It was only later, when rty, my mother also learned the art of outrageous, spellbinding most of those struggles were over, that left-wing imaginations exaggeration. It was only the outbreak of the Second World War turned towards the Holocaust and developed a vulgar syllogism: which made me wonder if the Royal Scots really had been patrol- “Nationalism equals racism equals fascism equals war.” ling the Great Glen to watch for cockney monster-kidnappers. For myself, I spent most of the 1960s in central Europe, in the But my mother had political instincts as well. She voted No in last phase of the Cold War. National stereotypes and prejudices the first devolution referendum in 1979, declaring that “a Scot- still abounded. But everywhere, under the puppet regimes of tish parliament will make Scotland more English.” This extraor- the Warsaw Pact, ordinary people made the connection between dinary remark staggered me. Maybe she was the only voter in national independence and personal freedom—a connection I Scotland who thought like that. But could there be something recognised from Scotland’s 1320 Declaration of Arbroath. For in it—a warning against replicating Westminster arrogance and the Poles, regained independence was not just a happy end complacency? Or was it, as I now think, a deeply patronising but a fateful moment of choice: “Poland yes—but what sort of opinion that Scots were not up to inventing our own democracy? Poland?” For Thomas Masaryk, the austere dominie who led the Loveable only in our very second-rateness? Czechs out of the Habsburg Empire, independence was about It’s easy to talk of “thoughtless nationalism.” Not thinking truth and high moral standards or it was nothing. “Nebát se a merely means that underthoughts are rehearsing their sound- nekrást” (Don’t be afraid, and don’t steal) he told his people. less melodies in your head. Put it like this. In every Scottish Back in Scotland, the bargain which supported the 1707 Act brain, there has been a tiny blue-and-white cell which secretes of Union was crumbling. The empire was over; the Scottish an awareness: “My country was independent once.” And every industrial economy was in steep decline even before Margaret so often, the cell has transmitted a minute, often almost imper- Thatcher took her chainsaw to it in the 1980s. The centralised ceptible pulse: “Would it not be grand, if one day…” welfare state, for all its virtues, was sapping the autonomy of But this stimulated other larger, higher-voltage cells around great Scottish professions—education, law, medicine. For the it to emit suppressor charges: “Are you daft? Get real; we’re too first time in three centuries, political nationalism, in the form wee, too poor, that shite’s for Wembley or the movies.” One way of the Scottish National Party (SNP), came out of the wings and of describing what’s happening to Scotland now is to say that paced the stage. the reaction of those inhibitor cells has grown weak and erratic. Now working in Edinburgh, I supported the devolution plans Whereas the other pulse, the blue-white one, is transmitting which finally produced a Scottish parliament in 1997. But it louder, faster, more insistently. This is why the real September seemed obvious to me that devolution was a running process, referendum question is no longer “Can we become independ- which would quite probably end in independence. The archaic ent?” It is: “Yes, we know that we can—but do we want to?” Anglo-British power structure would provoke growing fric- In 1949, standing in the fish queue in Kilmacolm, I watched tion between London and Edinburgh. And sooner or later—so warmly-dressed ladies collect their haddock fillets and then sign I guessed—a Tory government might find it best to boot Scot- the “Scottish Covenant,” the petition for a Scottish parliament land out of the UK altogether. Much as Václav Klaus had booted which lay on the slab by the door. I signed too. Nearly half the the surprised Slovaks into independence a few years before, in PROSPECT 2014 WHY I’M VOTING YES 5 order to dominate the Czech Republic without challenge. nother heavy-lifting job is institutional. For three But I hadn’t foreseen the surge in SNP popularity which led centuries, the loss of a parliament was replaced by to an absolute majority at Holyrood in 2011 and now to the Sep- various blocs of largely unaccountable power—often tember referendum. Until then, my own preference for a next benevolent but seldom democratic. This is a prob- step would have been “devo max”—full powers for a Scottish Alem that England does not know. Among such blocs today are government within the UK. The big fruit of independence, I the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, the Faculty of thought, needed a few more years to ripen. Advocates and the Educational Institute of Scotland, the high- Two things changed that. The first was Tony Blair’s behav- minded but monopolistic union of teachers. Some would add iour over the Iraq War. Suddenly, I found that I had lost the the Church of Scotland to the list. Devolution has failed to dent feeling of living in an independent country—a feeling I couldn’t the massive immunity of these oligarchies. Only an independ- wait to find again. The second, pragmatic, was David Cameron’s ent Scottish government could—I don’t say would—find the decision to strike full self-government off the referendum paper. guts to face them down and integrate them into a democracy. Now the choice was simply Scottish independence: Yes or No. Second, an independent Scotland rejoins the world. Scotland Everything or nothing. Can you want nothing for your country? would have its own European Union membership, appropriate So much for the small biography of one “Yes.” The big argu- to its special needs and priorities, and direct access to all global ment for Scotland’s return to independence has a positive part institutions. (Absurd bluff is a fair description of the threat that and a negative one—a pull and a push. I have to say that on a the EU, facing its worst crisis of public trust, would expel one journey across Scotland that I made in May in the company of a of its most loyal, wealthy and longstanding participants. All the group of artists and musicians (the “bus party”), only a handful same, a temporary suspension would allow Scotland to perform of the hundreds of “Yes” opinions we heard were about “push”— some of those heavy-lifting, state intervention tasks, ignoring in other words, about the threat to Scotland if we remained in the the EU rules against subsidies.) In Europe, Scotland would join union. Instead, our audiences described for us the better, fairer a large group of small nations with populations around the five Scotland they wanted to build. They hoped for more generous million mark. It would be more prosperous than most of them, self-government at local level, for a Scotland open to more immi- but would share in a non-nuclear membership of Nato. grants, for an outward-looking Scotland helping other people on Third, independence would transform and revive party the planet, for “a listening Scotland where we can air uncertain- democracy. Freed from London control, Scottish Labour would ties, where my son can grow up and have prospects…” And so on. probably purge its leadership. It would back sharply away from On that journey between the Pentland Firth and the Clyde, post-Blairite neoliberalism to the more statist, social-democratic we talked to several hundred people. Strikingly, none of them line which suits its traditions. This liberated Scottish Labour (and very few were committed SNP types) assumed that their could reasonably hope to evict the SNP from power within a few hopes could be realised within the union. They weren’t always years of independence. In the same way, Scottish Conservatives right about that. Some, at least, of their demands could be car- —once relieved of the unionist stigma—could reconnect with ried out by a determined Holyrood under current devolution the largely unrepresented mass of Scottish right-wing opinion. arrangements. But their assumption confirmed the almost ter- Fourth, an independent Scotland—guaranteed always to have rifying failure of the “Better Together” campaign to make an the government it voted for, in contrast to the constant “demo- attractive case for the union—as opposed to its often humili- cratic deficits” of union—could reconstruct its constitution. The ating and sometimes farcical “Project Fear” offensive against people would become sovereign in the normal European way (in independence. contrast to England’s weird doctrine of parliamentary absolut- “Yes” may well not win the referendum vote in September ism). This would allow the entrenching of much stronger local (an opinion poll carried out by YouGov in mid-June had “No” government powers (“subsidiarity”), which would suit Scotland on 53 per cent and “Yes” on 36 per cent, with 9 per cent “Don’t as a country of acute and touchy regional differences. There knows”). But it has already, overwhelmingly, won the campaign. would be a supreme law (“Lex Rex”) in the shape of a justiciable In the long term, that may come to matter more. written constitution—again, normal European stuff, but alien to Whatever happens, the 1707 union is over. The treaty became traditional English jurists. history in 1999, when the “reconvened” Scottish parliament met That’s some of the pull, the positive case for independence. in Edinburgh. In its place, we have a lower-case, informal union But there’s also the push. This is the “negative” case for inde- which London and Edinburgh make up as they go along. Noth- pendence as a defence against threat, as a “lifeboat option,” an ing is fixed now, nothing is stable, and the accelerating torrent escape route from approaching doom. It’s a powerful case. So of Scottish debate and self-questioning set off by this campaign it’s surprising, touching even, that the official or unofficial “Yes” will not be checked by a No vote. For the first time, independ- campaigns have not launched a “Project Fear” horror-saga of ence is coming to be seen by many as sober commonsense—a their own. way out of increasingly sterile wrangles with Westminster. What follows if Scotland votes No, even narrowly? Quite Some of the advantages of full independence are obvious, probably another Tory-led government after 2015, followed by a if not precisely quantifiable, and can be listed. First, control referendum that would drag Scotland out of Europe against its of resources, oil and gas above all. Talk of “peak oil” is mis- will. The resumed demolition of what is left of the welfare state leading. There is more than enough left to finance the heavy- down south—the transition to a “Serco state”—would soon crip- lifting jobs facing an independent Scotland: the planning of a ple public services in Scotland. (The block grant allocated to sounder, more diversified economy; the rescue of “abandoned” Scotland according to the so-called “Barnett formula” is cal- post-industrial communities; regional repopulation of remote culated as a proportion of UK public spending, so that English areas and wider land reform; a coherent offensive against Scot- cuts reduce expenditure in Scotland). The proud but expen- land’s shocking health problems. sive achievements of devolution—free tuition, home care and PROSPECT 2014 WHY I’M VOTING YES 6 prescriptions—would all become harder to maintain. So, criti- by the austerity that followed? Is it even what the Scots want, or cally, would the independence of the Scottish National Health do they just yearn for a protective state and a large, well-padded Service, which has kept at bay the chaos of artificial competi- public sector—grandfather’s Scotland restored? tion, internal markets and privatisation which has demoralised I think the mood is much more dynamic than that. The people healthcare in England. we met have been energised in a way nobody can remember, and The unionist parties promise “more powers” for Scotland they want a new country. They plied us with innovations, ideas after a No vote. Scottish opinion is sceptical. Even if the parties for change, new approaches to energy, the sea-bed, immigration, can agree on what “devo more” should comprise, their various justice. The things they wanted to overcome were Scottish, not ideas offer only marginal tinkering with the minor tax discre- “British”: we are too judgemental of one another, too self-right- tions already decided by the 2012 Scotland Act—and already dis- eous; we prefer “aye been” (it’s always been done so) to trying missed by most observers as hopelessly behind the curve. But, anything new. Nobody hated the English. Instead, it was “West- knowing Westminster, I predict its politicians will say: “Well, minster doesn’t show it knows or understands anything about me that’s that: the Scots have had their whine. Now we can forget or us” (Clydebank), “We should no longer be tenants in our own about them and get back to what matters: London’s housing land” (Inverness) and “We are a world apart from London, they bubble and who might replace Ed Miliband…” just don’t understand us” (Alexandria). The mood of what we heard was modernising, risk-taking; not he strength of the “push” factor is a combination of at all protectionist. Could a British federation contain it? Gordon real fear and moral horror. It’s an almost cultural Brown says so; David Marquand, in his essay in this collection, revulsion from the sort of Britain the coalition gov- thought so. But it’s a non-starter because a federation invented ernment and its predecessors are trying to create. merely to head off a secession wouldn’t survive, and wouldn’t TThe Scots, in their majority, do not want to live in permanent deserve to; and because a federation in which one nation has 85 job insecurity, in a society of growing inequality, declining real per cent of the population is an in-bed-with-an-elephant non- wages, zero-hours contracts, food banks and beggars jostling sense. It might work if England consented to break itself up into on the steps of every bank. The warning against “private afflu- federal-state-sized chunks, but the English have shown that ence, public squalor” still resonates in Scotland, where equal- they prefer a unitary state and direct rule from London. Heaven ity and “fairness” are held to be national values. knows why, but that’s their right. Lastly, the soul of a federation Gordon Brown, as he marched off on his search for “British is its duty to level up living standards in all of its members. But values,” once suggested that patriotism should centre on the can you imagine a federal government in London invoking the NHS, the greatest of all British achievements. The late Tony constitution to make Oxfordshire transfer millions to the budget Judt thought that the “trente glorieuses,” the 30 years in which of Tyne & Wear? How un-British! western Europe experienced peace, social security, growing Two final points. First, Scottish constitutional wishes have prosperity and increasing equality, were one of the supreme tri- been incredibly steady over the last half-century. The biggest sec- umphs in human history. Since devolution in 1999, Scotland has tion of opinion simply wants Scotland to govern itself as other set out to protect and nourish what’s left of that postwar British small nations do—if possible, within the United Kingdom. But if settlement in one part of the island. In this sense, the SNP is the that’s not possible, then so be it—independence may be the only most “British” party of all. way to reach proper self-government. “Devo max”—full auton- Thatcher, John Major, Blair and Cameron have all been omy, less foreign policy and defence—roughly corresponded to complicit in trying to dismantle that settlement. It’s no wonder that wish. But it’s not on the ballot paper this September, so that Scots sometimes quote Gore Vidal’s comment on Ameri- unknown numbers of people will vote Yes without wanting inde- can politics: “We have one party with two right wings.” Thirty pendence for itself. years ago, the largest bloc of voters wanting independence were Second, I have watched and taken part in the two previous ref- loyal supporters of Labour—a solidly unionist party. Class came erendum campaigns on self-government, in 1979 and 1997, but before nation, in those days. But the shattering Labour losses this one is different. Not just because of the immensity of the to the SNP in 2011 were a token that this self-shackling mindset decision, for the generations to come, but because this campaign was coming apart—mostly in reaction to policies perceived as has turned into a spreading emancipation, drastically and per- “Thatcherite” and ordained in London, not Scotland. manently changing the way Scotland’s people assess their small All over Scotland, I keep meeting men and women who say: nation and feel empowered to change it. “I don’t trust Alec Salmond, I couldn’t be SNP. But I’m having As a woman in Clydebank declared, “The genie’s oot the bot- to rethink my old ideas. I’m not sure. But I don’t easily see how tle, there’s nae puttin’ it back.” Whichever way the referendum I could vote No.” These are natural Labour voters. And these vote goes on that Thursday in September, Scotland on the Fri- are the people the No campaign really fears. day morning will already be living in some form of independence. Is “social democracy in one country” conceivable in the Neal Ascherson is a journalist and writer. He is the author of “Stone Europe of 2014, cowed by the crash of the banks and emaciated Voices: The Search for Scotland” (Granta)

PROSPECT 2014 8

Liberty or £500 JOHN KAY Published in the February 2014 issue of Prospect

n the 2011 Scottish Social Attitudes survey, respondents ure brought down James Callaghan’s Labour government. The were asked how they would vote in a referendum if inde- 18-year Conservative ascendancy at Westminster followed, but pendence would make them £500 per year better off. Margaret Thatcher’s home counties tones alienated Scots. By They would vote in favour, by around two to one. If inde- 1997 the Conservatives were almost eliminated as a political pendence would make them £500 per year worse off, the force within Scotland. When Labour regained office, it quickly Iresult would be a two to one majority against. established a devolved Scottish Parliament. But this did not There would not have been a similar result for a poll in the remove the nationalist threat: it gave it a platform. With Labour United States in 1775, in Ireland in 1920, or in India in 1945; nor nationally unpopular in 2007, the SNP won enough seats in the even in relation to modern separatist issues, such as those in Scottish Parliament to form a minority government. Its leader, Quebec or Belgium, far less Kosovo. The economic issue looms Alex Salmond, so dominated the political scene that, despite larger in Catalonia, but even there it is bound up with linguis- contrary polls, he led his party to an overwhelming victory in tic differences and an unhappy modern history from the Span- 2011—a result which enabled, or perhaps compelled, them to ish Civil War and its aftermath. The referendum campaign in call a referendum on independence to be held in September Scotland is characterised by a near exclusive focus on economic 2014. issues. What is the answer to the question the Social Attitudes In a world of relatively free trade, small countries can com- survey posited? pete in global markets by specialising in narrow areas of com- If states are viewed as economic rather than ethnic or polit- petitive advantage. The success of peripheral small countries in ical entities, the balance of advance has shifted over time. The western Europe is the product of such specialisation—such as 19th century brought the rise of large states. Countries became the Swiss capabilities in speciality chemicals and precision engi- bigger, empires were formed. Continental Europe saw the polit- neering or the cluster of medical companies around Copenha- ical reunification of Germany and of Italy. France, and par- gen. These high levels of national prosperity are conditional on ticularly Britain, built colonial empires. The United States being an active and effective player in a global economy. Ire- expanded across the American continent. land’s romantic nationalist fantasy of economic as well as polit- The history of the 20th century was quite different. Empires ical independence condemned it to 50 years of disappointing progressively collapsed. The weak Turkish and Austrian performance. Only in the 1970s did the country establish a mod- empires were the first to fall. The process continued as Britain ern state whose membership of the EU symbolised and facili- and France shed theirs, and by the end of the century even the tated a new, open economic order. Russian empire disintegrated. The number of members of the Over the past 50 years income per head in Scotland has United Nations, 51 at its formation, has today expanded to 193. moved in the range of 90 to 100 per cent of the UK average. The Some of the most successful economic performers in modern nadir was reached in the 1960s when that figure dipped briefly times have been small states such as Switzerland and the Scan- below 90 per cent: the peak was reached in the 1990s, followed dinavian countries, which have moved from being among the by a slight relative decline. Scotland is the richest region of the poorest states in the world to among the richest. UK outside London and southeast England. The growth rate of The changing attractions of large and small were reproduced Scotland has been around 0.5 per cent lower than that of the UK in the fall and rise of Scottish nationalism. In the 19th century but that difference is accounted for by slower population growth people began to talk about North Britain. There was no politi- in Scotland, the result of net emigration. Until recently, projec- cal Scottish nationalist movement, only romantic fluff based on tions suggested that Scotland’s population was likely to fall but apocryphal history largely invented by Walter Scott. The revival recent immigration, primarily from Poland, has delayed or elim- of Scottish nationalism in the 20th century began as the chatter inated that prospect. of literati in Scottish pubs. But in the 1970s it acquired an eco- The industrial structure of Scotland is also similar to that nomic dimension. The discovery of oil in the North Sea allowed of the UK. There is some truth in the claim that Scotland is the Scottish National Party to campaign on the unsentimental more dependent on public sector employment than the UK as a slogan “it’s Scotland’s oil”—and to win seats in Westminster gen- whole. But, although classification differences complicate com- eral elections for the first time. parisons, the difference is small. Scotland, like the UK, has an An abortive attempt to placate this nationalist revival by re- economically and culturally dominant capital city. But Edin- establishing a Scottish Assembly failed in 1979, and the fail- burgh is not Scotland’s largest city, and both the economy and PROSPECT 2014 LIBERTY OR £500 9 society of Scotland are deeply affected by a steady improvement The financial world is now very different, as illustrated by in the fortunes of Aberdeen and Edinburgh relative to Scot- the most significant parallel in Europe in living memory: the land’s other two principal cities, Dundee and Glasgow. Scotland breakup of Czechoslovakia. The intention again was to park the is in a very different position from Wales or Northern Ireland, currency issue but this proved impossible. Three weeks after two both of which are economically dependent on support from the separate countries came into being at the beginning of 1993, UK. Independence for Scotland is certainly a feasible economic the countries agreed to adopt distinct currency regimes. The option. But would the £500 have a positive or a negative sign decision was kept secret for three weeks, after which the Slovak attached? crown traded independently and at a discount. A Scottish vote for independence would be followed by nego- There are three basic currency options for an independent tiations about what independence would mean in practice. The Scotland. It could become a member of the eurozone; it could SNP’s proposed timetable—with an independent state coming form a monetary union with the remainder of the UK and con- into being 18 months after a Yes vote—seems unrealistic. The tinue to use sterling (an unattractive variant on this option has most important of such negotiations would be those with the Scotland unilaterally using that currency); or it could have remaining UK and with the European Union. an independent currency. The position of a Scottish currency Campaigners for independence face a genuine difficulty in would be one of many issues to be negotiated with the EU. describing the specifics that they ask people to support, which is Recent accession countries have broadly been told they must reflected in the lengthy White Paper on the effects of independ- take the treaties as they are and it can be expected that much ence which the Scottish government published in November. the same would be said to Scotland. There could, however, be That document is, perhaps inevitably, a mixture of the nego- discussion of areas where the UK has negotiated opt outs or spe- tiating stance a Scottish government would adopt in interna- cial arrangements. tional negotiations if it secured a positive result- on issues such It would not be sensible for the EU to insist on Scottish acces- as debt and currency; a positively spun description of how inde- sion to the Schengen agreement on a common passport zone, pendence might function in practice—on matters such as citi- since Scotland’s only land border is with a state outside it. Nor zenship; and an election manifesto for the SNP—on questions need the EU require Scotland to abandon its zero VAT rate on such as housing benefit and nuclear missiles. food, clothes and other products. There is no possibility that Neither the UK nor EU will enter into negotiations ahead of Scotland would inherit any share of the UK’s budget rebate. a Yes vote; the putative Scottish government can only set out Scotland would be required to accept that the euro is the offi- a negotiating stance. The documents that the current Scottish cial currency of the EU. However, initially, Scotland would not government produced in November are designed to reassure qualify for membership of the eurozone as it would not meet undecided votes that nothing much would change: the inde- the Maastricht criteria. The longer term issue would probably pendent state would have the same Queen, the same currency, be settled by vague aspiration on the part of Scotland to join the the same monetary policy and financial regulation. Most of the euro at some time in a future so indefinite as to be irrelevant to policy changes it describes—the most eye-catching is exten- any current decisions. sive provision of free childcare—are policies which the Scottish It would be sensible, as Scottish ministers have currently pro- government already has the powers, but not the resources, to posed, for Scotland to attempt to form a monetary union with implement. England after independence. But it would not be easy to achieve Some major issues could be deferred, to be dealt with in due that outcome. The debate would be conditioned by recent euro- course by negotiation between new sovereign states. The com- zone experience. Conventional wisdom today—not necessarily plexities of pension provision for the large numbers of people well founded—is that monetary union is feasible only if there who have worked in both Scotland and England might be an is a very high degree of fiscal coordination leading in the direc- example of such an issue, although such deferral would make tion of fiscal union; if there is a banking union; and if there is it difficult for a Scottish government to implement the White also widespread coordination of other policies. It is certain that Paper’s commitment to immediate reform of Scottish pension if negotiations took place between Scotland and the UK over policy. the formation of a monetary union, this would be the position Scottish independence would require detailed legislative adopted by the Bank of England and the UK Treasury. activity by both Westminster and the EU. It is unlikely, in fact So could the outcome of such a negotiation be consistent inconceivable, that general legislation would pass unless there with aspirations for an economically independent Scotland? The was a substantial degree of consensus on specific issues. The big- asymmetry between a country that represents 8.5 per cent of a gest immediate question—and the one that has most potential monetary union and one that makes up 91.5 per cent is a funda- for damaging uncertainty—is the decision an independent Scot- mental difficulty. The rest of the UK would seek fiscal oversight land would make about its currency. over the Scottish economy and would be unwilling to concede When Ireland became independent in 1922, the currency reciprocal oversight. At the very least the Scottish government issue was parked: people in Ireland carried on using English would have to prepare for the possibility that these negotiations pounds exactly as they had been doing before. These Eng- would not succeed. The principal alternative for an independ- lish pounds were issued by the Bank of England through Irish ent Scotland would be a separate currency. banks. Only in 1927 did Ireland start to have its own bank notes The possibility of such an outcome has economic conse- and for a long period after that the Irish Currency Board backed quences not just from the day of independence but from the day these Irish notes 100 per cent with Bank of England notes. In at which independence becomes a serious option. If there were 1942, Ireland established its own central bank, but the link to be a Yes vote—indeed, if it were believed to be likely that the between the Irish pound and the British pound was not finally vote in Scotland would go in favour of independence—sophisti- broken until 1979. cated individuals and businesses would start positioning them- PROSPECT 2014 LIBERTY OR £500 10 selves to ensure that they benefited from, or at least did not lose which took place in the UK from 1999-2006, Scotland was given out from, the establishment of a separate currency. more money through the block grant than it could sensibly They would start to ask, as Czechs and Slovaks asked, “what spend in the early years of devolution. Over these seven years, will happen to my bank account, and my life insurance policy? public expenditure in Scotland increased by almost 50 per cent Is my mortgage to be repaid in Scottish pounds or in English in real terms. pounds?” Instability follows uncertainty. It is difficult to know But these discussions as to whether Scottish voters would, in what the outcome of monetary negotiations would be and yet the short term, be net gainers or losers from the replacement vital that everyone knows the answer. of a subsidy from the UK by a windfall from the oil industry An independent currency would impose costs on Scotland, are hardly a serious basis for a decision as to whether Scotland as well as a degree of monetary freedom—but the costs should should become an independent country. not be exaggerated. It would be sensible for Scotland to peg its What would independence mean for the performance of currency to the pound, as the Irish did for so long. The Dan- business in Scotland? Since the economic performance of small ish krone has been pegged against the euro since the establish- states depends on successful specialisation in a global market, ment of the eurozone (and the Hong Kong currency has been the issue becomes: “What competitive advantages does Scotland linked to the US dollar for 30 years). Danish businesses main- have, or might Scotland have, that would enable Scottish busi- tain accounts in krone and in euros and the peg provides Den- nesses to compete as effectively as Swiss businesses, or Danish mark with much of the stability that a formal currency union businesses, or Swedish businesses, first within the EU and would offer. That said, it must be acknowledged that most Dan- then in a worldwide market?” ish politicians and business people would like the country to join Scotland has a traditional strength in financial services, the the eurozone. It has not happened because voters will not agree. product of a long Scottish involvement in imperial trade and Allocation of debt between the two countries would naturally finance. The record of Scottish finance over the last decade has be based on population or share of onshore GDP—there is little certainly been distinguished. Having established a reputation difference between the two. The recent announcement by the for prudence and conservatism over a century or two, Scotland’s UK Treasury that it would stand behind the UK’s debt is sim- banks managed to dissipate that reputation in a short-lived ply a statement of the obvious since the rest of the UK (as suc- phase of folly. Scotland no longer has the position in interna- cessor state) would be liable for it in any event. Scotland would tional banking to which it once aspired. It nevertheless retains presumably be responsible for servicing a pro rata share and a strong position in insurance, and in asset management, where might roll over that share into Scottish debt as the historic stock a reputation for conservatism and competence remains largely matured. Scotland could expect to pay a modest premium for intact. the unfamiliarity and relative illiquidity of a new small country’s Scotland has an obvious source of competitive advantage in debt, although this might initially be offset by some patriotic tourism. But tourism levels in Scotland relative to other Euro- purchases (both in Scotland in the diaspora). The borrowing pean countries are lower than Scotland’s potential, given its capacity of the new state would be limited by a debt to GDP evident attractions as a tourist destination. And it is hard to ratio not very different from the unfavourable debt to GDP ratio identify Scottish firms that will compete effectively and glob- for the UK as a whole. ally in that sector—no large tourism businesses are now based in The current fiscal position is that Scotland receives a block Scotland. They once existed but have mostly been absorbed into grant from the UK government for the bulk of its expenditure. global corporations: Stakis Hotels disappeared into Hilton, Gle- Health and education are the main expenditure items among neagles became Diageo Turnberry part of Starwood devolved functions. The allocation to Scotland in that block One of the most serious problems has been the drain of Scot- grant is around 10-12 per cent higher per head of population tish business and Scottish headquarters out of the country. Scot- than the corresponding figure for the UK as a whole. That cross tish and Newcastle Breweries, Bells, Teachers and Whyte and subsidy—perhaps not coincidentally—equates roughly to the Mackay, Scottish Widows and General Accident, the Glasgow gain to Scotland from an allocation of oil revenues by reference Herald and Grampian Foods have all moved their head offices. to the general principles of territorial rights in the North Sea in Is this due to Scotland’s membership of the UK? Or would much international law. An independent Scotland would have a budg- have happened anyway in a world in which London is a major etary position that was more volatile and more uncertain but financial and business centre, and in which merger and acqui- on balance neither substantially more or less favourable than sition activity across borders has become progressively easier? the status quo. However this position would tend to deteriorate Certainly Scotland has not been able to adopt policies to retain as oil revenues tail off and unfavourable demography makes its corporate headquarters within its boundaries in ways that it impact. might and probably would have been able to do as an independ- The additional per capita public expenditure in Scotland is ent country. mainly used to implement higher staffing levels in health and Scotland has a potential competitive advantage in premium education services. But while Scotland employs more doctors, food and drink. Scottish salmon, beef, shellfish and whisky are nurses and other ancillary workers per head of population than prized and valued around the world. Yet Scotland combines England, its mortality figures are worse than that of the UK as some of the best food products with the least healthy diet in the a whole. Scotland is the worst health performer among major EU. It is difficult to see Scotland as an international premium countries in western Europe. That is partly but not wholly food producer if that disjunction is not addressed. accounted for by particularly poor figures in Glasgow and the No product in global markets is as clearly identified with a west of Scotland. single country as is whisky with Scotland: customers routinely Scotland spends a lot in its public sector and it is not very ask simply for a Scotch. Yet the two largest producers of Scot- clear what it gains from it. As a result of the spending splurge tish whisky are Diageo—with a minimal headquarters pres- PROSPECT 2014 LIBERTY OR £500 11 ence in Scotland—and the French spirits manufacturer Pernod But independence might evolve in a different way. Scotland— Ricard. Still, the arrival of Diageo and Pernod Ricard in the Scot- and especially Glasgow and west central Scotland—suffered in tish whisky industry has revived a sector which was previously the 20th century from a municipal socialism which, initially in decline. The takeover by Guinness of the Scottish based Dis- idealistic and well-intentioned, became reactionary and mildly tillers’ Company in 1986 put an end what is probably one of the corrupt, in a way that damaged both individual aspiration and worst and longest sagas of mismanagement in British business business enterprise. Small countries are also vulnerable to the history. That decline of Scotland’s whisky monopoly from the crony capitalism which produced such disastrous results in other 1920s to the 1980s has wider lessons. Both whisky and banking west European economies such as Ireland or Iceland. It is not are stories of loss of competitive advantage through management difficult to see how a combination of the two might have a bale- failure, and responsibility for these failures is located in Scot- ful effect on any kind of entrepreneurial culture. It is on the bal- land, not outside it. ance of these two forces—the greater dynamism of a more self Scotland has some new sources of competitive advantage, confident state and the complacent self-congratulation too often such as the energy services sector that has developed around the characteristic of Scottish culture—that the economic progress of growth of North Sea oil production. Scottish doctors have also an independent Scotland would likely depend. been renowned around the world for at least 200 years. Not only But the likelihood of such an outcome from September’s ref- is Scotland still a major centre for medical training but spin-off erendum is small. The “yes” campaign remains well behind in businesses have recently emerged in life sciences. the polls. Perhaps Salmond can pull a last minute rabbit from What is needed is a climate of enterprise and entrepreneur- the hat; perhaps some recovery in the economy might bring with ship within Scotland. A number of successful new Scottish com- it a recovery in Conservative prospects of re-election at Westmin- panies have been created, such as KwikFit, Stagecoach, and ster which would further alienate Scottish voters to whom David Clyde Blowers—mostly by idiosyncratic individuals outside the Cameron and George Osborne have little appeal. But the odds traditional educational ladder climbed by “lads o’pairts” who are stacked against this. While the UK government, and particu- went on to Edinburgh or Glasgow Universities from Scotland’s larly the opposition parties in Scotland, have indicated the possi- famous academies. Among more conventional middle-class bility of further moves towards devolution after a “no” vote, it is products of the Scottish education system, many people have difficult to imagine that such measures would be a priority for a been successful in business—but outside Scotland. An independ- Westminster parliament once the independence threat had been ent Scotland might offer an environment more conducive to the removed. A 60/40 margin of defeat for Salmond would leave the development and retention of such individuals in future. So the issue still on the table. A 70/30 margin would kill it for the fore- result of independence could be a much more vibrant economic seeable future, and put in question the future of both Salmond environment. Devolution has led to some revival of Scottish iden- and the SNP. There is still a lot to play for. tity and self-confidence, and independence might do more. John Kay is an economist

PROSPECT 2014 13

United States of Britain david marquand Published in the June 2014 issue of Prospect

ying on the desk in front of me as I type is my pass- Republic. Had the Duke of Burgundy, Charles the Bold, beaten port. The cover is an elegant confection of maroon off the depredations of the French crown in the 15th century, and gold. “European Union” proclaims the first a powerful Burgundian state might now dwarf a puny France. line, in golden capital letters. Beneath, slightly Had Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile not married, larger golden capital letters add the words: “United there would have been no Spanish state. LKingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.” Beneath The confusion that now engulfs the UK’s territorial consti- that, also in gold, are the arms of Her Britannic Majesty, Queen tution can be understood only against that background. The Elizabeth II. At the top of the inside facing page are the words referendum on Scottish independence called by the Scottish “European Union.” Below them are two lines, translating that National Party government has provoked extraordinarily vitu- term into the two Celtic languages of Great Britain, Welsh and perative and insensitive attacks on the very idea of an inde- Scottish Gaelic. Then come the words, “United Kingdom of pendent Scotland from all and sundry: George Osborne, Danny Great Britain and Northern Ireland.” Below them come, once Alexander, Ed Balls and David Cameron, with Mark Carney and again, their Welsh and Scottish Gaelic equivalents. On the José Manuel Barroso bringing up the rear. They have all warned penultimate inside page of the passport, alongside an unflat- Scottish voters of the horrors that will engulf Scotland should tering photograph and below my full name, are the portentous they have the temerity to vote for secession from the UK. They words, “British Citizen.” remind me of King Lear’s famous threat “to do such things, The message is subtly, I almost said slyly, postmodern. It is what they are yet I know not, but they shall be terrors of the also remarkably European. I am, my passport tells me, a Brit- earth.” ish citizen. But that is not all I am. I am also a citizen of the Like Lear’s threat, the warnings delivered by Osborne and European Union, bearing the rights guaranteed to EU citizens company tell us more about the warners than the warned. Deep by virtue of the European Convention on Human Rights that in the sub-conscious of English politicians and commentators all EU member states are bound to accept. I am represented in lurks an unspoken, but profound incomprehension about the the directly elected European parliament, as well as in the Brit- nature of the non-English peoples of the UK. South of the bor- ish House of Commons. And thanks to the devolution of impor- der and east of Offa’s dyke England represents normality; the tant powers to the non-English nations of the United Kingdom, non-English are assumed to be would-be English, or even Eng- British citizenship itself is a far more complicated matter than lish in disguise. The notion that the Welsh and Scots are not just it used to be. I am Welsh by origin, and my wife and I have just non-English, but happily and contentedly non-English seems acquired a flat near Cardiff, my native city. Before long, we shall eccentric to the point of perversity. Partly because of this, the be entitled to vote in elections to the Welsh assembly or Senedd. terms “British” and “English” have been almost interchangeable This is typical of modern Europe. All over the continent, for English people. When Kipling asked, “What do they know ancient ethnicities are emerging from under the carapace of the of England who only England know?” he had Britain in mind. familiar European “nation state.” For Wales and Scotland read When the Scottish émigré, Thomas Carlyle talked of the “con- Catalonia, Sardinia, Galicia, Lombardy, Corsica, the Basque dition of England question” he could equally well have called country, Andalusia and Flanders. To make sense of this, it is it the “condition of Britain question.” In his magnificent 1941 important to remember that the allegedly “national” states of polemic, The Lion and the Unicorn, George Orwell called for a Europe are, in many cases, artificial: products of dynastic mar- “very English revolution,” but it is clear from the context that riages and the contingencies of battle rather than Abraham Lin- by “English” he meant “British.” coln’s “mystic chords of memory.” (The mystic chords sounded These deep-seated attitudes help to explain the widespread after the nations came into existence, not before.) But for the English failure to understand the logic of the SNP’s search for marriage between James IV of Scotland and Margaret Tudor, independence and, on a deeper level, to remember how and daughter of King Henry VII of England, Margaret’s grandson, why Scotland became part of the UK in the first place. It is a James VI of Scotland, would not have inherited the English long story, but the central fact is clear. As the Oxford politics crown, and the British state might never have come into exist- professor Iain Maclean has emphasised, the Treaty and sub- ence. Had Austria defeated Prussia at the battle of Königgrätz, sequent Acts of Union of 1707 flowed from a bargain between instead of the other way around, there would have been no Ger- the two sovereign and independent Kingdoms of Scotland and man empire, no Third Reich and probably no German Federal England (which then included Wales). The bargain was just PROSPECT 2014 UNITED STATES OF BRITAIN 14 that: a bargain. It was not a diktat. It was made because the incarnation of an idea; the kingship would have seemed to ruling bodies of the two nations thought it was in their inter- them as it seems to us, to embrace and express the qual- ests. England secured its northern frontier, ruling out any rep- ity that is peculiarly England’s: the unity of England, etition of the “auld alliance” between Scotland and France; the effortless and unconstrained, which accepts the unlim- Scots accepted the English law of succession to the throne, rul- ited supremacy of crown in parliament so naturally as not ing out a Jacobite succession; the Scottish and English par- to be aware of it.” liaments were merged; Scotland became a junior, but richly rewarded partner in what was now the British empire. At the Perhaps because he was ethnically Welsh, Powell was laying it same time, the continued existence of Scotland’s separate legal on a bit, but he put his finger on an exposed nerve of the British system and established church was guaranteed. These institu- polity. The Dicey-Powell doctrine runs directly counter to the tions preserved the memory of independent Scottish statehood implicit Scottish conception of popular sovereignty set out in and provided an enduring focus for a distinct Scottish identity. the Declaration of Arbroath of 1320. The text of the declaration Scotland, in other words, voluntarily joined a union with Eng- is worth pondering. If Robert the Bruce “should give up what land. I cannot see any reason why it would be ipso facto wicked he has begun, and agree to make us or our kingdom subject to or shocking or improper for Scotland now to decide that it no the King of England or the English,” it proclaims, “we should longer wishes to remain a member of the union concerned: that exert ourselves to drive him out as our enemy and a subverter the bargain was, in fact, one-sided and has not delivered, or at of his own rights and ours.” (Note the “our” and “ours.”) The least no longer delivers, the goods that the negotiators of 1707 premise is that the sovereign Scottish people should determine thought they were getting. the future of their country. This implicitly democratic concep- In sober fact, the guarantees given to Scotland in the Treaty tion lingered on in the minds of politically and constitutionally and Acts of Union rested on extremely shaky foundations. Eng- conscious Scots, but as a principle of government it didn’t sur- lish constitutional lawyers could never bring themselves to vive the union. accept that, in guaranteeing them, the settlement of 1707 had Constitutionally speaking, the UK is England writ large. The sought to entrench them in the constitution of the new Brit- Scots thought certain crucial Scottish demands had been guar- ish state. In one of the most resonant sentences ever penned by anteed in perpetuity, but according to the Dicey doctrine they an English constitutional lawyer, the Oxford jurist Albert Venn hadn’t been; in fact, they never could have been. By an extraor- Dicey insisted that the “doctrine of the legislative supremacy of dinary sleight of hand, the English doctrine of the “unlimited parliament,” as he called it, was “the very keystone of the con- supremacy of the crown in parliament” was imposed on the stitution.” None of the “limitations alleged to be imposed by law unconquered Scots, as well as on the conquered Welsh and the on the absolute authority of parliament,” he added, had “any partially conquered Irish. In calling the independence referen- real existence.” It followed that no parliament could bind its suc- dum, the Salmond government has rejected the Dicey/Powell cessor. The Act of Union was no exception; logically there could doctrine of unfettered parliamentary sovereignty in favour of be no exceptions. Indeed, with joyous glee, Dicey showed that the ancient Scottish doctrine of popular sovereignty. significant provisions of the Act of Union—one laying it down Against that background, the SNP case for Scottish inde- that professors at Scottish universities should subscribe to the pendence takes on a new colour. The central point concerns EU Presbyterian Confession of Faith and another prohibiting lay membership and its implications for Scotland. As the Scottish patronage in the Church—were repealed by the sovereign parlia- government points out, under devolution it has—and will con- ment of Great Britain. If Dicey was right (and he was) the guar- tinue to have—“no direct influence over EU decisions.” The UK antees of Scottish exceptionalism given in 1707 were worthless: government does not—indeed cannot—pay due regard to dis- the Scots had been sold a pup. tinctively Scottish concerns in the endless round of negotiations But at this point, the story takes a strange twist: Dicey’s doc- and compromises that are the stuff of EU politics and govern- trine of legislative parliamentary supremacy is not British; it is ance. Since Scotland is subsumed in the UK so far as EU poli- English, quintessentially English. For Enoch Powell, the great tics are concerned, there is no mechanism by which distinctive prophet of High Tory English nationalism, it encapsulated the Scottish concerns can be brought to bear in the EU legislative very essence of English nationhood. In a beautifully crafted, process. By definition, this is equally true of Wales and North- if slightly mad St George’s Day speech, he compared it to the ern Ireland. A Labour victory in the next election would leave “sacred olive tree” of ancient Athens. Like Athenians returning matters as they are. The sovereign London government would to the ruins of their city after it had been sacked by Xerxes, he still control the UK’s negotiating stance; the mere fact that the declared, the present generation of the English had come home party composition of it had changed would make no difference from years of imperial wanderings. Having returned, it had dis- to that brute fact. covered an unexpected affinity with earlier generations whose At this point, enter federalism. In a federal United Kingdom, effigies were to be found in England’s country churches. Sup- this would no longer be true. The constituent states of the feder- pose they could talk to us, he asked, what would they say? This ation—Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England—could is his answer: play the role that the German “Länder” play at the moment in the Bundesrepublik. They would be deeply involved in EU pol- “One thing they assuredly would not forget, Lancastrian icy-making. The UK government’s position would be hammered or Yorkist, squire or lord, priest or layman; they would out in intra-state negotiations and bargaining; the state govern- point to the kingship of England... and that sceptred awe ments would have a presence in Brussels, making sure that the in which Saint Edward the Englishman still seemed to sit British government stuck to the compromises made in the intra- in his own chair to claim the allegiance of all the English. state process. And if, as would be logical, the mouldering archa- Symbol yet source of power, person of flesh and blood, yet ism known as the House of Lords were replaced by an upper PROSPECT 2014 UNITED STATES OF BRITAIN 15 house on the lines of the German Bundesrat, which represents ging accountant, lacking in what the first George Bush called the Land governments, the states would be able to block any EU “the vision thing.” Only one objection needs to be taken seri- decisions that ignored their concerns. ously: Barroso’s claim that, if Scotland became independent, This is not just abstract theorising. The current UK govern- it would be difficult, perhaps impossible for her to join the EU. ment is Eurosceptic, not to say Europhobic. Its chief objectives But that is a matter of opinion, not an ex cathedra ruling by a in EU negotiations are to water down the “federalist” element in kind of Euro-pope. Barroso is not just President of the Euro- the EU Constitution in favour of the “confederalist”; and to pro- pean Commission. He is a right-of-centre Portuguese politician. tect the UK’s overblown and, in parts, criminal financial services His political position is radically different from the Scottish gov- sector from EU scrutiny. But none of this is true of Scotland. ernment’s. By no means all Commission officials share his opin- Scotland would like to be a constructive partner in EU politics. ion. As we speak, Scotland belongs to the EU by virtue of her Like most small member states, it knows that the EU offers the membership of the UK. The question is not whether she should best protection that small European nations have ever had from be allowed to join, if and when she becomes independent; it is big predators, as well as the best shelter from the upheavals of whether she should be thrown out. That question will be decided global markets. And, in present circumstances, the SNP con- by political argument and negotiation, not by unchallengeable tention that the Scots can play a constructive EU role only in an legal dicta. Of course, we cannot foresee the results. But it is independent Scotland has compelling force. clear that excluding Scotland from the EU would be an act of Moreover, the Scottish government is—implicitly at least— gratuitous and self-destructive folly. social-democratic. It seeks independence to protect Scottish The moral is clear. If Salmond loses the independence ref- social democracy against the market fundamentalism of the erendum, there will be an urgent need for a constitutional con- London government, both within the UK and in its dealings with vention to revise the UK’s territorial constitution, to decide how the EU. The roots of Scottish social democracy go deep. The the nations that make up the union should relate to each other political cultures of all the non-English nations of Great Brit- and to the whole and to hammer out an alternative to Westmin- ain are very different from their English counterparts. As a civil ster absolutism. (Some peers are rumoured to favour such a con- servant in the Welsh education department put it in my hear- vention before the referendum takes place, but it is hard to see ing not long ago, the overarching theme of UK governance can a suggestion from that quintessentially undemocratic quarter be summed up as “choice, competition, customer.” The Welsh gaining traction.) The important point is that if Scottish voters equivalent is: “voice, cooperation, citizen.” Since devolution, the reject independence in September there will a breathing space Welsh government has tried to follow the path implied by that to hammer out an agreed solution to the great conundrum of splendid trio. Mutatis mutandis the same is true of Scotland. multi-level governance in the UK: how to satisfy the legitimate But, ever since Mrs Thatcher crossed the threshold of No 10 aspirations both of the non-English nations of the union and of all UK governments, irrespective of party, have been in thrall to England. But the breathing space will not last for long. the imperatives of what Philip Bobbitt, the legal historian and philosopher, has called the “market state.” These imperatives t this point enter Charles Stewart Parnell, and the have not only violated the underlying assumptions of Scotland’s complex, long drawn-out and eventually tragic story political culture; they have also trampled on the religious tra- of the struggle over Irish home rule and of the deeper, ditions with which that culture is intertwined. Scotland’s reli- sometimes agonising struggles within the hearts and gious traditions are Roman Catholic and Calvinist. Both reject Aminds of those involved. It is rich in drama: William Gladstone’s the Hayekian market individualism of Thatcher and the watered first home rule bill and his magnificent speech in the debate on down version of it that prevailed under Blair and Brown. Two it; the Liberal split that ensured its defeat; Parnell’s terrible fall particularly egregious Thatcherisms stank in Scottish nostrils: after being successfully cited as a co-respondent in one of the her dictum that no one would remember the Good Samaritan most sensational divorce cases of the 19th century; his prema- if he hadn’t had the money to give effect to his good intentions; ture death; the Asquith government’s bitterly contested home and her notorious “sermon on the mound,” in which she insisted rule legislation before the First World War; the emergence of that since Christ chose to lay down his life, freedom of choice paramilitary forces both in Ulster and the south of Ireland; the was the essence of Christianity. Easter Rising of 1916 and the resulting “terrible beauty” that What if no fundamental change is made in the UK constitu- Yeats hymned in imperishable lines; the savage guerrilla war tion? Probably—but not certainly—Salmond will lose the refer- between the IRA and the British that followed the First World endum. However, that won’t be the end of the story. It is worth War; and the equally savage civil war between the supporters remembering that champions of independence have only got to and opponents of the 1921 treaty that gave the 26 counties of win once; opponents have to go on winning every time the ques- southern Ireland independent statehood. tion comes onto the political agenda. The political The story is also rich in passion, and in outsize political lead- and social forces that made the SNP Scotland’s governing ers. Salmond is a cuddly tabby cat compared with Parnell. Cam- party and lie behind its decision to hold the independence eron is laughably lightweight in comparison with Lord Salisbury. referendum won’t go away. Sooner or later, if the UK constitu- The wayward genius and vaulting ambition of Joseph Chamber- tion remains unchanged, there will be another demand for inde- lain, the Liberal Party’s nemesis in the 1880s, and the Conserva- pendence and another referendum. If the choice is once again tive Party’s in the early 1900s, have a steely intransigence about between independence and the status quo, I find it hard to see them which no present-day political leader can emulate. Lesser how any self-respecting Scot could vote against independence. members of the cast list—Cardinal Manning, austere Catholic For, as my old boss Roy Jenkins might have said, almost all convert and hammer of employer exploitation, Kitty O’Shea the the objections which have been made to independence fall well fatal love of Parnell’s life, and even her squalid husband, Cap- below the level of events. They breathe the spirit of a pettifog- tain William O’Shea—all seem larger than life. And Gladstone’s PROSPECT 2014 UNITED STATES OF BRITAIN 16 extraordinary combination of oratorical force, single-minded park provision. This “gas and water socialism”—the vigorous and will-power, charismatic inspiration, profound religious faith, constructive use of public power to improve social conditions on capacity for self-deception, institutional and political creativity, the ground—was Chamberlain’s apprenticeship. He approached high ideals and low cunning has no equivalent today. Colin Mat- national politics with the same impatient energy. His famous thew, who edited most of Gladstone’s voluminous diaries, wrote “Unauthorised Programme,” designed to “grapple with the mass that they described Gladstone’s “strivings to harness his will and of misery and destitution in our midst,” as he put it, was avow- his passions to the service of God.” It is hard to think of any mod- edly socialistic. All this was anathema to Gladstone. He was vis- ern politician—or indeed any other leading politician in the 19th cerally hostile to anything that smacked of socialism. He was for century—of whom that could be said. a limited state, not an interventionist one; partly because of this, The story is extraordinarily convoluted. To tell it in full would he gave a higher priority to the national grievances of the Irish need a substantial volume. The most I can do here is to pick than to social grievances in England and Scotland. Temperamen- out a few central themes. The first and most obvious is the tally, politically and philosophically, he and Chamberlain were leaden weight of Irish history that shaped the assumptions and chalk and cheese. behaviour of all the participants. In the 18th century, Ireland To me, at least, Gladstone is a much more attractive figure was effectively a colony, whose native population—the Catho- than Chamberlain. But Chamberlain saw—much more clearly lic Irish—were kept down, ultimately by force, but more imme- than Gladstone did—that the only sure way to bind Ireland into diately by cruel and humiliating penal laws that effectively the union was to treat the Irish question as one element in a deprived them of civil rights. Catholics could not bear arms, much wider British question: to reconstruct the British polity then an essential attribute of gentility; they could not practise on federal lines, making Ireland a state within a British federa- law; and they could not vote in elections to the Irish parliament. tion alongside Scotland, Wales and England. Chamberlain did The penal laws had gone by the middle of the 19th century, but not discover federalism during the struggle over Gladstone’s first the Irish famine of the second half of the 1840s inflicted a demo- home rule bill; he had toyed with federalist ideas as far back as graphic catastrophe on the country more terrible than anything the early 1870s. During the crisis over the home rule bill he told in the preceding century. Memories of it festered in the minds of a radical colleague that he thought the Westminster parliament the Irish diaspora in the United States and were revived by the should be responsible for foreign affairs, the army, navy, post lesser famine of the 1870s. office and customs; that subordinate legislatures in England, Not surprisingly, opposition to British rule frequently took Scotland, Wales, perhaps Ulster and the rest of Ireland should violent forms. The IRB—the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood, deal with their own internal affairs; that a Supreme Court should the so-called “Fenians”—were part of the context within which adjudicate on conflicts between the centre and the states; and constitutional opponents of British rule had to operate. The that the House of Lords should be abolished. great question facing the Irish party in the House of Commons In terms of the day-to-day politics of the moment, this was was how to reconcile the “Fenian” tradition with the constitu- patently not a runner. Gladstone was Prime Minister, in close tional one; and how to fit in with the mores and atmosphere of touch with Parnell. He and his future biographer John Morley the still largely aristocratic House of Commons. As Conor Cruise were preparing a government bill that, as Colin Matthew put O’Brien has shown, this apparently unpromising context was tai- it, turned “a slogan into the fine print of legislation.” He was lor-made for Parnell—a Protestant Irish landlord, an alumnus of not about to give way to an insubordinate minister peddling Cambridge University, a hereditary member of the Protestant remarkably inchoate and confused new slogans. Gladstone’s Ascendancy, yet at the same time endowed with a rare combina- ideas developed slowly, through serious reading and long reflec- tion of personal magnetism, political nous, strategic vision, and, tion. But once he had reached a conclusion, his mind locked onto until his terrible fall, rock-like fidelity to the Irish cause. it like the jaws of a man-trap. According to his biographer Rich- As I suggested above, in the current debate over Scottish inde- ard Shannon, a visitor to Gladstone’s home at Hawarden in the pendence, federalism is the dog that hasn’t barked in the night. winter of 1885-6 found him: In the debate over Irish home rule in 1880s, it barked quite fre- quently and fairly loudly. A leading dog handler was Joseph “so excited when he talked about Ireland, it was quite Chamberlain, who saw—or claimed to have seen—that the feder- frightening. He ended the conversation by saying, “Well ation of Canada was a model for the relationship between Ireland it has come to this, we must give them [the Irish] a great and the rest of the UK. People of English stock, Chamberlain deal or nothing.” And I answered with some warmth “then declared, had a special gift for “working out the great problem nothing.” Upon which he pushed back his chair with his of federal government”: Canada and the US were examples. In eyes glaring at me like a cat’s, he called to his wife that it the Commons debate following his resignation from Gladstone’s was time to go out.” government, he “raised the possibility of federation,” as his lat- est and most authoritative biographer puts it, as an alternative Few people could prevail against Gladstone’s glaring cat’s eyes, to home rule. Chamberlain’s political style was harshly rebar- and an insubordinate Chamberlain was not one of them. But bative. He was a confronter, by nature, not a conciliator; a split- it doesn’t follow that Chamberlainite federalism could never ter not a unifier. There was a noble grandeur about Gladstone’s have been a runner in any circumstances. A crucial question Damascene conversion to Irish home rule. It is all too easy to is whether Parnell and his party would have been satisfied. Of see Chamberlain’s response as spiteful and opportunistic; and course, there is no way of telling. But it is worth noting that on Gladstone’s admirers then and since have seen it in just that way. the touchstone issue of whether Ireland would continue to be The truth is more complicated. Chamberlain had won his represented directly in the “imperial” parliament at Westmin- spurs as a reforming Mayor of Birmingham, immersed in the ster, Parnell seems to have had an open mind. For Chamberlain nitty-gritty of slum-clearance, water supply, road-building and this was the crux of the home rule dispute. If there were no Irish PROSPECT 2014 UNITED STATES OF BRITAIN 17

MPs at Westminster, if Ireland would be the only part of the UK to republican liberty. Their solution was to locate sovereignty without representatives in the “imperial” parliament, Chamber- in the whole American people; and to ensure that the people lain’s federalist solution to the home rule crisis would be dead in could exercise their sovereignty both on the state and on the fed- the water. Ireland would follow its own path—a path that would eral level. Power would check power and the threat of execu- sooner or later lead to Irish secession from the UK. But if Irish tive aggrandisement would be held at bay. Last, but not least, MPs remained at Westminster, with a separate Irish legislature the package was codified and transparent. UK federalism would in Dublin dealing with domestic Irish affairs, the Irish settlement not follow the American example in every respect, but the three might pave the way for a federal United Kingdom. great pillars of American federalism—codification, checks and Originally, Gladstone wanted to retain Irish MPs at Westmin- balances and popular sovereignty—would be of its essence. ster, but he blenched at the implications, notably what we know In one crucial respect, however, the framers of a federal con- today as the “West Lothian question.” If Irish MPs sat in the stitution for the UK would face a problem with no American House of Commons, and if they were allowed to vote on all the counterpart: the problem of an overmighty (or perhaps just matters that came within its purview, a serious imbalance would overweight) England. England contains almost 84 per cent of result: Irish members would be able to vote on specifically Eng- the UK population. Scotland has just under 8.5 per cent, Wales lish (and Scottish) matters, though English and Scottish MPs just under 5 per cent and Northern Ireland just under 3 per would not be able to vote on the equivalent Irish matters since cent. There are wide variations in the state populations in Ger- they would have been devolved to the Irish legislature. But if many, and still more in the US, but no German or American Irish MPs were allowed to vote only on “imperial” matters and state towers over the rest in the way that England does. One pos- not on English ones, a majority on “imperial” questions might be sible solution would be to divide England into regions with the a minority on English ones. Collective and individual ministerial same powers as those of the non-English nations. But that solu- responsibility to the House of Commons, a fundamental prin- tion pays too much heed to symmetry and too little to sensibil- ciple of the Westminster model of parliamentary government, ity and self-understanding. The Scots and Welsh are not the only would be fatally undermined. The logical answer was federalism, ancient peoples to emerge from under the carapace of the British but for Gladstone that was a bridge too far. In the end, the 1886 state: the English have done so too. The Campaign for an Eng- home rule bill kept Irish MPs out. In doing so, it split the Liberal lish Parliament, which is now a feature of the landscape, and the Party, ensured the defeat of the bill, turned Chamberlain into proliferation of St George’s flags at appropriate moments in the a bitter and deadly foe of the British liberal tradition, led to 20 calendar are signs of that. A federal United Kingdom with four years of Conservative hegemony, and thrust hopes of British fed- states, one of them much more populous than the other three, eralism into a deep freeze in which they still languish. It is time would be an oddity. But it would reflect the odd history which has to switch the freezer off. made this country what it is. If the peoples and political classes What would a federal United Kingdom look like? The inspired of the United Kingdom want to make it work, they will. If they opening words of the US Constitution—“We the people”—point don’t, break-up is inevitable. the way to the answer. The founding fathers of the American David Marquand is author of The Decline of the Public: The Hollow- republic faced a conundrum: how to marry executive power ing Out of Citizenship

PROSPECT 2014 19

Time for a UK constitution linda colley Published in the May 2014 issue of Prospect

he Scottish government will soon issue a draft inde- in the last two centuries, there were large numbers of Britons pendence bill, and it will include an interim writ- who dismissed them as inherently impractical and unaccepta- ten constitution. If Scotland becomes independent, ble devices. Such opposition partly reflected the influence of the this constitution will be modified, amplified and “common law,” with its emphasis on the slow accretion of prec- ultimately ratified by a formal convention in edents and customs. But scepticism also had much older roots. T2016. In a sense, the exact provisions of this document—if it There were classical and biblical precedents for the idea that materialises—will be of less immediate significance than the fact unwritten, innate laws were superior to written laws. Christ’s of its existence. It would signal Scotland’s difference from the message, St Paul tells the Corinthians, is “written not with ink, rest of the UK, which lacks a written constitution—and that is, but with the spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but of course, precisely the intention. on tablets of human hearts.” The relentless proliferation of written constitutions has British and Irish defenders of an unwritten constitution been one of the most striking developments in the history of sometimes made similar, quasi-mystical claims. Edmund Burke the modern world. The last third of the 18th century witnessed did so in a speech in parliament in 1791, when he suggested that at least two major alterations in the ordering of human soci- there was no need to translate the Magna Carta from the origi- ety. The first was a quickening of the pace of industrial produc- nal Latin because Britons instinctively understood it; it was in tion and knowledge. The second was a wave of revolutions in the their hearts. James Bryce, a brilliant Scots-Irish academic, pol- Thirteen Colonies, France, Haiti and elsewhere, which—among itician and jurist, also made semi-mystical claims about Brit- other things—helped give rise to substantially novel and widely ain’s constitutional settlement in an influential book published influential constitutiuons. in 1905. He suggested that, while the British constitution could In 1786, no country on the face of the globe possessed a sin- not “be expressed in the stiff phrases of a code,” a “sense” of its gle, legal document that it explicitly styled a constitution. But content naturally evolved among those operating it. “This kind by 1820, and in the wake of the American and French Revolu- of constitution lives by what is called its spirit,” Bryce insisted. tions, continental Europe alone had generated at least 50 writ- “The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life,” again, a quotation ten constitutions. Between 1820 and 1850, over 80 more were from Corinthians. drafted, many of them in Latin America. Resistance to the new constitutions was also prompted by the In the second half of the 19th century, written constitutions fact that their two most conspicuous early exponents were both spread to some non-western polities, such as Japan; and by the polities with which Britain went bloodily to war: revolutionary end of the 20th century, these instruments had become almost America and revolutionary France. Considerable efforts were universal. In 1991, some 170 written constitutions were in exist- devoted during both conflicts to representing the new devices ence, of which about 150 had been drafted or revised since 1950. as being themselves alien and unsuited to Britain. One mani- With only one marked and major exception, no polity has festation of this was the growing use of the phrase “paper con- achieved what passes for full democracy without also generating stitution” to denounce constitutions of the US and even more some kind of written constitution. That exception is, of course, the French variety. Apparently coined in the early 1780s, “paper the UK, which, since the 1650s, has never possessed a codified constitution” came to be deployed in British parliamentary constitution. This absence has often worked to reinforce asser- speeches, newspapers and books, almost invariably in a nega- tions of British distinctiveness. Whereas a growing number of tive manner, until at least the 1970s. Paper constitutions were states in every continent have, since the 1780s, employed writ- like paper money, remarked the Victorian historian and politi- ten constitutions to help invent and publicise an idea of them- cian, Lord Macaulay: trashy substitutes for real gold. selves, in the case of the UK, it has been the lack of a written Even when the conclusion of the American Civil War in constitution that has frequently been invoked to distinguish the 1865 demonstrated that a major power possessed of a writ- country from others, and as a way of buttressing, both legally ten constitution could remain formidable and united, expres- and rhetorically, the political and territorial integrity of the Brit- sions of scepticism persisted, and not just among conservatives. ish state. Far from being manifestations of the popular will and shields Yet British responses to notions of a written constitution have against undue power, some critics contended, written consti- been more complex, and not as straightforwardly hostile, as this tutions were normally the work of small elites—intellectuals, familiar story suggests. To be sure, as constitutions proliferated lawyers, unelected judges, career politicians—and, once in exist- PROSPECT 2014 TIME FOR A UK CONSTITUTION 20 ence, might be difficult for the generality of a country’s people thought only and unvaryingly in terms of an “unwritten con- to amend. “The powers of the supreme democratic legislature stitution.” Indeed, before the 1860s, the phrase would have [of the United Kingdom] are limited by no paper constitution,” appeared to some as inappropriate and even incomprehensible. boasted a Scottish Liberal journalist in 1884. Since the Westmin- It was only from the 1870s that it steadily became more com- ster parliament was ultimately dependent only on “the voice of mon at Westminster and in the press. Like much else in the the people,” he went on, it was free and obliged to modify Brit- UK, the subsequent more explicit and celebratory cult of Brit- ain’s domestic workings whenever the needs and aspirations of ain’s “unwritten” constitution was something of a late Victorian- this fast changing society demanded it. Britain’s unwritten—and invented tradition. therefore plastic— constitution, so this kind of argument went, Fourth, there was a growing belief that Britain should write was part of what made it a modern and adaptable state. That constitutions for its empire. Mounting anxiety from the later view had some merit then—and still does. 19th century about the security of Britain’s global primacy increasingly gave rise to arguments that it should itself adopt a et, for all this, British responses to written constitu- more proactive, tutelary role in shaping constitutions elsewhere. tions have been neither uniform nor static. In part, One reason why Walter Bagehot wrote The English Constitution, this has been due to a spread of information. Made up first published as a book in 1867, was in order to make the claim of words, and easily translated into any written lan- that there were elements of the political system here that were Yguage, the new constitutions crossed borders and oceans very not sui generis, but might instead be profitably and easily emu- easily by way of print, which was a prime reason why they pro- lated elsewhere. Politicians and polemicists were increasingly liferated so spectacularly. Given the precocious breadth of Brit- aware that great competing powers, especially the USA and a ain’s print networks, its inhabitants were in a privileged position newly-united Germany, were using their respective written con- to acquire information about these political innovations from stitutions as convenient advertisements to the world of their very early on. Just five weeks after the first printed version of the respective governmental systems and ideals, and that Britain— US federal constitution was released on 17th September 1787, for with no such single text at its disposal—needed to find its own instance, extracts from it were already circulating in most Eng- ways to compete. lish and Scottish newspapers. Subsequent written constitutions Britain did in fact increasingly influence the constitutional from different countries and continents also almost invariably systems of many other countries, in large part—though never received British press coverage and discussion. When the Lib- entirely—because of the scale of its empire. Because so many eral Prime Minister William Gladstone formulated his “home of the constitutions that exist now are the result of de-coloni- rule” bills for Ireland in the 1880s and 1890s, he drew not only sation and struggles for self-determination, there is a tendency on federal ideas derived from the US constitution, but also on to view these texts as invariably linked to nation-building and provisions in the Canadian and Austrian constitutions. the promotion of democracy. But nationalism and democracy Second, while assertions of Westminster’s sovereignty cer- have been only a part of the story. From the late 18th century tainly became increasingly strident, there remained for a long onwards, written constitutions also served as organising tools for time no consensus even among the elite over exactly what different kinds of overseas and overland empires. Napoleon Bon- this implied. One eminent early 20th-century Oxford jurist aparte, for instance, repeatedly used written constitutions to remarked that, as late as the 1880s, educated men in Britain organise and hold together France’s expanding empire in conti- were still “slow to admit… that parliament… has constitution- nental Europe (it had conquered territory in Italy, Holland and ally a right to make any new law it pleases, to repeal any law, or Spain); while the most extensively ratified constitution in world to change or abolish any law.” history was that promulgated by Joseph Stalin in 1936, which Third, Britain possessed its own versions of a kind of writ- was ratified by over 50m people, and designed in part to cement ten constitutionalism. There was a long tradition of domestic together and burnish the Soviet empire. and colonial charters, and there were iconic constitutional texts The British, too, always recognised that written constitutions such as the Bill of Rights, Habeas Corpus Act and the Act of might possess imperial uses. The rate at which constitutions Union with Scotland of 1707, the preamble of which proclaimed were written by British state actors for different parts of the it—optimistically—as being “forever after” unalterable, even by empire (and occasionally for other territories) quickened from Westminster. the 1780s, increased sharply after 1840, and reached a climax Most of all, there was the Magna Carta, the charter sealed by between the Second World War and the 1970s, when London King John at Runnymede in 1215 which required the sovereign became increasingly busy drafting constitutions and ultimately to guarantee certain (limited) liberties of the “Freemen of our bills of rights for British colonies as a prelude to recognising Realm.” The Magna Carta, wrote one Victorian journalist, was their independence. Already, in 1951, a British lawyer was able a “sort of written constitution… nothing more than the verbal to boast that, “there are in all something like 70 separate consti- expression of the most urgent political wants of the age.” Such tutions in the Commonwealth and most of them were made in interpretations seem to have allowed some Britons to view the Britain.” The scale of British constitution writing for one-time new written constitutions not as suspect, foreign paper innova- colonies increased even faster after this; though it was never tions, but rather as younger sister texts to Britain’s own consti- confined only to imperial spaces. In the postwar period, British tutional canon. Well into the 19th century, books were issued on officials were heavily involved in drafting a new German -con both sides of the Atlantic combining, within the same set of cov- stitution, and also had a marked impact on constitutional texts ers, the texts of the US federal constitution, various continen- and human rights documents in the United Nations and Coun- tal European constitutions and the text of the Magna Carta, as cil of Europe. though these were somehow analogous documents. In reconciling their own overseas exercises in constitu- It is therefore misleading to assume that Britons in the past tional design with the celebration of our “unwritten constitu- PROSPECT 2014 TIME FOR A UK CONSTITUTION 21 tion” at home, successive British governments were helped by respects. The historic and mutually reinforcing combination of the fact that many—though not all—of the written constitutions busy constitution-writing abroad, with official resistance to con- for which they were responsible were colonial. As such, these stitutional activism on the domestic front, has largely ceased to almost invariably contained a focus on the British monarch of operate. Given waning overseas influence, and its own ever larger, the day, and could therefore be distinguished from the explic- more diverse and increasingly undeferential population, Britain’s itly transformative, often republican written constitutions of constitutional innovations in the future are likely to focus ever which London tended to be critical. Although sometimes more more upon the home-front. democratic than might be imagined, British colonial constitu- Towards the end of my recent book, Acts of Union and Disun- tions also tended to be studiously pragmatic in style and for- ion, I removed my historian’s hat and listed some constitutional mat. High-flown language was abhorred and so, until the 1960s, changes and adjustments that it would be useful to consider. I were bills of rights for colonial subjects. This latter omission was suggested (as many others have done) that it would be desirable partly prompted by imperial self-interest, but, as a British offi- to create a new English parliament or assembly, perhaps situ- cial recorded in the 1960s, bills of rights were also viewed as “a ated in the north so as to balance somewhat the growing con- feature of the constitutions of continental and other countries.” centration of power in the south. I argued that, if England did As this suggests, British officials could be very sensitive to accu- join Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales in gaining its own sations that they were in fact manufacturing their own “paper parliament, then the UK might usefully work out a more explic- constitutions.” It may be no accident that most British colonial itly federal system. The Westminster parliament might remain constitutions were inscribed not on paper, but on vellum and as an arena for determining major cross-border issues such as parchment, traditional materials that were also organic, made foreign policy, defence, macro-economic strategy and climate out of goat, calf or sheepskin. control, but a great deal of decision making and taxation could Some argued even more bluntly that it was not inconsistent be devolved to the four national parliaments and to local and for Britain to write constitutions for others even though it lacked regional authorities. And I proposed that a more federal UK one itself. On the contrary, they said, this was a demonstration would likely require a written constitution, or at least some new of the country’s political maturity and confident power. Britain charter of confederation. was peculiarly equipped to aid those striving countries which I have no great optimism that any of these measures will be needed written constitututions—in part because it required no implemented. Yet the case for more sustained and well-thought such aids and contrivances itself. “We in Britain have no constitu- out constitutional change has been strengthening, and not just tion of our own,” a British politician told an audience in Malta in because of the shifting relations between different parts of the the 1960s, after signing off on yet another colonial constitution. UK. Back in 1952, a British government official felt able to loftily “But we have quite a lot of experience of writing constitutions for inform a UN committee that, while other nations might require other people.” The degree to which countries and organisations human rights and freedoms to be set down in sacred texts, in across the world wanted, or were obliged to allow London to draft the UK “acceptance of the principle of liberty” was so ingrained constitutions on their behalf, only confirmed, according to this that “the existence of these rights is taken for granted.” Some of view of things, how privileged and satisfactory the British were Edward Snowden’s recent revelations about electronic surveil- in their existing uncodified arrangements at home. lance carried out by the British security services only serve to confirm that such a sturdy reliance on tradition and consensus uch attitudes still occasionally crop up among officials is simply not sufficient. in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, in those mar- There may in any case be no choice in the future but to under- ble-walled corridors from which Britain ran the empire. take more serious constitutional revisions. If Scotland secedes, Yet, in recent years, more attention in Britain has turned it will be a major shock not just to the territorial integrity of the Sto the domestic front, even though there has not yet been any UK, but also to the reputation and confidence of its political attempt at drafting a comprehensive new constitutional settle- order. Even if the union persists in some form, the degree of fur- ment. A Supreme Court has been created. The 1998 Human ther devolution likely to be conceded by Westminster to Scot- Rights Act has—at least for the present—been incorporated into land will place additional strains on the workings of the UK and British legal systems. Devolution has been implemented, and its unwritten constitution, and on the degree to which “ordinary will be extended irrespective of the result of the coming Scot- people” are able to understand and support both. Whatever tish referendum. There have been attempts at further reforms ensues, part of the work of constitutional reform and change in of the House of Lords, calls for a new Bill of Rights, and more. the future should be to encourage a more nuanced and accurate These innovations have many causes: but one underlying reason awareness of the British rejection—and occasional embrace—of for them may be the contraction of Britain’s capacity to inter- the notion of a written constitution. vene across the globe in constitutional terms, as in so many other Linda Colley is a professor of history at Princeton University

PROSPECT 2014 23

Don’t count on it JOHN KERR Published in the February 2013 issue of Prospect

resident José Manuel Barroso confirmed at the end and Slovakia, as two separate countries, joined the EU. In 1979, of last year that if Scotland won independence from when Greenland achieved home rule from Denmark, which was London after a referendum vote for secession, this by then a member of the European Community (the precur- would mean, ipso facto, that Scotland had left the sor of the EU), the 40,000 Greenlanders voted to leave the EC EU. and did so, with metropolitan Denmark negotiating the terms PThis was to the chagrin of Alex Salmond, Scotland’s first min- of their departure. No existing member state has split with both ister, who has undertaken to hold a referendum on independ- parts wanting to stay. The Scots would be breaking new ground, ence in 2014, and who last year assured members of the Scottish and for many in Brussels the necessary negotiation would be an Parliament that “oil-rich, gas-rich, energy-rich Scotland, fishing- unwelcome diversion. rich Scotland, will be welcomed with open arms in the Euro- For some it would be much worse than that. Governments pean Union.” The Scottish National Party (SNP) has implied facing their own breakaway regional or national movements that Scotland would be automatically an EU member, with Brus- might be tempted to demonstrate that secession isn’t easy, and sels simply setting another place at the table. Alas, the process has costs. Madrid would have the Catalans, and perhaps the would be much more complex and costly. Basques, in mind: that is why Spain, like Cyprus, Greece and Barroso’s news shouldn’t have come as a surprise: the pres- Romania, has yet to recognise, or permit the EU to recognise, ident of the European Commission was merely repeating the the 10-year independence of Kosovo, the breakaway ex-province position explained by Romano Prodi, his predecessor. In April of Serbia. In Athens the concern is their Macedonian province; in 2004, Prodi told the European Parliament that: “When a part Nicosia, Turkish Northern Cyprus; and in Bucharest, it is about of the territory of a member state ceases to be part of that state, “greater Hungary” rhetoric in Budapest and its own Hungarian for instance because the territory becomes an independent state, minority. All four countries might similarly view the question of the treaties will no longer apply to that territory. In other words, Scotland through their own domestic prism. For Spain the sali- a newly independent region would, by the fact of its independ- ence of the issue grows with the mounting demand in Barcelona ence, become a third country with respect to the Union, and the for an independence referendum. Some might try to draw dis- treaties would, from the date of its independence, not apply any tinctions between Scots and Catalans: unlike the Catalans, the more.” Scots have always kept their own legal system, and, unlike the If the new country wished the EU treaties to apply to it again, SNP, Catalans seeking independence do not wish to keep the he added, there would need to be “a negotiation on an agreement monarchy. But the plain fact is that Madrid would not welcome between the applicant state and the member states on the con- the break-up of the United Kingdom, lest the habit catch on, and ditions of admission and the adjustments to the treaties which would not welcome a Scottish seat in the European Council, lest such admission entails. This agreement is subject to ratification it encourage demand for a Catalan seat. Some Spanish politi- by all member states and the applicant state.” cians have already spoken of vetoing a Scottish accession bid. So an independent Scotland would need to go through the And who would be making Scotland’s case in the European same accession process as have all but the original six member Council? At least until 2015, David Cameron. The blame in Brus- states, a process which the Croats have just successfully com- sels for UK disintegration would, however unfairly, fall on the pleted, but in which the Turks are bogged down. Readmission government in London, which is already testing EU patience by would be possible for Scots only when every existing member opposing further integration. In Brussels, the prime minister’s state had agreed to every detail of the terms. And even then an advocacy of “less Europe, not more” seems out of tune with the adverse parliamentary or referendum vote on ratification, in any times. His attempt in 2011 to extract a price for agreeing to the EU capital, could still sink the ship. No wonder the SNP is in fiscal union, for Eurozone members, which he and his chancellor denial. had insistently demanded, caused bemusement and some resent- The prospect is no more appealing seen from Brussels, now ment. And the current Whitehall “audit” of EU powers, as they preoccupied with the survival of the euro and how best to bal- apply to the UK, is generally interpreted as presaging a second ance austerity with the encouragement of renewed growth. The outing for the same strategy, demanding further UK opt-outs, last thing anyone there wants is the distraction of a problem if and when further moves to shore up the euro require amend- without precedent, as this would be. The break-up of Czech- ment of the core EU treaty. oslovakia took place in 1993, well before the Czech Republic The idea that the UK alone should be entitled to renege on PROSPECT 2014 DON’T COUNT ON IT 24 existing commitments is not widely welcomed in the rest of negotiate with other EU member states. Europe. An alternative—that all countries should be able to More significantly, the treaties now require countries apply- select their own “pick and mix” package of à la carte member- ing to join the EU to take on a commitment to join the euro when ship—strikes many as a recipe for unacceptable unravelling they have passed the economic tests for doing so. Taken at face of the treaty. It isn’t easy to see how either prescription could value, this would demand a currency frontier on the Tweed— achieve the unanimous support necessary for adoption. UK between the euro in Scotland, and the pound south of the bor- influence in Brussels is shrinking. So, however velvet a Scottish der. But the Danes and Swedes ignore the requirement to join divorce might be, the present government in London is not best the euro, retaining their national currencies. In any case, if UK placed to help negotiate the EU consequences. debt were divided pro rata as the Kingdom divided, the share How difficult would the negotiations be? Partly that would that Scotland inherited would be too big to make the new coun- be for the Scots to determine. If they recognised that any appli- try, at least initially, eligible to join the euro. Assuming—perhaps cant is ill-placed to argue for changes in the club rules, the wis- rashly—goodwill all round, in Madrid as well, a declaration by est course might be to accept, en bloc, all the rules currently Scotland of its intent to give up sterling and switch to the euro applied by the UK. at an appropriate moment, undefined, might well be taken as To seek, from outside the EU, reforms of the Common Agri- sufficient. culture or Fisheries policies would be unwise, however welcome Rather more difficult might be the negotiation between Lon- in Scotland such reforms would be. To argue, from outside, that don and Edinburgh over how to ensure, with a common cur- the EU should allocate to Scotland more structural funds—the rency (sterling) but separate economic policies, that they did funds given to help the development of the poorest parts of the not repeat the problem in the eurozone that has arisen between EU—would cut little ice. Scotland’s best tactic, in order to jump Greece and Germany. Would London not insist on some form the queue of other applicants, would be to emphasise, from of fiscal pact, constraining Scottish borrowing, and would Edin- before the start, that it sought no changes, merely the reinstate- burgh not demand some say in London’s setting of Scotland’s ment of rights enjoyed and EU obligations accepted when part of interest rates? the UK. Even those, for example the Spanish, most uneasy about The negotiators would also have to consider the Schengen any secession, and so most tempted to cause problems or delay, Agreement, which does away with border checks on travellers would find such an approach hard to resist in principle. between most other member states, but to which the UK has Problems could however still arise when the negotiations never signed up. But neither has Ireland, which instead main- turned to issues on which the UK, using the power of veto of an tains a separate travel area with the UK. If the Scots preferred to existing member state, had secured a special status, as Marga- follow the Irish precedent, avoiding a physical frontier, with pass- ret Thatcher did at Fontainebleau in 1984 on the EU budget, and port checks and border guards at Gretna Green, the common John Major did at Maastricht in 1991 on monetary union. As an sense geographical arguments for doing so might well suffice— outsider, with no veto, Scotland might not find it easy to secure particularly if Edinburgh were prepared to signal an intention the necessary unanimity among all insiders that such arrange- to come into line with continental member states, and non- ments should also apply to a separate new member state. EU Schengen members like Norway and Switzerland, as soon Thus there would have to be a debate if the Scots were to wish as London and Dublin did so. But this would be another issue to retain the UK’s hard-won VAT anomalies, such as zero VAT on on which the ill-intentioned could deploy Fabian tactics to slow food and children’s clothes. But it looks a winnable fight, because down or block Scottish accession to the EU; the Scots would in it would not be a zero sum game. Regular cross-border shop- any case need, on joining, to accept the EU provisions on cross- ping in an independent Scotland by French or Germans would be border crime and policing from which the UK in 2012 announced no more likely than it is now. The actual rates charged in shops its intention to opt out. in member states bear no relationship to the VAT element in Finally, there is the question of the EU budget. Here it is the EU’s central budget income (because the VAT base used harder to see a happy outcome for Scotland. The Thatcher for budget purposes is an artificial statistical construct: actual rebate, secured by strong arm tactics, repays two-thirds of the rates vary widely between member states.) For existing member difference between the UK’s contribution and the EU’s recipro- states, if disposed to be kind, there would be no cost. The discus- cal payments to the UK. Britain has, over time, accepted that the sion would however create opportunities for the ill-disposed to rebate should not apply to that part of the budget which covers cause delays. expenditure in new, poorer, Central European member states. Conversely, thanks to David Cameron’s 2011 stance on fiscal But the agreement has so far saved the country some £70bn, union, the 2012 Austerity Pact is separate from the EU Treaty, and means that the UK now contributes some 10 per cent of and so will not come up in an accession negotiation. The Scots the total budget. In contrast, the Germans pay 20 per cent, the would be free to choose whether, like all Eurozone members and French and the Italians more than the UK, and the Dutch the most non-members (for instance, the Danes, Swedes, and Poles), most, per person. UK public opinion still thinks that the rebate they wished to accept common fiscal discipline provisions, or looks well justified, but everywhere else in Europe it is much stick with the Czechs and the residual UK in rejecting them. resented. Unlike the VAT arrangements, this is a zero sum game: Similarly, Cameron’s 2012 stance on banking union (accepting the less Britain pays, the more the rest all must. But what the the European Central Bank as the EU’s supervisory authority, UK has, it can continue to hold; since the demise of the rebate but not for banks based in Britain) may create future difficul- would require us to vote for its abolition, it survives. It will sur- ties for the City of London, but solves a problem for the Scots. vive again when the European Council turns again in February Edinburgh would be free to stay out too, with the Scottish banks to the financing negotiation adjourned in November. remaining under London supervision as well as London control. But for an applicant, Scotland, outside and wanting to come If that was what the Scots wanted, there would be nothing to in, the requirement for unanimity has the opposite effect. To PROSPECT 2014 DON’T COUNT ON IT 25 secure a Thatcher rebate for Scotland, the Scottish government tus might be mitigated if the Scots were to choose to apply EU would have to convince the governments of every other member laws autonomously, while waiting. Brussels could, if there were state, and their parliaments and voters, many much less rich in enough goodwill in other capitals, offer some reciprocal transi- per capita terms than Scotland, that the Scots should not have tional arrangements: there is no precedent for such a concession, to pay the normal membership fee. That is a Herculean diplo- but the situation has never arisen before. matic task. However, the ratification processes, like the prior negotia- So we should assume that an independent Scotland, like the tions, could become protracted were they to coincide with an UK now, would be a substantial net contributor (one of about attempt by the London government to secure a wider revision of a dozen) to the EU budget; and that, with no rebate, each Scot the EU treaty, or, after a referendum in the residual UK, to initi- would pay considerably more than each Englishman. ate the procedure for withdrawal from the EU. Other countries To put numbers to these propositions is not currently possi- might wish to consider a request from Alex Salmond together ble. The sums would depend principally on the size of the EU with any from David Cameron. budget for the next seven year period, the formula for calculating This analysis suggests that the Scots, as they approach the each country’s contribution, and the distribution of expenditure referendum debate, would do well to bear in mind above all that between agriculture, regional development, and other projects independence from the UK means leaving the EU, with no auto- over that period. matic return ticket. Negotiating re-entry could take time, with Standing back from these individual hurdles, my overall the shadow of Catalonia long over the table. There would be a assessment is that Scottish negotiations to join the EU need not recurring financial price to pay, in terms of Scotland’s share of be particularly complex, and they would cover far less ground the annual EU budget. And finally, if London, in parallel, sought than the standard process for the accession of a territory which to change the relationship of the remainder of the UK with the had not formerly been part of an EU member state. But the pro- EU, that could land the Scots with an extended hiatus. cedure would still provide ample scope for trouble-making by Scots, especially Alex Salmond, must read the small print those governments concerned about secessionist movements in closely. They can’t assume it would be easy, or cheap, to re-join their own countries. It could therefore prove protracted. If Scot- the EU. land adopted a practical approach, recognising the weak hand that any applicant has to play, that would maximise its chances The fallout from independence: who said what of finding a relatively speedy way through. But there would cer- “What I say to Alex Salmond is he in a way wants to have his tainly be a budget price to pay. cake and eat it. He wants to say, ‘I want to separate from the UK, When would these issues be tackled? For Scotland, there is a I want this new future for Scotland’, but on the other hand, he further problem of the sequence. doesn’t want the consequences that flow from that.” Pre-referendum David Cameron, prime minister “If one part of a country—I am not referring now to any spe- Brussels will not wish to address such questions while they cific one—wants to become an independent state, of course as an remain hypothetical, so Scotland will not be able to begin nego- independent state it has to apply to the European membership tiations before the referendum. Nor could much be achieved now according to the rules—that is obvious.” by discussions with other national governments individually. It José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Union would be naïve, for example, for the SNP to seek assurances of “We do not agree that an independent Scotland will be in the full co-operation from those in Spain, who have the greatest position of having to reapply for European Union membership, interest in the Scottish debate: they have their own fish to fry. because there is no provision for removing EU treaties from any Even the London government, whose voice in a Brussels debate part of EU territory, or for removing European citizenship from on a Scottish accession bid would be significant, might be reluc- the people of a country which has been in the EU for 40 years.” tant to give binding assurances before a referendum. Nicola Sturgeon, Scottish deputy first minister “In the hypothetical case of independence, Scotland would Post-referendum, pre-secession from the UK have to join the queue and ask to be admitted, needing the unan- imous approval of all member states to obtain the status of a can- It might well be possible, and would certainly be desirable, to didate country.” get informal exploratory talks started after a referendum vote José Manuel García-Margallo, Spanish foreign minister for independence but before actual secession took place. If all “Assuming there is a yes vote as a result of the referendum, other member states were prepared to co-operate, much of the Scotland will still be at that stage a part of the UK. What we groundwork could be done in this way. But formally Scotland have always accepted is there has to be a negotiation about the would have to be a state before it could accede, and the terms of details and the terms of Scotland’s membership of the EU. Cru- its disengagement from the UK would have a critical bearing on cially, that would take place at a time when we are still part of some aspects of the accession discussions. the UK, and still part of the EU of which we have been members for 40 years.” Post-secession, pre-accession John Swinney, SNP finance secretary “They seem to be saying Scotland can vote to be independent The final formalities can take time: Croatia’s accession negotia- and not be independent—it’s a ridiculous argument. It is time for tion was successfully completed in June 2011, but it is not due to the SNP to be straightforward about what independence means.” join until this July. Timing of national ratifications is entirely a Danny Alexander, chief secretary to the Treasury matter for individual member states (the Croatia Bill is now in John Kerr is the former permanent secretary of the Foreign and Com- the House of Lords). The practical problems of an extended hia- monwealth Office

PROSPECT 2014 27

The man who could save the union serena kutchinsky Published via the Prospect website, 4th July 2014

enzies Campbell is one of the nicest est university, St Andrews. These days, Campbell divides his men in politics,” said a Prospect col- time between his family home in Edinburgh, his North East league, as I set off to meet the for- Fife constituency and his London flat, which he feels gives him mer Liberal Democrat leader and a unique perspective on the independence debate. retired athlete to hear his answer to “I believe the right thing for Scots to do is vote No, and “Mthe Scottish independence question. But, when I finally make I believe that will be the outcome. My view is that it will be it through the airport-style security, there is no trace of the resolved in the peripheral housing estates of Glasgow, Edin- man who some say could save the union. It seems Sir Menzies burgh, Dundee, and Aberdeen. In spite of the best efforts of has stood me up. Westminster, and indeed the Scottish parliament, there’s a dis- A passionate advocate of federalism, Campbell has spent tinct lack of opportunity for many in those areas. These are the past two years espousing a positive solution to the Scot- natural Labour constituencies. It took a while, but it seems tish question. His most recent report on devolution, Campbell that the Labour party has woken up to this and is now full 2 (which could be the name of a spaceship), was published in throttle behind Better Together, or No Thanks as it’s now March and contains a grounding alternative vision for the UK’s known. I think that has helped spark a perceptible, but not future. Think of it as living “apart together”. Despite announc- enormous, increase in the support for the No vote which is ing last November that he will retire from political life at the reflected in the polls.” next general election (which could result in a damaging loss With support for the Yes vote apparently in decline, (the for the Lib Dems in his North East Fife seat), Campbell’s latest YouGov poll puts it at 35 per cent, and the No vote at 54 energy shows no signs of abating. Which makes his no-show per cent), now seems an opportune moment for Campbell, as even more surprising. the chair of the Home Rule Commission, to advocate for a fed- I’m back in Westminster the next morning, after several eral alternative. apologetic emails. With his lengthy frame clad in navy chinos, “The Liberal Democrats were the first to embrace feder- blue shirt and tie, Campbell looks more like a dapper, retired alism as a viable solution. Others are now following suit, for athlete than an ageing politico. All that’s missing is the Pan- example Gordon Brown’s latest pronouncements indicate that ama hat. This is possibly due to the fact that “Minger” was he has turned into a federalist. We welcome all converts. In the once a leading British sprinter who broke the British 100m first report on Home Rule that I delivered in October 2012, I record in 1967, earning him the nickname “the fastest white laid out the case for a federal relationship between Scotland man in Britain.” I try to ignore the Chariots of Fire theme tune and the rest of the United Kingdom. All three parties have that’s buzzing around my head and focus on Campbell’s vision now signed up to the idea that Scotland will get more powers, for the future of his homeland. signed up to it in blood it seems. And I believe it will spread “The voter turnout for this referendum on 18th September around the country. In England, for example support for UKIP is likely to be higher than for next year’s General Election,” is based upon some sense of national identity, which may even- says Campbell as I settle into an armchair and take in the view tually manifest itself in a desire for a devolved government. It’s of Westminster spires through his window. “The question of no longer just about the West Lothian question, it’s also the Scotland’s place in the kingdom has been on the agenda since West Belfast and the West Wales question.” long before Alex Salmond’s SNP won a majority in the Scottish Campbell is confident that the Scottish independence parliament in 2011. It even predates the 1979 referendum on debate has altered attitudes towards devolution, although he devolution, as the SNP won, and then promptly lost, 11 seats in admits that previous failed proposals such as John Prescott’s 1974. It’s time we settled it because it’s clouding people’s per- North East assembly have not exactly helped the cause. His ception of Scotland,” he says. conviction that this is the only logical constitutional path for Born in Glasgow in 1941, Campbell is the epitome of the the country is unwavering, and his arguments, at times, per- proud Scotsman. Yes, the accent has softened, but this is a man suasive. It seems fitting that at the end of a long and success- who was born in Scotland, who went to school and university ful career spanning 28 years (“I was only going to do a couple in Scotland, married a Scot (the glamorous Lady Elspeth who of parliaments and then go back to the bar but somehow it got many credit with persuading him to run for party leader in in my blood”), Campbell is finally getting to focus on what is 2006), qualified in and practiced law in Scotland, represents a clearly a pet project. At one point he jumps up and dashes off Scottish constituency and is the chancellor of Scotland’s old- to get me copies of the Campbell 1 and 2 reports, despite my PROSPECT 2014 THE MAN WHO COULD SAVE THE UNION 28 protestation that I had already read them online. His pride in you will not be favoured. A friend of mine told me in confi- this work is clear to see. dence that the Scottish First Minister called him and spent 50 “It’s my view that the present constitutional arrangements minutes on the telephone.” in the United Kingdom are not sustainable, and that the pro- Does he think that nationalism is still a growing force in cess of change will start with Scotland developing a federal Scotland, or would a No vote wipe it out? The Scottish gov- relationship with the rest of the UK. You could argue that ernment has lowered the voting age in the referendum to 16, “devo max” [which would see the Scottish Parliament running but says Campbell this is a ploy which could backfire against everything apart from defence and foreign affairs] comes very the SNP. “Schools in Aberdeenshire [which is historically an close to that. I think the argument against putting devo-max SNP heartland] staged a recent ballot and the result among on the ballot paper as an option in this referendum was that if 15 to 17 year olds was 75 per cent voting No and 25 per cent support for independence went down, while support for devo- voting Yes. My slightly romantic view is that these children of max went up, then the SNP could still claim a victory of sorts. the digital age are citizens of the world and don’t define them- Mr Salmond is an agile enough politician to capitalise on that selves by nationality in the way that older people have been opportunity and that would mean the independence question inclined to do.” was still live.” The most headline-grabbing element of the Campbell 2 s our conversation is briefly disrupted by the ringing proposal was a call for a cross-party summit 30 days after the of the division bell, which calls MPs to vote, my eyes vote, to “secure a consensus for further extension of powers fall on a framed photograph of Campbell with the to the Scottish Parliament consistent with continued mem- Duke and Duchess of Cambridge [who met at the bership of the United Kingdom.” He also calls for these plans Auniversity of which he is now Chancellor] proudly displayed to be included in each party’s election manifesto—the prom- over his desk. On another shelf is another snap of Campbell ise of which could potentially dampen the nationalist threat. shaking hands with the King of Jordan. With rumours swirl- While Campbell and his party are certainly committed to this, ing of a republican plot to ditch the Queen in the wake of a Yes can the same be said of their more powerful allies in Better vote, this photographic evidence would suggest that Campbell Together? “No one has actually said yes to me,” he says cheer- is something of a royalist. Is that the case? “On the monarchy, fully “Maybe they don’t want to appear arrogant. But, I would I’m a pragmatist,” he says wryly. “I think the current system be absolutely astonished if after a no vote, the three main UK of a constitutional monarchy is better than anything else. The parties do not come to an agreement.” left-wing factions within the SNP would want rid of the Queen Any solution that is forged on this highly emotive issue, if the vote is Yes. There is quite a strong element of republican- can’t be purely political—the fault line it has exposed among ism in the SNP, one or two of its prominent members have pre- families, friends and colleagues runs deep. A recent poll viously declared themselves as anti-monarchists.” revealed that nearly half (42 per cent) of all Scottish families Campbell’s surprising vigour is beginning to wane ever so are divided on whether the country should become independ- slightly as we reach the end of our allocated time. He may have ent. ”It’s inevitably been divisive. No one should run away from decided to step down from political life voluntarily but what that and those divisions will still exist afterwards, “ acknowl- does he think the future holds for the two key party leaders edges Campbell. “The main parties have a responsibility to on either side, Mssrs Cameron and Salmond, if the vote goes try and ensure that whatever the result is that they make it against them? work. Online abuse is a large part of the problem. Although “Cameron won’t resign if there is a Yes vote. He will say Better Together supporters write blogs and dish out abuse, that the people have spoken, and then he could run a General the strength of the vitriol from the Cybernats [online support- Election campaign focused on England, which would satisfy ers of Scottish nationalism] is of an entirely different nature. quite a few of his backbenchers. As for Salmond, neither he There is an SNP MSP who attacked the leadership of the Scot- nor the SNP will give up the cause if the No camp triumphs. If tish Liberal Democrat and Labour parties saying those that they lose there will inevitably be a period of reflection within opposed independence are ‘anti-Scottish’. the SNP, from which Salmond will still emerge as leader. Campbell’s disdain for the SNP and its leader’s bullying tac- Although, he is likely to encounter resistance from the funda- tics is clear throughout our conversation. He claims that the mentalists in the SNP who will argue they lost because they discipline within Salmond’s party is so “ferocious” that MSPs weren’t nationalist enough. The SNP might not end up with dare not vote against the party line even when it goes against independence but they will seek to maintain the trappings of the interests of their constituents. The example he gives is of it—for them the argument will not be over.” the SNP MSP for Campbell’s own Westminster constituency So, does Campbell’s federalist vision hold the key to a peace- who initially came out against the proposal to close the local ful future for the United Kingdom, or is just a fantasy? As he sheriff court but then voted to do so. predicted, noises are finally being made in favour of increased Campbell’s indignation at this political opportunism dom- devolution, as the Strathclyde report delivered in June by the inates the next 15 minutes of our conversation, and leads him Conservatives indicates. Described by David Cameron as a on to imply that the SNP are trying to exert influence over “thoroughly Conservative vision” for greater devolution, the Scotland’s business leaders. “There’s a lot of bullying and report includes a promise to pass all income tax powers to the intimidation that goes on. Now, it’s starting to surface that Scottish parliament, as well as giving it additional powers over some prominent businessmen have been subject to subtle VAT and welfare. Labour’s vision, unveiled in March, is less warnings along the lines of there will be a lot of contracts [up dramatic but still promises greater tax powers for the Scot- for grabs] after independence—the clear implication being if tish parliament and a pledge to abolish the “bedroom tax” in you’re someone who speaks out against the Yes campaign, then Scotland. But it all feels too little, too late and as party politi- PROSPECT 2014 THE MAN WHO COULD SAVE THE UNION 29

image credits p3 Scottish first minister Alex Salmond: © Getty Images p7 A Yes campaign poster in Glasgow: © Getty Images p11 The Union Jack projected onto Parliament: ©London News Pictures/Rex p17 Sir James Thornhill’s “Ceiling of the Painted Hall” at Greenwich (1707-14) celebrating the Protestant succession of English monarchs: © Photononstop/SuperStock p21 Oil rig, Cromarty, Scotland: Wikimedia Commons p26 Supporters rally for Scottish independence in Edinburgh: © Andrew Milligan/PA Archive/Press Association Images © Prospect Publishing Limited 2014