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Scotland’s vote for independence one year on It is now a year since the formerly-United Kingdom woke up to an independent Scotland. What is your verdict on developments since the incredible news that Scotland had voted “YES”?
Prime Minister Alex Salmond’s decision to “walk away” from Scotland’s share of the rUK’s National Debt and the subsequent borrowing crisis has proved particularly controversial. Despite Mr Miliband’s softening of his predecessor’s stance in the “war of the gold reserves”, he has not actually agreed to release Scotland’s share until agreement has been reached. Nevertheless Mr Salmond’s groundbreaking use of “Progressive Quantitative Easing” to mitigate the effects on the Scottish economy of the manipulation of oil prices by hostile speculators is widely seen as an example to be emulated by the emerging People’s Union of England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
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Yes Natalie – no matter how bad our problems are now, “Scottish Independence” would have made them even worse.
Both for Scotland – which, by now, would be a socialist “People’s State” and for the rest of the United Kingdom.
The non socialist forces in England and Wales (and Ulster) would have been thrown into despair by a victory for “Scottish Independence”.
Mr Miliband would have won the election (even with Scotland out of the Union) and would now be working on building his father’s dream.
The dream of Ralph Miliband.
Given that the SNP’s dreams of an independent Scotland are based upon a rather generous interpretation of the volume of oil that ‘belongs’ to Scotland and the price on the open market with benchmark ICE Brent Crude trading below $50 a barrel, then I’m guessing that a year on from voting “Yes” would have demonstrated that the economic arguments put forward by Wee Eck were at best optimistic and at worst downright lies.
With a deficit between income and outgoings of about £7 billion a year, then either Miliband would have had to provide some form of transitional arrangement to assist the newly Independent Scotland (and a £7 billion isn’t that much considering how much the UK is pissing away on a second railway to nowhere), so I think it likely that Miliband would have done some kind of deal in return for concessions, probably on the oil or UK companies with large assets / holdings in Scotland.
As for walking away from their share of the national debt, well it wouldn’t be the first time. This was the same accusation that was made during the passage of the Statute of Westminster in 1931 which granted independence to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Ireland, and Newfoundland.
As for arguing over gold reserves, I suspect that transitional arrangements would be dependant agreeing that all other claims and matters were settled, thus no share of the national debt, but equally, no share of the UK national dividend or assets.
On the matter of Scotland’s share of the national debt, if you look at the headline figure of 1.7tn and a per capita basis, that means that Scotland would be liable for about £70bn or so (more if you applied a Barnett formula approach to it)
What exactly do you expect Scotland to do? Write a cheque for £70bn? Not possible, the government simply wouldn’t have enough money to pay it and as a newly independent small country would struggle to raise that kind of funding by issuing Scottish Gilts on an already saturated market at anything other than penal rates of interest.
The UK could place a lien on UK National assets in Scotland, but again this would be assets in a foreign country and subject to Scottish Courts, so it’s not like you could just wander in with a bunch of heavies and seize the new Borders to Edinburgh railway line.
So regardless of Salmond’s huffing-and-puffing, it would all come down to Real Politik and whatever negotiated settlement was agreed. Given that the rump of the UK would remain Scotland’s largest trading partner, Wee Eck would have had to show some degree of give-and-take.
Certainly from the high point of obtaining a mandate for independence in a referendum, it would be all downhill from there, but the reason the Scots have baulked at voting “Yes” thus far is that they know full well that it’s a one way street. Certainly there would be no return to the UK when things got sticky (as they inevitably would under Scotland’s version of Erich Honecker).
I suspect, one-year-on from a “Yes” vote, that the ‘brain drain’ from Scotland to the rump-UK would be shocking and exacerbate an already difficult economic situation.
This is why the Scots may um-and-ahhh about independence and vote SNP, but when it comes to a vote, they’ll vote “No”.
This was the same accusation that was made during the passage of the Statute of Westminster in 1931 which granted independence to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Ireland, and Newfoundland.
Heh. New Zealand wasn’t “granted” anything. It didn’t ask for the Statute of Westminster and delayed implementing it. We Kiwis were happy to keep our share of the debt — provided we were kept fully British. But you lot told us to piss off, so we eventually did. It was the 1980s before NZ really shook off its attachment to Britain.
I believe the Australians were happier to go.
I have no argument about the Statute of Westminster being forced on the dominions and some being glad to go, whilst others were more reluctant. It was necessarily the UK saying to the dominions, you’re big enough to look after yourselves, off you go.
As for Australia, the real shocker for them was not the 1931 act, but the Fall of Singapore which clearly demonstrated that despite the parental sentiment of the UK, when push came to shove it was unable to protect its territories overseas, whether those still bound to it as British Malaya and Singapore were or those forcibly freed by the 1931 act.
The sudden threat of a Japanese invasion of the Northern Territories without any assistance from the UK left a distinctly sour taste in Australian mouths and Anglo-Australian sentiment have never been the same since.
If Scotland ever did decide to cut the cord and go-it-alone, I think that despite all of the angry anti-English rhetoric of the SNP and the anti-Scots rhetoric of the Tories/UKIP, there would be a desire to get matters settled quickly, permanently and as amicably as possible.
I suppose another question is, What would have happened to those regions of Scotland that emphatically rejected independence in the referendum? Orkney and Shetland, The Borders? Could they not make the argument that just as Scotland separated from the United Kingdom, they therefore saw themselves as equally empowered to separate themselves from New Scotland and remain in the UK? After all, plenty of nations have pieces of themselves that are not contiguous, including the UK with Northern Ireland, and the US with Alaska and Hawaii. Complicated stuff, for sure, especially with the productive farmland in The Borders and the oil and fish in Shetland.
I believe that if Scotland had voted to break up the UK a year ago, the process would still be ongoing. In that context, the collapse in the price of oil, on which Scottish national socialism based its fantasy economics, would have been rather interesting. Would the people of Scotland have got cold feet, and demanded that the independence process be halted, or would they have marched grimly into a toilet paper free socialist future under the Maximum Leader?
“Stories from the border of invading gangs looking for toilet paper which is now in short supply have led to calls in the north for a reinstatement of Hadrian’s Wall”
You really think so? I would imagine the response in the rest of the UK would be closer to “Thank God, they’re finally gone, now we can clean up the mess they’ve made!”
First time I’ve heard the phrase ‘Progressive quantitative easing’ – PC for runaway inflation a la Venezuela, I take it. 🙂
Some imaginary further paragraphs of your article follow, for your amusement. Alternative history prediction is fun isn’t it. I’d bet a _small_ sum on your and my Scotland alternative history being right, albeit not happening quite so fast. I see the ‘south of the border’ predictions as much more “one possible guess of several” but it fits the gloom and doom mood. 🙂
“With many residents of Scotland retaining their British passports, especially in the private sector, and continuing failure to agree a double-taxation treaty, it seems Mr Salmond has difficulty using higher taxation to offset the drastic reduction in official oil revenues (still less the even greater reduction in those oil revenues he can can actually collect, given the ongoing attitudes of the Orkney and Shetland Isles, and of the Southern Government). Mr Milliband seems well aware that he too needs tax revenue for his plans, and the relocation of all financial head-offices out of the area of Mr Salmond’s jurisdiction has strengthened the Englishman’s hand on double-taxation. Whether the “direct taxation auxiliaries” recently mobilised from the SNP’s ranks will obtain enough to make a difference, or motivate sufficient further passport conversion, is uncertain. In this situation, the bulk of tax received north of the border is increasingly paid by people and organisations whose salaries and budgets the Scottish state then funds from its proceeds, PQE filling the gaps that would otherwise arise..
Mr Milliband has fewer troubles for now. Out of the chaotic fragments of Tory party left by the humiliation of having “lost the United Kingdom”, a viable opposition party may one day arise, but for the moment Labour plans face little effective delay from either them or a Liberal party whose union with them in the last parliament left its supporters dissatisfied, and in many cases absent, at the last election. Losing, from their control, and from the country, the province where they were strongest might seem an ill omen for the long-term future of the Labour party, but for now they are as strong in the remains of the UK as they once were in Scotland.”
As a matter of fact, that’s how the state of West Virginia came into being: in the runup to the American Civil War, the western counties of Virginia voted against seceding from the US when the state as a whole voted in favor, and the US government accepted them as a new state.
I suspect ‘long-lost cousin’ might well be correct, at least in England even if perhaps not Ulster and Wales 😉
Niall Kilmartin,
…Whether the “direct taxation auxiliaries” recently mobilised from the SNP’s ranks…
I take it that these public spirited folk act in the spirit of the Sign of the Blue Eagle?
‘… “direct taxation auxiliaries” … I take it that these public spirited folk act in the spirit of the Sign of the Blue Eagle?’
The blue eagle: that was in the years when, as Alastair Cooke put it, “America flirted with National Socialism”.
Yes, I think Salmond’s (or Sturgeon’s) people would indeed flirt similarly – and since their government would certainly lack “9 old men” to say stop, the relationship might get pretty serious.
If Wee Eck had any brains (Yeah, OK. Bear with me on this one) and wasn’t so rabidly anti English and determined to rub the collective English noses in the crud, he could have said “This decision affects the whole of the UK and so should be decided by everyone in the UK”.
I am convinced that the overwhelming result would have been for independence with the vast majority of the English population saying “We are fed up of not being able to do right for doing wrong so go your own way”.
The Scots would have still blamed the English for everything from bad weather to hemorrhoids on the perfidious English for the next 2,000 years but at least the English wouldn’t be paying for it.
I wuld point out that Hadrians wall is well inside England. You would cede all of Northumberland to the Porridge eaters. A much better bet would be to build a wall along the actual border and/or revert to the situation before 1603 and have th Border Rievers reinstated as a cordon sanitare along the border. George MacDonald Frazer wrote a book about them called The Steel Bonnets. Worth reading.
Phil, is it possible that this is precisely the scenario Salmond is afraid of, and that the Struggle for Independence is an end in and of itself? Granted, I know next to nothing about him as a person, so feel free to laugh this off :-O
John Galt: quite so.
As regards the Orkneys, maybe they should push to re-join Norway.
I suspect that each economic shock in an independent Scotland would see another wave of emigration by the ambitious and/or talented, that would not be properly replaced in the good times in between. This is the pattern from Eire, after all.
Ireland’s solution was to lower corporate taxation. That would be a bitter pill for the SNP.
Natalie,
I followed your link and it took me a few seconds to realise NRA meant the National Recovery Act, not the National Rifle Association.
SD.
The future of the MP for Orkney & Shetland is already well undermined. Not only was Carmichael’s majority hugely reduced in the last General Election, but he was then exposed as the source of the rumour (?) that Nicola Sturgeon had said to the French that she’d prefer a Conservative win to a Labour win. The Gnats, of course, whipped oot their skean dubhs and looked forward to slicing pieces off the poor chap; the Gnats decided a High Court review under the Representation of The People Act of whether his Election win should be set aside – remember Phil Woolas? – would be the way to go. Mind you, Woolas deserved it. Carmichael’s one of the few straightforward, honest-as-the-day-is-long MPs who really does put his constituents first.
If the Election was rerun today there’s little doubt that Carmichael would fall and the SNP would take the seat. Few non-SNP voters in Orkney really believed the Lib Dems could lose, or even be threatened; now the SNP have their man down they’ve got the skean dubhs out again and are reaching for the HP Sauce and a dash of salt and pepper.
As for rejoining Norway – for years there’s been a small bunch of thoroughly inoffensive loons (in the nicest possible way!) campaigning for Norway to reclaim the Northern Isles. Mainly in Shetland, though. But Shetlanders still think they’re Vikings anyway.
The abandonment of the “Scottish share” would indeed provoke a borrowing crisis.
In rUK, it would mean an effective rise per capita of the debt of about 10%, which is roughly an additional year to 18 months borrowing at the current rate. This would be irritating but in no way terminal.
In the People’s Undemocratic Republic of Jockistan though, the crisis rages. The international money markets lend money to Scotland but only at heavy rates suspecting they will have an Argentinian approach to any money they borrow if they can concoct an internal excuse to justify it. The Scottish goverment’s attempt to print money to solve the problem causes the newly established Scottish £ to devalue even further as cuts bite due to the collapse of their only real income, Oil.
Retaliatory action taken by the Conservative Prime Minister encouraging businesses to move south to Northern England by offering economic bribes pay off as any business that can moves south both to access the European Union markets and to avoid increasing taxes and the possibility of ‘exit taxes’, and to operate in a stable currency, causing unemployment to fall significantly.
The rUk abandons Scottish exports ; to buy Scottish things, or visit Scotland, or do business with them is viewed rather like dealing with Argentina was during and after the Falklands war. Tourism collapses, alternative sources are found for almost anything Scotland produces.
The Nationalists still blame the Eng^H^H^H Westminster for all their problems. The 60% of the population that isn’t stupid starts to migrate South.
Ah West Virginia.
But since the Commonwealth of Virginia did not approve the excision of part of its territory to form a new state… I know that subsequently the judges and others have ruled. To me, either Virginia could depart the USA and West Virginia (perhaps) secede from Virginia, or once it had been made clear that no state could secede (shame!), then West Virginia would have to be folded back into Virginia. Damn that Illinois lawyer.
@ Mr Galt
“What exactly do you expect Scotland to do? Write a cheque for £70bn? Not possible, the government simply wouldn’t have enough money to pay it and as a newly independent small country would struggle to raise that kind of funding by issuing Scottish Gilts on an already saturated market at anything other than penal rates of interest.”
What you’re implying, of course, is a net result of the combined national debt of the former UK entity being increased by the Jockist share. In actuality, the selling of Jockist debt should be matched by the redemption of Rest of the UK debt in matching quantities. Keeping the total indebtedness neutral. Or there could be a form of capitalisation. Each holder of UK debt receives a wad of Jock debt, with a corresponding write down on their holding of Reduced UK Successor debt.
Can’t imagine that’d go down very well with the Wee Honcho, though. No opportunity for him to get his paws on any actual, new dosh.
Chester Draws,
“Ireland’s solution was to lower corporate taxation. That would be a bitter pill for the SNP.”
Actually, during the run-up to the referendum the SNP did promise* to lower Corporation Tax if they won, only dropping the policy in March 2015. The proposed reduction in CT was unpopular with SNP party members but was, I suppose, meant to sweeten the pill for businesses nervous about independence. The SNP are left wing, but they are nationalists first and left wingers second.
So far as I know changes to corporation tax were only being discussed in the context of what would happen if Scotland became independent – in our world Corporation Tax continues to be set centrally for all the UK.
——-
*Mind you, both Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon also promised that the referendum would be a “once in a generation” event.
It amuses me that if there was a UK wide referendum on Scottish independence, and the rest of the UK voted for Scotland to leave, but Scotland voted to stay, the SNP could get independence but STILL blame the English for all their troubles………….
The establishing of West Virginia was admittedly ‘pragmatic’. But the Royal Navy is (probably) still able to wrest the Outer Isles away from Scotland if they choose to be wrested, which is a pretty good definition of ‘pragmatic’.
As a Scot living in America, I can say you English are all full of it. What we would have done with independence is take all those assets we have and invest them in this amazing deal we have heard of in Panama. We are going to create this trading route that will launch Scotland once again as an international trading power, without the English albatross around our neck.
Yeah, and we are going to win the world cup in 2018 too.
Fraser Orr,
I read on Wikipedia that the patch of land concerned is, in fact, currently untenanted…
Scotland winning the world cup in ’18? I wouldn’t bet on it, but some surprising things happen in sport.
PersonFromPorlock: After Virginia declared secession, a convention of Unionists from western counties met in Wheeling (in the northern “panhandle” between Ohio and Pennsylvania, already occupied by Union troops). The convention voted that the declaration of secession had vacated all state offices.
The convention then named a new slate of state officials, which Lincoln recognized as “Virginia”. Union Virginia then consented to the separation of the western counties as a new state. Union Virginia also elected new U.S. Senators, and administered areas occupied by the Union Army, such as Alexandria (across the Potomac from Washington) and Norfolk.
The delegates to the Union convention were informally appointed, not elected. Of the 49 counties incorporated into West Virginia, only 32 were represented in Wheeling, and 19 had cast majority “Yes” votes in the secession referendum.
Let’s not forget the part played by the good Doctor Who, in keeping Scotland within the Union! First a Scottish-accented companion, then a scottish-accented Doctor! you can bet that would have been changed quickly if the Scots were not part of the United Kingdom!
I’m pleased that, since Scotland would be outside of the “pound zone” and would not be admitted to the Euro zone, the haggis makes such a fine unit of currency.
Surellin – haggis? would that be like Larry Niven’s idea of making coins out of radioactive metals so as to increase spending? (It would literally burn a hole in your pocket).
“…and this fine item may be yours for only 40 pounds of haggis!”
“Um well, I don’t like the price. How about i give you 60 pounds for it?”
“no, I’m firm on the 40 pounds.”
“How about 50 pounds of haggis and i won’t throw in any lutefisk?”
“Deal!”
Would Wales have opted for freedom, if Scotland had seceded? What could they have used as a store of value?