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HomeFeatured BlogsScottish independence: it’s a scandal that half of us are excluded from the vote

Scottish independence: it’s a scandal that half of us are excluded from the vote

Jeremy Paxman, who is a quarter Scot, would have like a say in the future of the Union Photo: PA/BBC

On Thursday, the English will discover what the Scots really think of them.
Like the final row in a troubled marriage, it could be the event that serves
to separate those we were once told God had joined together.

The decision is not for those of us who live south of Berwick-upon-Tweed,
because the electorate has been selected in a way that could make a Chicago
party boss gaze down at his toecaps with embarrassment. Let us leave aside
the exclusion of a role in the fate of their country for Scots who
represented it in the recent Commonwealth Games but don’t happen to be
living there right now (and the granting of that right to any Kylie, Hank or
Svetlana who has an address north of the border). Let us ignore, too, the
extension of the franchise to 16-year-olds.

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No, the real scandal – in which almost the whole English Establishment has
been complicit – has been the exclusion of half of the Union from a decision
on its future. The fate of this supposed relationship of equals is to be
determined solely by those who find themselves living on one side of a
border that we have been told for generations no longer really matters.

Indeed, the very composition of the electorate validates the Scots
nationalists’ claim that, despite the subsidy their country gets from the
government in London, they remain somehow an oppressed minority. The
apparently high levels of voter engagement testify to disgust at the rotten
borough system that exists in parts of the Scottish industrial heartland,
and a recognition of the unattractiveness of Westminster.

Well, here’s a revelation for you, Hamish. There are plenty of Union citizens
in Birmingham, Builth Wells and Bury St Edmunds who think the Westminster
parliament is remote and unrepresentative. Some of them believe that it is
not just unattractive but also absurd. They’re just not being offered a
chance to say so.

The Scots are lucky in having a history, culture and legal system of their
own, which engender far more passionate loyalties than exist in most other
parts of the UK. The English – who do not have such traditions – recognise
the draw of this alternative identity. Hence the last-minute, panic-stricken
visits of English notables such as Cameron, Clegg and Miliband, offering
further devolution. Hence, too, the menaces of the bankers and supermarket
magnates. We shall doubtless soon see a claim that independence makes an
outbreak of the Ebola virus more likely.

As Defoe remarked 300 years ago, the English are a mongrel race. I love
Scotland and rejoice that a quarter of the blood in my veins is Scottish.
Perhaps that should entitle me to get together with three other
quarter-Scots and between us hope to add up to one Alex Salmond?

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But this is not really a matter or race. I dare say that at some shady point
in his family history, even Mr Salmond has been blessed with an injection of
English genes.

No, we are repeatedly told, this decision is a matter of politics pure and
simple – not that those words are often run together.

The Union was a political fix for a problem at a particular time. Scotland was
near-bankrupt after attempting to create its own empire in the jungles of
Latin America. When the Darien Scheme turned out a tragicomic catastrophe,
the political class in Edinburgh looked south of the border and saw the
opportunity to join the English in building their empire and enrich their
country in the process.

As generals, engineers, administrators, traders, missionaries and doctors, the
Scots proved brilliant imperialists.

But the British Empire is no more. Is it any wonder that the fate of the Union
is in question? Those who argue that it should last for ever have as much
political insight as Ozymandias. So the worst possible outcome in this vote
will be a very narrow majority to stay in the Union, for then the issue
could hang around like a bad smell for years to come.

The English response to the threat of being abandoned has ranged from the
bombastic to the cringing. Groups of the self-important write open letters
in wheedling tones, under the numptyish impression that the Chosen of
Galashiels or Glasgow give a damn what they feel. These appeals make Uriah
Heep sound like the Terminator. Frankly, it’s embarrassing.

Thus it was that, in the dying days of the referendum campaign, the pro‑Union
camp deployed their Big Gun. This turned out to be Gordon Brown, whom many
Down South had rather imagined would be leading the procession on to the
last train north from King’s Cross after independence, accompanied by the
irritating bagpiper who busks outside Selfridges on Oxford Street.

In the event of a Yes vote, the English should wave them a wistful goodbye.
“Britain” was a political solution to a political problem and separation
would not mean the end of England. In fact, it is hard to imagine many of
the dire predictions of the demise of the Union turning out to be as baleful
as predicted. Life expectancy would rise.

As for the rest – the supposedly permanent Tory government, the predicted
complacency despite the loss of international prestige – native ingenuity
will see us through. Of course, the English should be under no illusions.
But if the people of Scotland really do decide they’ve had enough of the
Union, good luck to them. It is rather astonishing that the nationalists
haven’t bothered to work out what will be inside their countrymen’s wallets
– but they are a great mercantile people, and it is not beyond the wit of
the nation to address the currency question with a 21st-century groat or
something.

Yet there is an uncomfortable suspicion that the nationalists are relying upon
the usual wetness of the English Establishment to settle the question,
hoping they will just say: “Oh well, if you want to keep the pound, go ahead
– and here’s a place or two making policy at the Bank of England.” It is all
too plausible.

The trend in the modern world is towards an erosion of national borders. If it
turns out the Scots really do want to create a new one, then let’s have a
proper frontier, with passport controls and barbed wire and Alsatian dogs
and watchtowers on the banks of the Tweed. The ticket collectors on Scottish
trains have their own rather fetching tartan already. They could extend it
to the border guards assigned to keep their land free from Southern
corruption.

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(via Telegraph)

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