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

articulate a compelling case for the Union other than one based on prophesies of doom for Scotland if it goes it alone. This is partly because the question that David Cameron chose to pose in this referendum—full independence, or no change at all—is the wrong one. There should have been the option on the bal-lot of “devo-max”—full autonomy, minus responsibility for for-eign policy and defence. Yet Cameron ducked that, wanting to force Scotland into a No vote; even though that is the likely result, the tactic has backfired by forcing serious consideration of the Yes option.

Whatever happens on 18th September, Britain will have to rethink the way it runs itself. The writer and former Labour MP David Marquand imagines a federal future for the UK which grants autonomy to the constituent parts of the Union, short of outright secession. A vision which is shared by Sir Menzies Campbell who discusses his reports on home rule and shares his thoughts on how a cross-party consesus could be achieved after a No vote. And Linda Colley, the distinguished historian, argues that one effect of the referendum campaign has been to put the case for a written UK constitution firmly back on the agenda.

Whether the result is independence or not, this historic vote is likely to be the trigger for fundamental constitutional change in Scotland and beyond. The United Kingdom will never be the same again.

The vision of an independent Scotland will not disap-pear, even with a No vote in the referendum on 18th September, which opinion polls suggest is likely. As Neal Ascherson argues in “Why I’ll vote Yes,” that idea, now that it has taken root, will not go away.

When Scots looks south, Ascherson writes, they see little of themselves there. And all the while, the internal voice which muses that “my country was independent once” gets louder. Like many countries before it, Scotland sees independence “as the way to join the world, modernise and take responsibility for their own actions and mistakes.”

Yet for all the feelings of national identity and self-assertion that the referendum campaign has stirred up, economic ques-tions—particularly concerning the currency and membership of the of European Union—have dominated the debate. However, as the campaign enters its final weeks, there is still an alarm-ing lack of clarity on these key issues. The arguments have not developed much since January 2013, when John Kerr argued that it would not be quick, easy or cheap for an independent Scotland to rejoin the EU. As for the economic benefits of inde-pendence, these too remain unclear, as John Kay shows in his article “Give me liberty or £500.”

If the economic arguments are inconclusive, then what is left is vision. It is regrettable, therefore, that the Better Together campaign, alternately complacent and tentative, has failed to

Introduction

PROSPECT 2014 4

adult population put their names to this painfully polite doc-ument, which began, “We, the people of Scotland...” Nothing happened. The then Labour government, concealing its alarm, told the stupid Scots to go away and learn that British politics worked through decisions by sovereign parliaments, not by ref-erendums or petitions.

Later, I saw a lot of the empire in terminal decay, in Africa and Asia. Everywhere I met people who saw national independ-ence—even in nations recently invented by the colonial power—as the way to join the world, to modernise and take responsibility for their own actions and mistakes. In Britain in those first post-war decades, “nationalism” usually meant that struggle from colonial status towards independence. It was only later, when most of those struggles were over, that left-wing imaginations turned towards the Holocaust and developed a vulgar syllogism: “Nationalism equals racism equals fascism equals war.”

For myself, I spent most of the 1960s in central Europe, in the last phase of the Cold War. National stereotypes and prejudices still abounded. But everywhere, under the puppet regimes of the Warsaw Pact, ordinary people made the connection between national independence and personal freedom—a connection I recognised from Scotland’s 1320 Declaration of Arbroath. For the Poles, regained independence was not just a happy end but a fateful moment of choice: “Poland yes—but what sort of Poland?” For Thomas Masaryk, the austere dominie who led the Czechs out of the Habsburg Empire, independence was about truth and high moral standards or it was nothing. “Nebát se a nekrást” (Don’t be afraid, and don’t steal) he told his people.

Back in Scotland, the bargain which supported the 1707 Act of Union was crumbling. The empire was over; the Scottish industrial economy was in steep decline even before Margaret Thatcher took her chainsaw to it in the 1980s. The centralised welfare state, for all its virtues, was sapping the autonomy of great Scottish professions—education, law, medicine. For the first time in three centuries, political nationalism, in the form of the Scottish National Party (SNP), came out of the wings and paced the stage.

Now working in Edinburgh, I supported the devolution plans which finally produced a Scottish parliament in 1997. But it seemed obvious to me that devolution was a running process, which would quite probably end in independence. The archaic Anglo-British power structure would provoke growing fric-tion between London and Edinburgh. And sooner or later—so I guessed—a Tory government might find it best to boot Scot-land out of the UK altogether. Much as Václav Klaus had booted the surprised Slovaks into independence a few years before, in

My uncle was an officer in the Royal Scots, “the First of Foot.” The tartan trews on his long legs made him magnificent. As a child, I once asked my mother, his sister, “But what are the Royal Scots for, if it’s peacetime?” “They’re

there to stop the English taking away the Loch Ness Monster,” she said. Married to a naval officer and fiercely loyal to the White Ensign, speaking a cut-glass English she’d learned in London at Miss Fogarty’s drama school, she was also the touch-iest Scottish patriot.

“Breathes there the man with soul so dead/ Who never to himself hath said/ This is my own, my native land!” As children, we often heard that ringing round the kitchen. From Miss Foga-rty, my mother also learned the art of outrageous, spellbinding exaggeration. It was only the outbreak of the Second World War which made me wonder if the Royal Scots really had been patrol-ling the Great Glen to watch for cockney monster-kidnappers.

But my mother had political instincts as well. She voted No in the first devolution referendum in 1979, declaring that “a Scot-tish parliament will make Scotland more English.” This extraor-dinary remark staggered me. Maybe she was the only voter in Scotland who thought like that. But could there be something in it—a warning against replicating Westminster arrogance and complacency? Or was it, as I now think, a deeply patronising opinion that Scots were not up to inventing our own democracy? Loveable only in our very second-rateness?

It’s easy to talk of “thoughtless nationalism.” Not thinking merely means that underthoughts are rehearsing their sound-less melodies in your head. Put it like this. In every Scottish brain, there has been a tiny blue-and-white cell which secretes an awareness: “My country was independent once.” And every so often, the cell has transmitted a minute, often almost imper-ceptible pulse: “Would it not be grand, if one day…”

But this stimulated other larger, higher-voltage cells around it to emit suppressor charges: “Are you daft? Get real; we’re too wee, too poor, that shite’s for Wembley or the movies.” One way of describing what’s happening to Scotland now is to say that the reaction of those inhibitor cells has grown weak and erratic. Whereas the other pulse, the blue-white one, is transmitting louder, faster, more insistently. This is why the real September referendum question is no longer “Can we become independ-ent?” It is: “Yes, we know that we can—but do we want to?”

In 1949, standing in the fish queue in Kilmacolm, I watched warmly-dressed ladies collect their haddock fillets and then sign the “Scottish Covenant,” the petition for a Scottish parliament which lay on the slab by the door. I signed too. Nearly half the

Why I’m voting Yesneal ascherson

Published in the August 2014 issue of Prospect

PROSPECT 2014 5WHY I’M VOTING YES

Another heavy-lifting job is institutional. For three centuries, the loss of a parliament was replaced by various blocs of largely unaccountable power—often benevolent but seldom democratic. This is a prob-

lem that England does not know. Among such blocs today are the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, the Faculty of Advocates and the Educational Institute of Scotland, the high-minded but monopolistic union of teachers. Some would add the Church of Scotland to the list. Devolution has failed to dent the massive immunity of these oligarchies. Only an independ-ent Scottish government could—I don’t say would—find the guts to face them down and integrate them into a democracy.

Second, an independent Scotland rejoins the world. Scotland would have its own European Union membership, appropriate to its special needs and priorities, and direct access to all global institutions. (Absurd bluff is a fair description of the threat that the EU, facing its worst crisis of public trust, would expel one of its most loyal, wealthy and longstanding participants. All the same, a temporary suspension would allow Scotland to perform some of those heavy-lifting, state intervention tasks, ignoring the EU rules against subsidies.) In Europe, Scotland would join a large group of small nations with populations around the five million mark. It would be more prosperous than most of them, but would share in a non-nuclear membership of Nato.

Third, independence would transform and revive party democracy. Freed from London control, Scottish Labour would probably purge its leadership. It would back sharply away from post-Blairite neoliberalism to the more statist, social-democratic line which suits its traditions. This liberated Scottish Labour could reasonably hope to evict the SNP from power within a few years of independence. In the same way, Scottish Conservatives —once relieved of the unionist stigma—could reconnect with the largely unrepresented mass of Scottish right-wing opinion.

Fourth, an independent Scotland—guaranteed always to have the government it voted for, in contrast to the constant “demo-cratic deficits” of union—could reconstruct its constitution. The people would become sovereign in the normal European way (in contrast to England’s weird doctrine of parliamentary absolut-ism). This would allow the entrenching of much stronger local government powers (“subsidiarity”), which would suit Scotland as a country of acute and touchy regional differences. There would be a supreme law (“Lex Rex”) in the shape of a justiciable written constitution—again, normal European stuff, but alien to traditional English jurists.

That’s some of the pull, the positive case for independence. But there’s also the push. This is the “negative” case for inde-pendence as a defence against threat, as a “lifeboat option,” an escape route from approaching doom. It’s a powerful case. So it’s surprising, touching even, that the official or unofficial “Yes” campaigns have not launched a “Project Fear” horror-saga of their own.

What follows if Scotland votes No, even narrowly? Quite probably another Tory-led government after 2015, followed by a referendum that would drag Scotland out of Europe against its will. The resumed demolition of what is left of the welfare state down south—the transition to a “Serco state”—would soon crip-ple public services in Scotland. (The block grant allocated to Scotland according to the so-called “Barnett formula” is cal-culated as a proportion of UK public spending, so that English cuts reduce expenditure in Scotland). The proud but expen-sive achievements of devolution—free tuition, home care and

order to dominate the Czech Republic without challenge.But I hadn’t foreseen the surge in SNP popularity which led

to an absolute majority at Holyrood in 2011 and now to the Sep-tember referendum. Until then, my own preference for a next step would have been “devo max”—full powers for a Scottish government within the UK. The big fruit of independence, I thought, needed a few more years to ripen.

Two things changed that. The first was Tony Blair’s behav-iour over the Iraq War. Suddenly, I found that I had lost the feeling of living in an independent country—a feeling I couldn’t wait to find again. The second, pragmatic, was David Cameron’s decision to strike full self-government off the referendum paper. Now the choice was simply Scottish independence: Yes or No. Everything or nothing. Can you want nothing for your country?

So much for the small biography of one “Yes.” The big argu-ment for Scotland’s return to independence has a positive part and a negative one—a pull and a push. I have to say that on a journey across Scotland that I made in May in the company of a group of artists and musicians (the “bus party”), only a handful of the hundreds of “Yes” opinions we heard were about “push”—in other words, about the threat to Scotland if we remained in the union. Instead, our audiences described for us the better, fairer Scotland they wanted to build. They hoped for more generous self-government at local level, for a Scotland open to more immi-grants, for an outward-looking Scotland helping other people on the planet, for “a listening Scotland where we can air uncertain-ties, where my son can grow up and have prospects…” And so on.

On that journey between the Pentland Firth and the Clyde, we talked to several hundred people. Strikingly, none of them (and very few were committed SNP types) assumed that their hopes could be realised within the union. They weren’t always right about that. Some, at least, of their demands could be car-ried out by a determined Holyrood under current devolution arrangements. But their assumption confirmed the almost ter-rifying failure of the “Better Together” campaign to make an attractive case for the union—as opposed to its often humili-ating and sometimes farcical “Project Fear” offensive against independence.

“Yes” may well not win the referendum vote in September (an opinion poll carried out by YouGov in mid-June had “No” on 53 per cent and “Yes” on 36 per cent, with 9 per cent “Don’t knows”). But it has already, overwhelmingly, won the campaign. In the long term, that may come to matter more.

Whatever happens, the 1707 union is over. The treaty became history in 1999, when the “reconvened” Scottish parliament met in Edinburgh. In its place, we have a lower-case, informal union which London and Edinburgh make up as they go along. Noth-ing is fixed now, nothing is stable, and the accelerating torrent of Scottish debate and self-questioning set off by this campaign will not be checked by a No vote. For the first time, independ-ence is coming to be seen by many as sober commonsense—a way out of increasingly sterile wrangles with Westminster.

Some of the advantages of full independence are obvious, if not precisely quantifiable, and can be listed. First, control of resources, oil and gas above all. Talk of “peak oil” is mis-leading. There is more than enough left to finance the heavy-lifting jobs facing an independent Scotland: the planning of a sounder, more diversified economy; the rescue of “abandoned” post-industrial communities; regional repopulation of remote areas and wider land reform; a coherent offensive against Scot-land’s shocking health problems.

PROSPECT 2014 6WHY I’M VOTING YES

by the austerity that followed? Is it even what the Scots want, or do they just yearn for a protective state and a large, well-padded public sector—grandfather’s Scotland restored?

I think the mood is much more dynamic than that. The people we met have been energised in a way nobody can remember, and they want a new country. They plied us with innovations, ideas for change, new approaches to energy, the sea-bed, immigration, justice. The things they wanted to overcome were Scottish, not “British”: we are too judgemental of one another, too self-right-eous; we prefer “aye been” (it’s always been done so) to trying anything new. Nobody hated the English. Instead, it was “West-minster doesn’t show it knows or understands anything about me or us” (Clydebank), “We should no longer be tenants in our own land” (Inverness) and “We are a world apart from London, they just don’t understand us” (Alexandria).

The mood of what we heard was modernising, risk-taking; not at all protectionist. Could a British federation contain it? Gordon Brown says so; David Marquand, in his essay in this collection, thought so. But it’s a non-starter because a federation invented merely to head off a secession wouldn’t survive, and wouldn’t deserve to; and because a federation in which one nation has 85 per cent of the population is an in-bed-with-an-elephant non-sense. It might work if England consented to break itself up into federal-state-sized chunks, but the English have shown that they prefer a unitary state and direct rule from London. Heaven knows why, but that’s their right. Lastly, the soul of a federation is its duty to level up living standards in all of its members. But can you imagine a federal government in London invoking the constitution to make Oxfordshire transfer millions to the budget of Tyne & Wear? How un-British!

Two final points. First, Scottish constitutional wishes have been incredibly steady over the last half-century. The biggest sec-tion of opinion simply wants Scotland to govern itself as other small nations do—if possible, within the United Kingdom. But if that’s not possible, then so be it—independence may be the only way to reach proper self-government. “Devo max”—full auton-omy, less foreign policy and defence—roughly corresponded to that wish. But it’s not on the ballot paper this September, so unknown numbers of people will vote Yes without wanting inde-pendence for itself.

Second, I have watched and taken part in the two previous ref-erendum campaigns on self-government, in 1979 and 1997, but this one is different. Not just because of the immensity of the decision, for the generations to come, but because this campaign has turned into a spreading emancipation, drastically and per-manently changing the way Scotland’s people assess their small nation and feel empowered to change it.

As a woman in Clydebank declared, “The genie’s oot the bot-tle, there’s nae puttin’ it back.” Whichever way the referendum vote goes on that Thursday in September, Scotland on the Fri-day morning will already be living in some form of independence. Neal Ascherson is a journalist and writer. He is the author of “Stone Voices: The Search for Scotland” (Granta)

prescriptions—would all become harder to maintain. So, criti-cally, would the independence of the Scottish National Health Service, which has kept at bay the chaos of artificial competi-tion, internal markets and privatisation which has demoralised healthcare in England.

The unionist parties promise “more powers” for Scotland after a No vote. Scottish opinion is sceptical. Even if the parties can agree on what “devo more” should comprise, their various ideas offer only marginal tinkering with the minor tax discre-tions already decided by the 2012 Scotland Act—and already dis-missed by most observers as hopelessly behind the curve. But, knowing Westminster, I predict its politicians will say: “Well, that’s that: the Scots have had their whine. Now we can forget about them and get back to what matters: London’s housing bubble and who might replace Ed Miliband…”

The strength of the “push” factor is a combination of real fear and moral horror. It’s an almost cultural revulsion from the sort of Britain the coalition gov-ernment and its predecessors are trying to create.

The Scots, in their majority, do not want to live in permanent job insecurity, in a society of growing inequality, declining real wages, zero-hours contracts, food banks and beggars jostling on the steps of every bank. The warning against “private afflu-ence, public squalor” still resonates in Scotland, where equal-ity and “fairness” are held to be national values.

Gordon Brown, as he marched off on his search for “British values,” once suggested that patriotism should centre on the NHS, the greatest of all British achievements. The late Tony Judt thought that the “trente glorieuses,” the 30 years in which western Europe experienced peace, social security, growing prosperity and increasing equality, were one of the supreme tri-umphs in human history. Since devolution in 1999, Scotland has set out to protect and nourish what’s left of that postwar British settlement in one part of the island. In this sense, the SNP is the most “British” party of all.

Thatcher, John Major, Blair and Cameron have all been complicit in trying to dismantle that settlement. It’s no wonder that Scots sometimes quote Gore Vidal’s comment on Ameri-can politics: “We have one party with two right wings.” Thirty years ago, the largest bloc of voters wanting independence were loyal supporters of Labour—a solidly unionist party. Class came before nation, in those days. But the shattering Labour losses to the SNP in 2011 were a token that this self-shackling mindset was coming apart—mostly in reaction to policies perceived as “Thatcherite” and ordained in London, not Scotland.

All over Scotland, I keep meeting men and women who say: “I don’t trust Alec Salmond, I couldn’t be SNP. But I’m having to rethink my old ideas. I’m not sure. But I don’t easily see how I could vote No.” These are natural Labour voters. And these are the people the No campaign really fears.

Is “social democracy in one country” conceivable in the Europe of 2014, cowed by the crash of the banks and emaciated

PROSPECT 2014 8

ure brought down James Callaghan’s Labour government. The 18-year Conservative ascendancy at Westminster followed, but Margaret Thatcher’s home counties tones alienated Scots. By 1997 the Conservatives were almost eliminated as a political force within Scotland. When Labour regained office, it quickly established a devolved Scottish Parliament. But this did not remove the nationalist threat: it gave it a platform. With Labour nationally unpopular in 2007, the SNP won enough seats in the Scottish Parliament to form a minority government. Its leader, Alex Salmond, so dominated the political scene that, despite contrary polls, he led his party to an overwhelming victory in 2011—a result which enabled, or perhaps compelled, them to call a referendum on independence to be held in September 2014.

In a world of relatively free trade, small countries can com-pete in global markets by specialising in narrow areas of com-petitive advantage. The success of peripheral small countries in western Europe is the product of such specialisation—such as the Swiss capabilities in speciality chemicals and precision engi-neering or the cluster of medical companies around Copenha-gen. These high levels of national prosperity are conditional on being an active and effective player in a global economy. Ire-land’s romantic nationalist fantasy of economic as well as polit-ical independence condemned it to 50 years of disappointing performance. Only in the 1970s did the country establish a mod-ern state whose membership of the EU symbolised and facili-tated a new, open economic order.

Over the past 50 years income per head in Scotland has moved in the range of 90 to 100 per cent of the UK average. The nadir was reached in the 1960s when that figure dipped briefly below 90 per cent: the peak was reached in the 1990s, followed by a slight relative decline. Scotland is the richest region of the UK outside London and southeast England. The growth rate of Scotland has been around 0.5 per cent lower than that of the UK but that difference is accounted for by slower population growth in Scotland, the result of net emigration. Until recently, projec-tions suggested that Scotland’s population was likely to fall but recent immigration, primarily from Poland, has delayed or elim-inated that prospect.

The industrial structure of Scotland is also similar to that of the UK. There is some truth in the claim that Scotland is more dependent on public sector employment than the UK as a whole. But, although classification differences complicate com-parisons, the difference is small. Scotland, like the UK, has an economically and culturally dominant capital city. But Edin-burgh is not Scotland’s largest city, and both the economy and

In the 2011 Scottish Social Attitudes survey, respondents were asked how they would vote in a referendum if inde-pendence would make them £500 per year better off. They would vote in favour, by around two to one. If inde-pendence would make them £500 per year worse off, the

result would be a two to one majority against.There would not have been a similar result for a poll in the

United States in 1775, in Ireland in 1920, or in India in 1945; nor even in relation to modern separatist issues, such as those in Quebec or Belgium, far less Kosovo. The economic issue looms larger in Catalonia, but even there it is bound up with linguis-tic differences and an unhappy modern history from the Span-ish Civil War and its aftermath. The referendum campaign in Scotland is characterised by a near exclusive focus on economic issues. What is the answer to the question the Social Attitudes survey posited?

If states are viewed as economic rather than ethnic or polit-ical entities, the balance of advance has shifted over time. The 19th century brought the rise of large states. Countries became bigger, empires were formed. Continental Europe saw the polit-ical reunification of Germany and of Italy. France, and par-ticularly Britain, built colonial empires. The United States expanded across the American continent.

The history of the 20th century was quite different. Empires progressively collapsed. The weak Turkish and Austrian empires were the first to fall. The process continued as Britain and France shed theirs, and by the end of the century even the Russian empire disintegrated. The number of members of the United Nations, 51 at its formation, has today expanded to 193. Some of the most successful economic performers in modern times have been small states such as Switzerland and the Scan-dinavian countries, which have moved from being among the poorest states in the world to among the richest.

The changing attractions of large and small were reproduced in the fall and rise of Scottish nationalism. In the 19th century people began to talk about North Britain. There was no politi-cal Scottish nationalist movement, only romantic fluff based on apocryphal history largely invented by Walter Scott. The revival of Scottish nationalism in the 20th century began as the chatter of literati in Scottish pubs. But in the 1970s it acquired an eco-nomic dimension. The discovery of oil in the North Sea allowed the Scottish National Party to campaign on the unsentimental slogan “it’s Scotland’s oil”—and to win seats in Westminster gen-eral elections for the first time.

An abortive attempt to placate this nationalist revival by re-establishing a Scottish Assembly failed in 1979, and the fail-

Liberty or £500JOHN KAY

Published in the February 2014 issue of Prospect

PROSPECT 2014 9LIBERTY OR £500

The financial world is now very different, as illustrated by the most significant parallel in Europe in living memory: the breakup of Czechoslovakia. The intention again was to park the currency issue but this proved impossible. Three weeks after two separate countries came into being at the beginning of 1993, the countries agreed to adopt distinct currency regimes. The decision was kept secret for three weeks, after which the Slovak crown traded independently and at a discount.

There are three basic currency options for an independent Scotland. It could become a member of the eurozone; it could form a monetary union with the remainder of the UK and con-tinue to use sterling (an unattractive variant on this option has Scotland unilaterally using that currency); or it could have an independent currency. The position of a Scottish currency would be one of many issues to be negotiated with the EU. Recent accession countries have broadly been told they must take the treaties as they are and it can be expected that much the same would be said to Scotland. There could, however, be discussion of areas where the UK has negotiated opt outs or spe-cial arrangements.

It would not be sensible for the EU to insist on Scottish acces-sion to the Schengen agreement on a common passport zone, since Scotland’s only land border is with a state outside it. Nor need the EU require Scotland to abandon its zero VAT rate on food, clothes and other products. There is no possibility that Scotland would inherit any share of the UK’s budget rebate. Scotland would be required to accept that the euro is the offi-cial currency of the EU. However, initially, Scotland would not qualify for membership of the eurozone as it would not meet the Maastricht criteria. The longer term issue would probably be settled by vague aspiration on the part of Scotland to join the euro at some time in a future so indefinite as to be irrelevant to any current decisions.

It would be sensible, as Scottish ministers have currently pro-posed, for Scotland to attempt to form a monetary union with England after independence. But it would not be easy to achieve that outcome. The debate would be conditioned by recent euro-zone experience. Conventional wisdom today—not necessarily well founded—is that monetary union is feasible only if there is a very high degree of fiscal coordination leading in the direc-tion of fiscal union; if there is a banking union; and if there is also widespread coordination of other policies. It is certain that if negotiations took place between Scotland and the UK over the formation of a monetary union, this would be the position adopted by the Bank of England and the UK Treasury.

So could the outcome of such a negotiation be consistent with aspirations for an economically independent Scotland? The asymmetry between a country that represents 8.5 per cent of a monetary union and one that makes up 91.5 per cent is a funda-mental difficulty. The rest of the UK would seek fiscal oversight over the Scottish economy and would be unwilling to concede reciprocal oversight. At the very least the Scottish government would have to prepare for the possibility that these negotiations would not succeed. The principal alternative for an independ-ent Scotland would be a separate currency.

The possibility of such an outcome has economic conse-quences not just from the day of independence but from the day at which independence becomes a serious option. If there were to be a Yes vote—indeed, if it were believed to be likely that the vote in Scotland would go in favour of independence—sophisti-cated individuals and businesses would start positioning them-

society of Scotland are deeply affected by a steady improvement in the fortunes of Aberdeen and Edinburgh relative to Scot-land’s other two principal cities, Dundee and Glasgow. Scotland is in a very different position from Wales or Northern Ireland, both of which are economically dependent on support from the UK. Independence for Scotland is certainly a feasible economic option. But would the £500 have a positive or a negative sign attached?

A Scottish vote for independence would be followed by nego-tiations about what independence would mean in practice. The SNP’s proposed timetable—with an independent state coming into being 18 months after a Yes vote—seems unrealistic. The most important of such negotiations would be those with the remaining UK and with the European Union.

Campaigners for independence face a genuine difficulty in describing the specifics that they ask people to support, which is reflected in the lengthy White Paper on the effects of independ-ence which the Scottish government published in November. That document is, perhaps inevitably, a mixture of the nego-tiating stance a Scottish government would adopt in interna-tional negotiations if it secured a positive result- on issues such as debt and currency; a positively spun description of how inde-pendence might function in practice—on matters such as citi-zenship; and an election manifesto for the SNP—on questions such as housing benefit and nuclear missiles.

Neither the UK nor EU will enter into negotiations ahead of a Yes vote; the putative Scottish government can only set out a negotiating stance. The documents that the current Scottish government produced in November are designed to reassure undecided votes that nothing much would change: the inde-pendent state would have the same Queen, the same currency, the same monetary policy and financial regulation. Most of the policy changes it describes—the most eye-catching is exten-sive provision of free childcare—are policies which the Scottish government already has the powers, but not the resources, to implement.

Some major issues could be deferred, to be dealt with in due course by negotiation between new sovereign states. The com-plexities of pension provision for the large numbers of people who have worked in both Scotland and England might be an example of such an issue, although such deferral would make it difficult for a Scottish government to implement the White Paper’s commitment to immediate reform of Scottish pension policy.

Scottish independence would require detailed legislative activity by both Westminster and the EU. It is unlikely, in fact inconceivable, that general legislation would pass unless there was a substantial degree of consensus on specific issues. The big-gest immediate question—and the one that has most potential for damaging uncertainty—is the decision an independent Scot-land would make about its currency.

When Ireland became independent in 1922, the currency issue was parked: people in Ireland carried on using English pounds exactly as they had been doing before. These Eng-lish pounds were issued by the Bank of England through Irish banks. Only in 1927 did Ireland start to have its own bank notes and for a long period after that the Irish Currency Board backed these Irish notes 100 per cent with Bank of England notes. In 1942, Ireland established its own central bank, but the link between the Irish pound and the British pound was not finally broken until 1979.

PROSPECT 2014 10LIBERTY OR £500

which took place in the UK from 1999-2006, Scotland was given more money through the block grant than it could sensibly spend in the early years of devolution. Over these seven years, public expenditure in Scotland increased by almost 50 per cent in real terms.

But these discussions as to whether Scottish voters would, in the short term, be net gainers or losers from the replacement of a subsidy from the UK by a windfall from the oil industry are hardly a serious basis for a decision as to whether Scotland should become an independent country.

What would independence mean for the performance of business in Scotland? Since the economic performance of small states depends on successful specialisation in a global market, the issue becomes: “What competitive advantages does Scotland have, or might Scotland have, that would enable Scottish busi-nesses to compete as effectively as Swiss businesses, or Danish

businesses, or Swedish businesses, first within the EU and then in a worldwide market?”

Scotland has a traditional strength in financial services, the product of a long Scottish involvement in imperial trade and finance. The record of Scottish finance over the last decade has certainly been distinguished. Having established a reputation for prudence and conservatism over a century or two, Scotland’s banks managed to dissipate that reputation in a short-lived phase of folly. Scotland no longer has the position in interna-tional banking to which it once aspired. It nevertheless retains a strong position in insurance, and in asset management, where a reputation for conservatism and competence remains largely intact.

Scotland has an obvious source of competitive advantage in tourism. But tourism levels in Scotland relative to other Euro-pean countries are lower than Scotland’s potential, given its evident attractions as a tourist destination. And it is hard to identify Scottish firms that will compete effectively and glob-ally in that sector—no large tourism businesses are now based in Scotland. They once existed but have mostly been absorbed into global corporations: Stakis Hotels disappeared into Hilton, Gle-neagles  became Diageo Turnberry part of Starwood

One of the most serious problems has been the drain of Scot-tish business and Scottish headquarters out of the country. Scot-tish and Newcastle Breweries, Bells, Teachers and Whyte and Mackay, Scottish Widows and General Accident, the Glasgow Herald and Grampian Foods have all moved their head offices. Is this due to Scotland’s membership of the UK? Or would much have happened anyway in a world in which London is a major financial and business centre, and in which merger and acqui-sition activity across borders has become progressively easier? Certainly Scotland has not been able to adopt policies to retain corporate headquarters within its boundaries in ways that it might and probably would have been able to do as an independ-ent country.

Scotland has a potential competitive advantage in premium food and drink. Scottish salmon, beef, shellfish and whisky are prized and valued around the world. Yet Scotland combines some of the best food products with the least healthy diet in the EU. It is difficult to see Scotland as an international premium food producer if that disjunction is not addressed.

No product in global markets is as clearly identified with a single country as is whisky with Scotland: customers routinely ask simply for a Scotch. Yet the two largest producers of Scot-tish whisky are Diageo—with a minimal headquarters pres-

selves to ensure that they benefited from, or at least did not lose out from, the establishment of a separate currency.

They would start to ask, as Czechs and Slovaks asked, “what will happen to my bank account, and my life insurance policy? Is my mortgage to be repaid in Scottish pounds or in English pounds?” Instability follows uncertainty. It is difficult to know what the outcome of monetary negotiations would be and yet vital that everyone knows the answer.

An independent currency would impose costs on Scotland, as well as a degree of monetary freedom—but the costs should not be exaggerated. It would be sensible for Scotland to peg its currency to the pound, as the Irish did for so long. The Dan-ish krone has been pegged against the euro since the establish-ment of the eurozone (and the Hong Kong currency has been linked to the US dollar for 30 years). Danish businesses main-tain accounts in krone and in euros and the peg provides Den-mark with much of the stability that a formal currency union would offer. That said, it must be acknowledged that most Dan-ish politicians and business people would like the country to join the eurozone. It has not happened because voters will not agree.

Allocation of debt between the two countries would naturally be based on population or share of onshore GDP—there is little difference between the two. The recent announcement by the UK Treasury that it would stand behind the UK’s debt is sim-ply a statement of the obvious since the rest of the UK (as suc-cessor state) would be liable for it in any event. Scotland would presumably be responsible for servicing a pro rata share and might roll over that share into Scottish debt as the historic stock matured. Scotland could expect to pay a modest premium for the unfamiliarity and relative illiquidity of a new small country’s debt, although this might initially be offset by some patriotic purchases (both in Scotland in the diaspora). The borrowing capacity of the new state would be limited by a debt to GDP ratio not very different from the unfavourable debt to GDP ratio for the UK as a whole.

The current fiscal position is that Scotland receives a block grant from the UK government for the bulk of its expenditure. Health and education are the main expenditure items among devolved functions. The allocation to Scotland in that block grant is around 10-12 per cent higher per head of population than the corresponding figure for the UK as a whole. That cross subsidy—perhaps not coincidentally—equates roughly to the gain to Scotland from an allocation of oil revenues by reference to the general principles of territorial rights in the North Sea in international law. An independent Scotland would have a budg-etary position that was more volatile and more uncertain but on balance neither substantially more or less favourable than the status quo. However this position would tend to deteriorate as oil revenues tail off and unfavourable demography makes its impact.

The additional per capita public expenditure in Scotland is mainly used to implement higher staffing levels in health and education services. But while Scotland employs more doctors, nurses and other ancillary workers per head of population than England, its mortality figures are worse than that of the UK as a whole. Scotland is the worst health performer among major countries in western Europe. That is partly but not wholly accounted for by particularly poor figures in Glasgow and the west of Scotland.

Scotland spends a lot in its public sector and it is not very clear what it gains from it. As a result of the spending splurge

PROSPECT 2014 11LIBERTY OR £500

But independence might evolve in a different way. Scotland—and especially Glasgow and west central Scotland—suffered in the 20th century from a municipal socialism which, initially idealistic and well-intentioned, became reactionary and mildly corrupt, in a way that damaged both individual aspiration and business enterprise. Small countries are also vulnerable to the crony capitalism which produced such disastrous results in other west European economies such as Ireland or Iceland. It is not difficult to see how a combination of the two might have a bale-ful effect on any kind of entrepreneurial culture. It is on the bal-ance of these two forces—the greater dynamism of a more self confident state and the complacent self-congratulation too often characteristic of Scottish culture—that the economic progress of an independent Scotland would likely depend.

But the likelihood of such an outcome from September’s ref-erendum is small. The “yes” campaign remains well behind in the polls. Perhaps Salmond can pull a last minute rabbit from the hat; perhaps some recovery in the economy might bring with it a recovery in Conservative prospects of re-election at Westmin-ster which would further alienate Scottish voters to whom David Cameron and George Osborne have little appeal. But the odds are stacked against this. While the UK government, and particu-larly the opposition parties in Scotland, have indicated the possi-bility of further moves towards devolution after a “no” vote, it is difficult to imagine that such measures would be a priority for a Westminster parliament once the independence threat had been removed. A 60/40 margin of defeat for Salmond would leave the issue still on the table. A 70/30 margin would kill it for the fore-seeable future, and put in question the future of both Salmond and the SNP. There is still a lot to play for.John Kay is an economist

ence in Scotland—and the French spirits manufacturer Pernod Ricard. Still, the arrival of Diageo and Pernod Ricard in the Scot-tish whisky industry has revived a sector which was previously in decline. The takeover by Guinness of the Scottish based Dis-tillers’ Company in 1986 put an end what is probably one of the worst and longest sagas of mismanagement in British business history. That decline of Scotland’s whisky monopoly from the 1920s to the 1980s has wider lessons. Both whisky and banking are stories of loss of competitive advantage through management failure, and responsibility for these failures is located in Scot-land, not outside it.

Scotland has some new sources of competitive advantage, such as the energy services sector that has developed around the growth of North Sea oil production. Scottish doctors have also been renowned around the world for at least 200 years. Not only is Scotland still a major centre for medical training but spin-off businesses have recently emerged in life sciences.

What is needed is a climate of enterprise and entrepreneur-ship within Scotland. A number of successful new Scottish com-panies have been created, such as KwikFit, Stagecoach, and Clyde Blowers—mostly by idiosyncratic individuals outside the traditional educational ladder climbed by “lads o’pairts” who went on to Edinburgh or Glasgow Universities from Scotland’s famous academies. Among more conventional middle-class products of the Scottish education system, many people have been successful in business—but outside Scotland. An independ-ent Scotland might offer an environment more conducive to the development and retention of such individuals in future. So the result of independence could be a much more vibrant economic environment. Devolution has led to some revival of Scottish iden-tity and self-confidence, and independence might do more.

PROSPECT 2014 13

Republic. Had the Duke of Burgundy, Charles the Bold, beaten off the depredations of the French crown in the 15th century, a powerful Burgundian state might now dwarf a puny France. Had Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile not married, there would have been no Spanish state.

The confusion that now engulfs the UK’s territorial consti-tution can be understood only against that background. The referendum on Scottish independence called by the Scottish National Party government has provoked extraordinarily vitu-perative and insensitive attacks on the very idea of an inde-pendent Scotland from all and sundry: George Osborne, Danny Alexander, Ed Balls and David Cameron, with Mark Carney and José Manuel Barroso bringing up the rear. They have all warned Scottish voters of the horrors that will engulf Scotland should they have the temerity to vote for secession from the UK. They remind me of King Lear’s famous threat “to do such things, what they are yet I know not, but they shall be terrors of the earth.”

Like Lear’s threat, the warnings delivered by Osborne and company tell us more about the warners than the warned. Deep in the sub-conscious of English politicians and commentators lurks an unspoken, but profound incomprehension about the nature of the non-English peoples of the UK. South of the bor-der and east of Offa’s dyke England represents normality; the non-English are assumed to be would-be English, or even Eng-lish in disguise. The notion that the Welsh and Scots are not just non-English, but happily and contentedly non-English seems eccentric to the point of perversity. Partly because of this, the terms “British” and “English” have been almost interchangeable for English people. When Kipling asked, “What do they know of England who only England know?” he had Britain in mind. When the Scottish émigré, Thomas Carlyle talked of the “con-dition of England question” he could equally well have called it the “condition of Britain question.” In his magnificent 1941 polemic, The Lion and the Unicorn, George Orwell called for a “very English revolution,” but it is clear from the context that by “English” he meant “British.”

These deep-seated attitudes help to explain the widespread English failure to understand the logic of the SNP’s search for independence and, on a deeper level, to remember how and why Scotland became part of the UK in the first place. It is a long story, but the central fact is clear. As the Oxford politics professor Iain Maclean has emphasised, the Treaty and sub-sequent Acts of Union of 1707 flowed from a bargain between the two sovereign and independent Kingdoms of Scotland and England (which then included Wales). The bargain was just

Lying on the desk in front of me as I type is my pass-port. The cover is an elegant confection of maroon and gold. “European Union” proclaims the first line, in golden capital letters. Beneath, slightly larger golden capital letters add the words: “United

Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.” Beneath that, also in gold, are the arms of Her Britannic Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II. At the top of the inside facing page are the words “European Union.” Below them are two lines, translating that term into the two Celtic languages of Great Britain, Welsh and Scottish Gaelic. Then come the words, “United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.” Below them come, once again, their Welsh and Scottish Gaelic equivalents. On the penultimate inside page of the passport, alongside an unflat-tering photograph and below my full name, are the portentous words, “British Citizen.”

The message is subtly, I almost said slyly, postmodern. It is also remarkably European. I am, my passport tells me, a Brit-ish citizen. But that is not all I am. I am also a citizen of the European Union, bearing the rights guaranteed to EU citizens by virtue of the European Convention on Human Rights that all EU member states are bound to accept. I am represented in the directly elected European parliament, as well as in the Brit-ish House of Commons. And thanks to the devolution of impor-tant powers to the non-English nations of the United Kingdom, British citizenship itself is a far more complicated matter than it used to be. I am Welsh by origin, and my wife and I have just acquired a flat near Cardiff, my native city. Before long, we shall be entitled to vote in elections to the Welsh assembly or Senedd.

This is typical of modern Europe. All over the continent, ancient ethnicities are emerging from under the carapace of the familiar European “nation state.” For Wales and Scotland read Catalonia, Sardinia, Galicia, Lombardy, Corsica, the Basque country, Andalusia and Flanders. To make sense of this, it is important to remember that the allegedly “national” states of Europe are, in many cases, artificial: products of dynastic mar-riages and the contingencies of battle rather than Abraham Lin-coln’s “mystic chords of memory.” (The mystic chords sounded after the nations came into existence, not before.) But for the marriage between James IV of Scotland and Margaret Tudor, daughter of King Henry VII of England, Margaret’s grandson, James VI of Scotland, would not have inherited the English crown, and the British state might never have come into exist-ence. Had Austria defeated Prussia at the battle of Königgrätz, instead of the other way around, there would have been no Ger-man empire, no Third Reich and probably no German Federal

United States of Britaindavid marquand

Published in the June 2014 issue of Prospect

PROSPECT 2014 14UNITED STATES OF BRITAIN

incarnation of an idea; the kingship would have seemed to them as it seems to us, to embrace and express the qual-ity that is peculiarly England’s: the unity of England, effortless and unconstrained, which accepts the unlim-ited supremacy of crown in parliament so naturally as not to be aware of it.”

Perhaps because he was ethnically Welsh, Powell was laying it on a bit, but he put his finger on an exposed nerve of the British polity. The Dicey-Powell doctrine runs directly counter to the implicit Scottish conception of popular sovereignty set out in the Declaration of Arbroath of 1320. The text of the declaration is worth pondering. If Robert the Bruce “should give up what he has begun, and agree to make us or our kingdom subject to the King of England or the English,” it proclaims, “we should exert ourselves to drive him out as our enemy and a subverter of his own rights and ours.” (Note the “our” and “ours.”) The premise is that the sovereign Scottish people should determine the future of their country. This implicitly democratic concep-tion lingered on in the minds of politically and constitutionally conscious Scots, but as a principle of government it didn’t sur-vive the union.

Constitutionally speaking, the UK is England writ large. The Scots thought certain crucial Scottish demands had been guar-anteed in perpetuity, but according to the Dicey doctrine they hadn’t been; in fact, they never could have been. By an extraor-dinary sleight of hand, the English doctrine of the “unlimited supremacy of the crown in parliament” was imposed on the unconquered Scots, as well as on the conquered Welsh and the partially conquered Irish. In calling the independence referen-dum, the Salmond government has rejected the Dicey/Powell doctrine of unfettered parliamentary sovereignty in favour of the ancient Scottish doctrine of popular sovereignty.

Against that background, the SNP case for Scottish inde-pendence takes on a new colour. The central point concerns EU membership and its implications for Scotland. As the Scottish government points out, under devolution it has—and will con-tinue to have—“no direct influence over EU decisions.” The UK government does not—indeed cannot—pay due regard to dis-tinctively Scottish concerns in the endless round of negotiations and compromises that are the stuff of EU politics and govern-ance. Since Scotland is subsumed in the UK so far as EU poli-tics are concerned, there is no mechanism by which distinctive Scottish concerns can be brought to bear in the EU legislative process. By definition, this is equally true of Wales and North-ern Ireland. A Labour victory in the next election would leave matters as they are. The sovereign London government would still control the UK’s negotiating stance; the mere fact that the party composition of it had changed would make no difference to that brute fact.

At this point, enter federalism. In a federal United Kingdom, this would no longer be true. The constituent states of the feder-ation—Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England—could play the role that the German “Länder” play at the moment in the Bundesrepublik. They would be deeply involved in EU pol-icy-making. The UK government’s position would be hammered out in intra-state negotiations and bargaining; the state govern-ments would have a presence in Brussels, making sure that the British government stuck to the compromises made in the intra-state process. And if, as would be logical, the mouldering archa-ism known as the House of Lords were replaced by an upper

that: a bargain. It was not a diktat. It was made because the ruling bodies of the two nations thought it was in their inter-ests. England secured its northern frontier, ruling out any rep-etition of the “auld alliance” between Scotland and France; the Scots accepted the English law of succession to the throne, rul-ing out a Jacobite succession; the Scottish and English par-liaments were merged; Scotland became a junior, but richly rewarded partner in what was now the British empire. At the same time, the continued existence of Scotland’s separate legal system and established church was guaranteed. These institu-tions preserved the memory of independent Scottish statehood and provided an enduring focus for a distinct Scottish identity.

Scotland, in other words, voluntarily joined a union with Eng-land. I cannot see any reason why it would be ipso facto wicked or shocking or improper for Scotland now to decide that it no longer wishes to remain a member of the union concerned: that the bargain was, in fact, one-sided and has not delivered, or at least no longer delivers, the goods that the negotiators of 1707 thought they were getting.

In sober fact, the guarantees given to Scotland in the Treaty and Acts of Union rested on extremely shaky foundations. Eng-lish constitutional lawyers could never bring themselves to accept that, in guaranteeing them, the settlement of 1707 had sought to entrench them in the constitution of the new Brit-ish state. In one of the most resonant sentences ever penned by an English constitutional lawyer, the Oxford jurist Albert Venn Dicey insisted that the “doctrine of the legislative supremacy of parliament,” as he called it, was “the very keystone of the con-stitution.” None of the “limitations alleged to be imposed by law on the absolute authority of parliament,” he added, had “any real existence.” It followed that no parliament could bind its suc-cessor. The Act of Union was no exception; logically there could be no exceptions. Indeed, with joyous glee, Dicey showed that significant provisions of the Act of Union—one laying it down that professors at Scottish universities should subscribe to the Presbyterian Confession of Faith and another prohibiting lay patronage in the Church—were repealed by the sovereign parlia-ment of Great Britain. If Dicey was right (and he was) the guar-antees of Scottish exceptionalism given in 1707 were worthless: the Scots had been sold a pup.

But at this point, the story takes a strange twist: Dicey’s doc-trine of legislative parliamentary supremacy is not British; it is English, quintessentially English. For Enoch Powell, the great prophet of High Tory English nationalism, it encapsulated the very essence of English nationhood. In a beautifully crafted, if slightly mad St George’s Day speech, he compared it to the “sacred olive tree” of ancient Athens. Like Athenians returning to the ruins of their city after it had been sacked by Xerxes, he declared, the present generation of the English had come home from years of imperial wanderings. Having returned, it had dis-covered an unexpected affinity with earlier generations whose effigies were to be found in England’s country churches. Sup-pose they could talk to us, he asked, what would they say? This is his answer:

“One thing they assuredly would not forget, Lancastrian or Yorkist, squire or lord, priest or layman; they would point to the kingship of England... and that sceptred awe in which Saint Edward the Englishman still seemed to sit in his own chair to claim the allegiance of all the English. Symbol yet source of power, person of flesh and blood, yet

PROSPECT 2014 15UNITED STATES OF BRITAIN

ging accountant, lacking in what the first George Bush called “the vision thing.” Only one objection needs to be taken seri-ously: Barroso’s claim that, if Scotland became independent, it would be difficult, perhaps impossible for her to join the EU. But that is a matter of opinion, not an ex cathedra ruling by a kind of Euro-pope. Barroso is not just President of the Euro-pean Commission. He is a right-of-centre Portuguese politician. His political position is radically different from the Scottish gov-ernment’s. By no means all Commission officials share his opin-ion. As we speak, Scotland belongs to the EU by virtue of her membership of the UK. The question is not whether she should be allowed to join, if and when she becomes independent; it is whether she should be thrown out. That question will be decided by political argument and negotiation, not by unchallengeable legal dicta. Of course, we cannot foresee the results. But it is clear that excluding Scotland from the EU would be an act of gratuitous and self-destructive folly.

The moral is clear. If Salmond loses the independence ref-erendum, there will be an urgent need for a constitutional con-vention to revise the UK’s territorial constitution, to decide how the nations that make up the union should relate to each other and to the whole and to hammer out an alternative to Westmin-ster absolutism. (Some peers are rumoured to favour such a con-vention before the referendum takes place, but it is hard to see a suggestion from that quintessentially undemocratic quarter gaining traction.) The important point is that if Scottish voters reject independence in September there will a breathing space to hammer out an agreed solution to the great conundrum of multi-level governance in the UK: how to satisfy the legitimate aspirations both of the non-English nations of the union and of England. But the breathing space will not last for long.

At this point enter Charles Stewart Parnell, and the complex, long drawn-out and eventually tragic story of the struggle over Irish home rule and of the deeper, sometimes agonising struggles within the hearts and

minds of those involved. It is rich in drama: William Gladstone’s first home rule bill and his magnificent speech in the debate on it; the Liberal split that ensured its defeat; Parnell’s terrible fall after being successfully cited as a co-respondent in one of the most sensational divorce cases of the 19th century; his prema-ture death; the Asquith government’s bitterly contested home rule legislation before the First World War; the emergence of paramilitary forces both in Ulster and the south of Ireland; the Easter Rising of 1916 and the resulting “terrible beauty” that Yeats hymned in imperishable lines; the savage guerrilla war between the IRA and the British that followed the First World War; and the equally savage civil war between the supporters and opponents of the 1921 treaty that gave the 26 counties of southern Ireland independent statehood.

The story is also rich in passion, and in outsize political lead-ers. Salmond is a cuddly tabby cat compared with Parnell. Cam-eron is laughably lightweight in comparison with Lord Salisbury. The wayward genius and vaulting ambition of Joseph Chamber-lain, the Liberal Party’s nemesis in the 1880s, and the Conserva-tive Party’s in the early 1900s, have a steely intransigence about them which no present-day political leader can emulate. Lesser members of the cast list—Cardinal Manning, austere Catholic convert and hammer of employer exploitation, Kitty O’Shea the fatal love of Parnell’s life, and even her squalid husband, Cap-tain William O’Shea—all seem larger than life. And Gladstone’s

house on the lines of the German Bundesrat, which represents the Land governments, the states would be able to block any EU decisions that ignored their concerns.

This is not just abstract theorising. The current UK govern-ment is Eurosceptic, not to say Europhobic. Its chief objectives in EU negotiations are to water down the “federalist” element in the EU Constitution in favour of the “confederalist”; and to pro-tect the UK’s overblown and, in parts, criminal financial services sector from EU scrutiny. But none of this is true of Scotland. Scotland would like to be a constructive partner in EU politics. Like most small member states, it knows that the EU offers the best protection that small European nations have ever had from big predators, as well as the best shelter from the upheavals of global markets. And, in present circumstances, the SNP con-tention that the Scots can play a constructive EU role only in an independent Scotland has compelling force.

Moreover, the Scottish government is—implicitly at least—social-democratic. It seeks independence to protect Scottish social democracy against the market fundamentalism of the London government, both within the UK and in its dealings with the EU. The roots of Scottish social democracy go deep. The political cultures of all the non-English nations of Great Brit-ain are very different from their English counterparts. As a civil servant in the Welsh education department put it in my hear-ing not long ago, the overarching theme of UK governance can be summed up as “choice, competition, customer.” The Welsh equivalent is: “voice, cooperation, citizen.” Since devolution, the Welsh government has tried to follow the path implied by that splendid trio. Mutatis mutandis the same is true of Scotland.

But, ever since Mrs Thatcher crossed the threshold of No 10 all UK governments, irrespective of party, have been in thrall to the imperatives of what Philip Bobbitt, the legal historian and philosopher, has called the “market state.” These imperatives have not only violated the underlying assumptions of Scotland’s political culture; they have also trampled on the religious tra-ditions with which that culture is intertwined. Scotland’s reli-gious traditions are Roman Catholic and Calvinist. Both reject the Hayekian market individualism of Thatcher and the watered down version of it that prevailed under Blair and Brown. Two particularly egregious Thatcherisms stank in Scottish nostrils: her dictum that no one would remember the Good Samaritan if he hadn’t had the money to give effect to his good intentions; and her notorious “sermon on the mound,” in which she insisted that since Christ chose to lay down his life, freedom of choice was the essence of Christianity.

What if no fundamental change is made in the UK constitu-tion? Probably—but not certainly—Salmond will lose the refer-endum. However, that won’t be the end of the story. It is worth remembering that champions of independence have only got to win once; opponents have to go on winning every time the ques-tion comes onto the political agenda. The political

and social forces that made the SNP Scotland’s governing party and lie behind its decision to hold the independence

referendum won’t go away. Sooner or later, if the UK constitu-tion remains unchanged, there will be another demand for inde-pendence and another referendum. If the choice is once again between independence and the status quo, I find it hard to see how any self-respecting Scot could vote against independence.

For, as my old boss Roy Jenkins might have said, almost all the objections which have been made to independence fall well below the level of events. They breathe the spirit of a pettifog-

PROSPECT 2014 16UNITED STATES OF BRITAIN

park provision. This “gas and water socialism”—the vigorous and constructive use of public power to improve social conditions on the ground—was Chamberlain’s apprenticeship. He approached national politics with the same impatient energy. His famous “Unauthorised Programme,” designed to “grapple with the mass of misery and destitution in our midst,” as he put it, was avow-edly socialistic. All this was anathema to Gladstone. He was vis-cerally hostile to anything that smacked of socialism. He was for a limited state, not an interventionist one; partly because of this, he gave a higher priority to the national grievances of the Irish than to social grievances in England and Scotland. Temperamen-tally, politically and philosophically, he and Chamberlain were chalk and cheese.

To me, at least, Gladstone is a much more attractive figure than Chamberlain. But Chamberlain saw—much more clearly than Gladstone did—that the only sure way to bind Ireland into the union was to treat the Irish question as one element in a much wider British question: to reconstruct the British polity on federal lines, making Ireland a state within a British federa-tion alongside Scotland, Wales and England. Chamberlain did not discover federalism during the struggle over Gladstone’s first home rule bill; he had toyed with federalist ideas as far back as the early 1870s. During the crisis over the home rule bill he told a radical colleague that he thought the Westminster parliament should be responsible for foreign affairs, the army, navy, post office and customs; that subordinate legislatures in England, Scotland, Wales, perhaps Ulster and the rest of Ireland should deal with their own internal affairs; that a Supreme Court should adjudicate on conflicts between the centre and the states; and that the House of Lords should be abolished.

In terms of the day-to-day politics of the moment, this was patently not a runner. Gladstone was Prime Minister, in close touch with Parnell. He and his future biographer John Morley were preparing a government bill that, as Colin Matthew put it, turned “a slogan into the fine print of legislation.” He was not about to give way to an insubordinate minister peddling remarkably inchoate and confused new slogans. Gladstone’s ideas developed slowly, through serious reading and long reflec-tion. But once he had reached a conclusion, his mind locked onto it like the jaws of a man-trap. According to his biographer Rich-ard Shannon, a visitor to Gladstone’s home at Hawarden in the winter of 1885-6 found him:

“so excited when he talked about Ireland, it was quite frightening. He ended the conversation by saying, “Well it has come to this, we must give them [the Irish] a great deal or nothing.” And I answered with some warmth “then nothing.” Upon which he pushed back his chair with his eyes glaring at me like a cat’s, he called to his wife that it was time to go out.”

Few people could prevail against Gladstone’s glaring cat’s eyes, and an insubordinate Chamberlain was not one of them. But it doesn’t follow that Chamberlainite federalism could never have been a runner in any circumstances. A crucial question is whether Parnell and his party would have been satisfied. Of course, there is no way of telling. But it is worth noting that on the touchstone issue of whether Ireland would continue to be represented directly in the “imperial” parliament at Westmin-ster, Parnell seems to have had an open mind. For Chamberlain this was the crux of the home rule dispute. If there were no Irish

extraordinary combination of oratorical force, single-minded will-power, charismatic inspiration, profound religious faith, capacity for self-deception, institutional and political creativity, high ideals and low cunning has no equivalent today. Colin Mat-thew, who edited most of Gladstone’s voluminous diaries, wrote that they described Gladstone’s “strivings to harness his will and his passions to the service of God.” It is hard to think of any mod-ern politician—or indeed any other leading politician in the 19th century—of whom that could be said.

The story is extraordinarily convoluted. To tell it in full would need a substantial volume. The most I can do here is to pick out a few central themes. The first and most obvious is the leaden weight of Irish history that shaped the assumptions and behaviour of all the participants. In the 18th century, Ireland was effectively a colony, whose native population—the Catho-lic Irish—were kept down, ultimately by force, but more imme-diately by cruel and humiliating penal laws that effectively deprived them of civil rights. Catholics could not bear arms, then an essential attribute of gentility; they could not practise law; and they could not vote in elections to the Irish parliament. The penal laws had gone by the middle of the 19th century, but the Irish famine of the second half of the 1840s inflicted a demo-graphic catastrophe on the country more terrible than anything in the preceding century. Memories of it festered in the minds of the Irish diaspora in the United States and were revived by the lesser famine of the 1870s.

Not surprisingly, opposition to British rule frequently took violent forms. The IRB—the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood, the so-called “Fenians”—were part of the context within which constitutional opponents of British rule had to operate. The great question facing the Irish party in the House of Commons was how to reconcile the “Fenian” tradition with the constitu-tional one; and how to fit in with the mores and atmosphere of the still largely aristocratic House of Commons. As Conor Cruise O’Brien has shown, this apparently unpromising context was tai-lor-made for Parnell—a Protestant Irish landlord, an alumnus of Cambridge University, a hereditary member of the Protestant Ascendancy, yet at the same time endowed with a rare combina-tion of personal magnetism, political nous, strategic vision, and, until his terrible fall, rock-like fidelity to the Irish cause.

As I suggested above, in the current debate over Scottish inde-pendence, federalism is the dog that hasn’t barked in the night. In the debate over Irish home rule in 1880s, it barked quite fre-quently and fairly loudly. A leading dog handler was Joseph Chamberlain, who saw—or claimed to have seen—that the feder-ation of Canada was a model for the relationship between Ireland and the rest of the UK. People of English stock, Chamberlain declared, had a special gift for “working out the great problem of federal government”: Canada and the US were examples. In the Commons debate following his resignation from Gladstone’s government, he “raised the possibility of federation,” as his lat-est and most authoritative biographer puts it, as an alternative to home rule. Chamberlain’s political style was harshly rebar-bative. He was a confronter, by nature, not a conciliator; a split-ter not a unifier. There was a noble grandeur about Gladstone’s Damascene conversion to Irish home rule. It is all too easy to see Chamberlain’s response as spiteful and opportunistic; and Gladstone’s admirers then and since have seen it in just that way.

The truth is more complicated. Chamberlain had won his spurs as a reforming Mayor of Birmingham, immersed in the nitty-gritty of slum-clearance, water supply, road-building and

PROSPECT 2014 17UNITED STATES OF BRITAIN

to republican liberty. Their solution was to locate sovereignty in the whole American people; and to ensure that the people could exercise their sovereignty both on the state and on the fed-eral level. Power would check power and the threat of execu-tive aggrandisement would be held at bay. Last, but not least, the package was codified and transparent. UK federalism would not follow the American example in every respect, but the three great pillars of American federalism—codification, checks and balances and popular sovereignty—would be of its essence.

In one crucial respect, however, the framers of a federal con-stitution for the UK would face a problem with no American counterpart: the problem of an overmighty (or perhaps just overweight) England. England contains almost 84 per cent of the UK population. Scotland has just under 8.5 per cent, Wales just under 5 per cent and Northern Ireland just under 3 per cent. There are wide variations in the state populations in Ger-many, and still more in the US, but no German or American state towers over the rest in the way that England does. One pos-sible solution would be to divide England into regions with the same powers as those of the non-English nations. But that solu-tion pays too much heed to symmetry and too little to sensibil-ity and self-understanding. The Scots and Welsh are not the only ancient peoples to emerge from under the carapace of the British state: the English have done so too. The Campaign for an Eng-lish Parliament, which is now a feature of the landscape, and the proliferation of St George’s flags at appropriate moments in the calendar are signs of that. A federal United Kingdom with four states, one of them much more populous than the other three, would be an oddity. But it would reflect the odd history which has made this country what it is. If the peoples and political classes of the United Kingdom want to make it work, they will. If they don’t, break-up is inevitable. David Marquand is author of The Decline of the Public: The Hollow-ing Out of Citizenship

MPs at Westminster, if Ireland would be the only part of the UK without representatives in the “imperial” parliament, Chamber-lain’s federalist solution to the home rule crisis would be dead in the water. Ireland would follow its own path—a path that would sooner or later lead to Irish secession from the UK. But if Irish MPs remained at Westminster, with a separate Irish legislature in Dublin dealing with domestic Irish affairs, the Irish settlement might pave the way for a federal United Kingdom.

Originally, Gladstone wanted to retain Irish MPs at Westmin-ster, but he blenched at the implications, notably what we know today as the “West Lothian question.” If Irish MPs sat in the House of Commons, and if they were allowed to vote on all the matters that came within its purview, a serious imbalance would result: Irish members would be able to vote on specifically Eng-lish (and Scottish) matters, though English and Scottish MPs would not be able to vote on the equivalent Irish matters since they would have been devolved to the Irish legislature. But if Irish MPs were allowed to vote only on “imperial” matters and not on English ones, a majority on “imperial” questions might be a minority on English ones. Collective and individual ministerial responsibility to the House of Commons, a fundamental prin-ciple of the Westminster model of parliamentary government, would be fatally undermined. The logical answer was federalism, but for Gladstone that was a bridge too far. In the end, the 1886 home rule bill kept Irish MPs out. In doing so, it split the Liberal Party, ensured the defeat of the bill, turned Chamberlain into a bitter and deadly foe of the British liberal tradition, led to 20 years of Conservative hegemony, and thrust hopes of British fed-eralism into a deep freeze in which they still languish. It is time to switch the freezer off.

What would a federal United Kingdom look like? The inspired opening words of the US Constitution—“We the people”—point the way to the answer. The founding fathers of the American republic faced a conundrum: how to marry executive power

PROSPECT 2014 19

in the last two centuries, there were large numbers of Britons who dismissed them as inherently impractical and unaccepta-ble devices. Such opposition partly reflected the influence of the “common law,” with its emphasis on the slow accretion of prec-edents and customs. But scepticism also had much older roots. There were classical and biblical precedents for the idea that unwritten, innate laws were superior to written laws. Christ’s message, St Paul tells the Corinthians, is “written not with ink, but with the spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.”

British and Irish defenders of an unwritten constitution sometimes made similar, quasi-mystical claims. Edmund Burke did so in a speech in parliament in 1791, when he suggested that there was no need to translate the Magna Carta from the origi-nal Latin because Britons instinctively understood it; it was in their hearts. James Bryce, a brilliant Scots-Irish academic, pol-itician and jurist, also made semi-mystical claims about Brit-ain’s constitutional settlement in an influential book published in 1905. He suggested that, while the British constitution could not “be expressed in the stiff phrases of a code,” a “sense” of its content naturally evolved among those operating it. “This kind of constitution lives by what is called its spirit,” Bryce insisted. “The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life,” again, a quotation from Corinthians.

Resistance to the new constitutions was also prompted by the fact that their two most conspicuous early exponents were both polities with which Britain went bloodily to war: revolutionary America and revolutionary France. Considerable efforts were devoted during both conflicts to representing the new devices as being themselves alien and unsuited to Britain. One mani-festation of this was the growing use of the phrase “paper con-stitution” to denounce constitutions of the US and even more the French variety. Apparently coined in the early 1780s, “paper constitution” came to be deployed in British parliamentary speeches, newspapers and books, almost invariably in a nega-tive manner, until at least the 1970s. Paper constitutions were like paper money, remarked the Victorian historian and politi-cian, Lord Macaulay: trashy substitutes for real gold.

Even when the conclusion of the American Civil War in 1865 demonstrated that a major power possessed of a writ-ten constitution could remain formidable and united, expres-sions of scepticism persisted, and not just among conservatives. Far from being manifestations of the popular will and shields against undue power, some critics contended, written consti-tutions were normally the work of small elites—intellectuals, lawyers, unelected judges, career politicians—and, once in exist-

The Scottish government will soon issue a draft inde-pendence bill, and it will include an interim writ-ten constitution. If Scotland becomes independent, this constitution will be modified, amplified and

ultimately ratified by a formal convention in 2016. In a sense, the exact provisions of this document—if it materialises—will be of less immediate significance than the fact of its existence. It would signal Scotland’s difference from the rest of the UK, which lacks a written constitution—and that is, of course, precisely the intention.

The relentless proliferation of written constitutions has been one of the most striking developments in the history of the modern world. The last third of the 18th century witnessed at least two major alterations in the ordering of human soci-ety. The first was a quickening of the pace of industrial produc-tion and knowledge. The second was a wave of revolutions in the Thirteen Colonies, France, Haiti and elsewhere, which—among other things—helped give rise to substantially novel and widely influential constitutiuons.

In 1786, no country on the face of the globe possessed a sin-gle, legal document that it explicitly styled a constitution. But by 1820, and in the wake of the American and French Revolu-tions, continental Europe alone had generated at least 50 writ-ten constitutions. Between 1820 and 1850, over 80 more were drafted, many of them in Latin America.

In the second half of the 19th century, written constitutions spread to some non-western polities, such as Japan; and by the end of the 20th century, these instruments had become almost universal. In 1991, some 170 written constitutions were in exist-ence, of which about 150 had been drafted or revised since 1950.

With only one marked and major exception, no polity has achieved what passes for full democracy without also generating some kind of written constitution. That exception is, of course, the UK, which, since the 1650s, has never possessed a codified constitution. This absence has often worked to reinforce asser-tions of British distinctiveness. Whereas a growing number of states in every continent have, since the 1780s, employed writ-ten constitutions to help invent and publicise an idea of them-selves, in the case of the UK, it has been the lack of a written constitution that has frequently been invoked to distinguish the country from others, and as a way of buttressing, both legally and rhetorically, the political and territorial integrity of the Brit-ish state.

Yet British responses to notions of a written constitution have been more complex, and not as straightforwardly hostile, as this familiar story suggests. To be sure, as constitutions proliferated

Time for a UK constitutionlinda colley

Published in the May 2014 issue of Prospect

PROSPECT 2014 20TIME FOR A UK CONSTITUTION

thought only and unvaryingly in terms of an “unwritten con-stitution.” Indeed, before the 1860s, the phrase would have appeared to some as inappropriate and even incomprehensible. It was only from the 1870s that it steadily became more com-mon at Westminster and in the press. Like much else in the UK, the subsequent more explicit and celebratory cult of Brit-ain’s “unwritten” constitution was something of a late Victorian-invented tradition.

Fourth, there was a growing belief that Britain should write constitutions for its empire. Mounting anxiety from the later 19th century about the security of Britain’s global primacy increasingly gave rise to arguments that it should itself adopt a more proactive, tutelary role in shaping constitutions elsewhere. One reason why Walter Bagehot wrote The English Constitution, first published as a book in 1867, was in order to make the claim that there were elements of the political system here that were not sui generis, but might instead be profitably and easily emu-lated elsewhere. Politicians and polemicists were increasingly aware that great competing powers, especially the USA and a newly-united Germany, were using their respective written con-stitutions as convenient advertisements to the world of their respective governmental systems and ideals, and that Britain—with no such single text at its disposal—needed to find its own ways to compete.

Britain did in fact increasingly influence the constitutional systems of many other countries, in large part—though never entirely—because of the scale of its empire. Because so many of the constitutions that exist now are the result of de-coloni-sation and struggles for self-determination, there is a tendency to view these texts as invariably linked to nation-building and the promotion of democracy. But nationalism and democracy have been only a part of the story. From the late 18th century onwards, written constitutions also served as organising tools for different kinds of overseas and overland empires. Napoleon Bon-aparte, for instance, repeatedly used written constitutions to organise and hold together France’s expanding empire in conti-nental Europe (it had conquered territory in Italy, Holland and Spain); while the most extensively ratified constitution in world history was that promulgated by Joseph Stalin in 1936, which was ratified by over 50m people, and designed in part to cement together and burnish the Soviet empire.

The British, too, always recognised that written constitutions might possess imperial uses. The rate at which constitutions were written by British state actors for different parts of the empire (and occasionally for other territories) quickened from the 1780s, increased sharply after 1840, and reached a climax between the Second World War and the 1970s, when London became increasingly busy drafting constitutions and ultimately bills of rights for British colonies as a prelude to recognising their independence. Already, in 1951, a British lawyer was able to boast that, “there are in all something like 70 separate consti-tutions in the Commonwealth and most of them were made in Britain.” The scale of British constitution writing for one-time colonies increased even faster after this; though it was never confined only to imperial spaces. In the postwar period, British officials were heavily involved in drafting a new German con-stitution, and also had a marked impact on constitutional texts and human rights documents in the United Nations and Coun-cil of Europe.

In reconciling their own overseas exercises in constitu-tional design with the celebration of our “unwritten constitu-

ence, might be difficult for the generality of a country’s people to amend. “The powers of the supreme democratic legislature [of the United Kingdom] are limited by no paper constitution,” boasted a Scottish Liberal journalist in 1884. Since the Westmin-ster parliament was ultimately dependent only on “the voice of the people,” he went on, it was free and obliged to modify Brit-ain’s domestic workings whenever the needs and aspirations of this fast changing society demanded it. Britain’s unwritten—and therefore plastic— constitution, so this kind of argument went, was part of what made it a modern and adaptable state. That view had some merit then—and still does.

Yet, for all this, British responses to written constitu-tions have been neither uniform nor static. In part, this has been due to a spread of information. Made up of words, and easily translated into any written lan-

guage, the new constitutions crossed borders and oceans very easily by way of print, which was a prime reason why they pro-liferated so spectacularly. Given the precocious breadth of Brit-ain’s print networks, its inhabitants were in a privileged position to acquire information about these political innovations from very early on. Just five weeks after the first printed version of the US federal constitution was released on 17th September 1787, for instance, extracts from it were already circulating in most Eng-lish and Scottish newspapers. Subsequent written constitutions from different countries and continents also almost invariably received British press coverage and discussion. When the Lib-eral Prime Minister William Gladstone formulated his “home rule” bills for Ireland in the 1880s and 1890s, he drew not only on federal ideas derived from the US constitution, but also on provisions in the Canadian and Austrian constitutions.

Second, while assertions of Westminster’s sovereignty cer-tainly became increasingly strident, there remained for a long time no consensus even among the elite over exactly what this implied. One eminent early 20th-century Oxford jurist remarked that, as late as the 1880s, educated men in Britain were still “slow to admit… that parliament… has constitution-ally a right to make any new law it pleases, to repeal any law, or to change or abolish any law.”

Third, Britain possessed its own versions of a kind of writ-ten constitutionalism. There was a long tradition of domestic and colonial charters, and there were iconic constitutional texts such as the Bill of Rights, Habeas Corpus Act and the Act of Union with Scotland of 1707, the preamble of which proclaimed it—optimistically—as being “forever after” unalterable, even by Westminster.

Most of all, there was the Magna Carta, the charter sealed by King John at Runnymede in 1215 which required the sovereign to guarantee certain (limited) liberties of the “Freemen of our Realm.” The Magna Carta, wrote one Victorian journalist, was a “sort of written constitution… nothing more than the verbal expression of the most urgent political wants of the age.” Such interpretations seem to have allowed some Britons to view the new written constitutions not as suspect, foreign paper innova-tions, but rather as younger sister texts to Britain’s own consti-tutional canon. Well into the 19th century, books were issued on both sides of the Atlantic combining, within the same set of cov-ers, the texts of the US federal constitution, various continen-tal European constitutions and the text of the Magna Carta, as though these were somehow analogous documents.

It is therefore misleading to assume that Britons in the past

PROSPECT 2014 21TIME FOR A UK CONSTITUTION

respects. The historic and mutually reinforcing combination of busy constitution-writing abroad, with official resistance to con-stitutional activism on the domestic front, has largely ceased to operate. Given waning overseas influence, and its own ever larger, more diverse and increasingly undeferential population, Britain’s constitutional innovations in the future are likely to focus ever more upon the home-front.

Towards the end of my recent book, Acts of Union and Disun-ion, I removed my historian’s hat and listed some constitutional changes and adjustments that it would be useful to consider. I suggested (as many others have done) that it would be desirable to create a new English parliament or assembly, perhaps situ-ated in the north so as to balance somewhat the growing con-centration of power in the south. I argued that, if England did join Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales in gaining its own parliament, then the UK might usefully work out a more explic-itly federal system. The Westminster parliament might remain as an arena for determining major cross-border issues such as foreign policy, defence, macro-economic strategy and climate control, but a great deal of decision making and taxation could be devolved to the four national parliaments and to local and regional authorities. And I proposed that a more federal UK would likely require a written constitution, or at least some new charter of confederation.

I have no great optimism that any of these measures will be implemented. Yet the case for more sustained and well-thought out constitutional change has been strengthening, and not just because of the shifting relations between different parts of the UK. Back in 1952, a British government official felt able to loftily inform a UN committee that, while other nations might require human rights and freedoms to be set down in sacred texts, in the UK “acceptance of the principle of liberty” was so ingrained that “the existence of these rights is taken for granted.” Some of Edward Snowden’s recent revelations about electronic surveil-lance carried out by the British security services only serve to confirm that such a sturdy reliance on tradition and consensus is simply not sufficient.

There may in any case be no choice in the future but to under-take more serious constitutional revisions. If Scotland secedes, it will be a major shock not just to the territorial integrity of the UK, but also to the reputation and confidence of its political order. Even if the union persists in some form, the degree of fur-ther devolution likely to be conceded by Westminster to Scot-land will place additional strains on the workings of the UK and its unwritten constitution, and on the degree to which “ordinary people” are able to understand and support both. Whatever ensues, part of the work of constitutional reform and change in the future should be to encourage a more nuanced and accurate awareness of the British rejection—and occasional embrace—of the notion of a written constitution. Linda Colley is a professor of history at Princeton University

tion” at home, successive British governments were helped by the fact that many—though not all—of the written constitutions for which they were responsible were colonial. As such, these almost invariably contained a focus on the British monarch of the day, and could therefore be distinguished from the explic-itly transformative, often republican written constitutions of which London tended to be critical. Although sometimes more democratic than might be imagined, British colonial constitu-tions also tended to be studiously pragmatic in style and for-mat. High-flown language was abhorred and so, until the 1960s, were bills of rights for colonial subjects. This latter omission was partly prompted by imperial self-interest, but, as a British offi-cial recorded in the 1960s, bills of rights were also viewed as “a feature of the constitutions of continental and other countries.” As this suggests, British officials could be very sensitive to accu-sations that they were in fact manufacturing their own “paper constitutions.” It may be no accident that most British colonial constitutions were inscribed not on paper, but on vellum and parchment, traditional materials that were also organic, made out of goat, calf or sheepskin.

Some argued even more bluntly that it was not inconsistent for Britain to write constitutions for others even though it lacked one itself. On the contrary, they said, this was a demonstration of the country’s political maturity and confident power. Britain was peculiarly equipped to aid those striving countries which needed written constitututions—in part because it required no such aids and contrivances itself. “We in Britain have no constitu-tion of our own,” a British politician told an audience in Malta in the 1960s, after signing off on yet another colonial constitution. “But we have quite a lot of experience of writing constitutions for other people.” The degree to which countries and organisations across the world wanted, or were obliged to allow London to draft constitutions on their behalf, only confirmed, according to this view of things, how privileged and satisfactory the British were in their existing uncodified arrangements at home.

Such attitudes still occasionally crop up among officials in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, in those mar-ble-walled corridors from which Britain ran the empire. Yet, in recent years, more attention in Britain has turned

to the domestic front, even though there has not yet been any attempt at drafting a comprehensive new constitutional settle-ment. A Supreme Court has been created. The 1998 Human Rights Act has—at least for the present—been incorporated into British legal systems. Devolution has been implemented, and will be extended irrespective of the result of the coming Scot-tish referendum. There have been attempts at further reforms of the House of Lords, calls for a new Bill of Rights, and more. These innovations have many causes: but one underlying reason for them may be the contraction of Britain’s capacity to inter-vene across the globe in constitutional terms, as in so many other

PROSPECT 2014 23

and Slovakia, as two separate countries, joined the EU. In 1979, when Greenland achieved home rule from Denmark, which was by then a member of the European Community (the precur-sor of the EU), the 40,000 Greenlanders voted to leave the EC and did so, with metropolitan Denmark negotiating the terms of their departure. No existing member state has split with both parts wanting to stay. The Scots would be breaking new ground, and for many in Brussels the necessary negotiation would be an unwelcome diversion.

For some it would be much worse than that. Governments facing their own breakaway regional or national movements might be tempted to demonstrate that secession isn’t easy, and has costs. Madrid would have the Catalans, and perhaps the Basques, in mind: that is why Spain, like Cyprus, Greece and Romania, has yet to recognise, or permit the EU to recognise, the 10-year independence of Kosovo, the breakaway ex-province of Serbia. In Athens the concern is their Macedonian province; in Nicosia, Turkish Northern Cyprus; and in Bucharest, it is about “greater Hungary” rhetoric in Budapest and its own Hungarian minority. All four countries might similarly view the question of Scotland through their own domestic prism. For Spain the sali-ence of the issue grows with the mounting demand in Barcelona for an independence referendum. Some might try to draw dis-tinctions between Scots and Catalans: unlike the Catalans, the Scots have always kept their own legal system, and, unlike the SNP, Catalans seeking independence do not wish to keep the monarchy. But the plain fact is that Madrid would not welcome the break-up of the United Kingdom, lest the habit catch on, and would not welcome a Scottish seat in the European Council, lest it encourage demand for a Catalan seat. Some Spanish politi-cians have already spoken of vetoing a Scottish accession bid.

And who would be making Scotland’s case in the European Council? At least until 2015, David Cameron. The blame in Brus-sels for UK disintegration would, however unfairly, fall on the government in London, which is already testing EU patience by opposing further integration. In Brussels, the prime minister’s advocacy of “less Europe, not more” seems out of tune with the times. His attempt in 2011 to extract a price for agreeing to the fiscal union, for Eurozone members, which he and his chancellor had insistently demanded, caused bemusement and some resent-ment. And the current Whitehall “audit” of EU powers, as they apply to the UK, is generally interpreted as presaging a second outing for the same strategy, demanding further UK opt-outs, if and when further moves to shore up the euro require amend-ment of the core EU treaty.

The idea that the UK alone should be entitled to renege on

President José Manuel Barroso confirmed at the end of last year that if Scotland won independence from London after a referendum vote for secession, this would mean, ipso facto, that Scotland had left the EU.

This was to the chagrin of Alex Salmond, Scotland’s first min-ister, who has undertaken to hold a referendum on independ-ence in 2014, and who last year assured members of the Scottish Parliament that “oil-rich, gas-rich, energy-rich Scotland, fishing-rich Scotland, will be welcomed with open arms in the Euro-pean Union.” The Scottish National Party (SNP) has implied that Scotland would be automatically an EU member, with Brus-sels simply setting another place at the table. Alas, the process would be much more complex and costly.

Barroso’s news shouldn’t have come as a surprise: the pres-ident of the European Commission was merely repeating the position explained by Romano Prodi, his predecessor. In April 2004, Prodi told the European Parliament that: “When a part of the territory of a member state ceases to be part of that state, for instance because the territory becomes an independent state, the treaties will no longer apply to that territory. In other words, a newly independent region would, by the fact of its independ-ence, become a third country with respect to the Union, and the treaties would, from the date of its independence, not apply any more.”

If the new country wished the EU treaties to apply to it again, he added, there would need to be “a negotiation on an agreement between the applicant state and the member states on the con-ditions of admission and the adjustments to the treaties which such admission entails. This agreement is subject to ratification by all member states and the applicant state.”

So an independent Scotland would need to go through the same accession process as have all but the original six member states, a process which the Croats have just successfully com-pleted, but in which the Turks are bogged down. Readmission would be possible for Scots only when every existing member state had agreed to every detail of the terms. And even then an adverse parliamentary or referendum vote on ratification, in any EU capital, could still sink the ship. No wonder the SNP is in denial.

The prospect is no more appealing seen from Brussels, now preoccupied with the survival of the euro and how best to bal-ance austerity with the encouragement of renewed growth. The last thing anyone there wants is the distraction of a problem without precedent, as this would be. The break-up of Czech-oslovakia took place in 1993, well before the Czech Republic

Don’t count on itJOHN KERR

Published in the February 2013 issue of Prospect

PROSPECT 2014 24DON’T COUNT ON IT

negotiate with other EU member states.More significantly, the treaties now require countries apply-

ing to join the EU to take on a commitment to join the euro when they have passed the economic tests for doing so. Taken at face value, this would demand a currency frontier on the Tweed—between the euro in Scotland, and the pound south of the bor-der. But the Danes and Swedes ignore the requirement to join the euro, retaining their national currencies. In any case, if UK debt were divided pro rata as the Kingdom divided, the share that Scotland inherited would be too big to make the new coun-try, at least initially, eligible to join the euro. Assuming—perhaps rashly—goodwill all round, in Madrid as well, a declaration by Scotland of its intent to give up sterling and switch to the euro at an appropriate moment, undefined, might well be taken as sufficient.

Rather more difficult might be the negotiation between Lon-don and Edinburgh over how to ensure, with a common cur-rency (sterling) but separate economic policies, that they did not repeat the problem in the eurozone that has arisen between Greece and Germany. Would London not insist on some form of fiscal pact, constraining Scottish borrowing, and would Edin-burgh not demand some say in London’s setting of Scotland’s interest rates?

The negotiators would also have to consider the Schengen Agreement, which does away with border checks on travellers between most other member states, but to which the UK has never signed up. But neither has Ireland, which instead main-tains a separate travel area with the UK. If the Scots preferred to follow the Irish precedent, avoiding a physical frontier, with pass-port checks and border guards at Gretna Green, the common sense geographical arguments for doing so might well suffice—particularly if Edinburgh were prepared to signal an intention to come into line with continental member states, and non-EU Schengen members like Norway and Switzerland, as soon as London and Dublin did so. But this would be another issue on which the ill-intentioned could deploy Fabian tactics to slow down or block Scottish accession to the EU; the Scots would in any case need, on joining, to accept the EU provisions on cross-border crime and policing from which the UK in 2012 announced its intention to opt out.

Finally, there is the question of the EU budget. Here it is harder to see a happy outcome for Scotland. The Thatcher rebate, secured by strong arm tactics, repays two-thirds of the difference between the UK’s contribution and the EU’s recipro-cal payments to the UK. Britain has, over time, accepted that the rebate should not apply to that part of the budget which covers expenditure in new, poorer, Central European member states. But the agreement has so far saved the country some £70bn, and means that the UK now contributes some 10 per cent of the total budget. In contrast, the Germans pay 20 per cent, the French and the Italians more than the UK, and the Dutch the most, per person. UK public opinion still thinks that the rebate looks well justified, but everywhere else in Europe it is much resented. Unlike the VAT arrangements, this is a zero sum game: the less Britain pays, the more the rest all must. But what the UK has, it can continue to hold; since the demise of the rebate would require us to vote for its abolition, it survives. It will sur-vive again when the European Council turns again in February to the financing negotiation adjourned in November.

But for an applicant, Scotland, outside and wanting to come in, the requirement for unanimity has the opposite effect. To

existing commitments is not widely welcomed in the rest of Europe. An alternative—that all countries should be able to select their own “pick and mix” package of à la carte member-ship—strikes many as a recipe for unacceptable unravelling of the treaty. It isn’t easy to see how either prescription could achieve the unanimous support necessary for adoption. UK influence in Brussels is shrinking. So, however velvet a Scottish divorce might be, the present government in London is not best placed to help negotiate the EU consequences.

How difficult would the negotiations be? Partly that would be for the Scots to determine. If they recognised that any appli-cant is ill-placed to argue for changes in the club rules, the wis-est course might be to accept, en bloc, all the rules currently applied by the UK.

To seek, from outside the EU, reforms of the Common Agri-culture or Fisheries policies would be unwise, however welcome in Scotland such reforms would be. To argue, from outside, that the EU should allocate to Scotland more structural funds—the funds given to help the development of the poorest parts of the EU—would cut little ice. Scotland’s best tactic, in order to jump the queue of other applicants, would be to emphasise, from before the start, that it sought no changes, merely the reinstate-ment of rights enjoyed and EU obligations accepted when part of the UK. Even those, for example the Spanish, most uneasy about any secession, and so most tempted to cause problems or delay, would find such an approach hard to resist in principle.

Problems could however still arise when the negotiations turned to issues on which the UK, using the power of veto of an existing member state, had secured a special status, as Marga-ret Thatcher did at Fontainebleau in 1984 on the EU budget, and John Major did at Maastricht in 1991 on monetary union. As an outsider, with no veto, Scotland might not find it easy to secure the necessary unanimity among all insiders that such arrange-ments should also apply to a separate new member state.

Thus there would have to be a debate if the Scots were to wish to retain the UK’s hard-won VAT anomalies, such as zero VAT on food and children’s clothes. But it looks a winnable fight, because it would not be a zero sum game. Regular cross-border shop-ping in an independent Scotland by French or Germans would be no more likely than it is now. The actual rates charged in shops in member states bear no relationship to the VAT element in the EU’s central budget income (because the VAT base used for budget purposes is an artificial statistical construct: actual rates vary widely between member states.) For existing member states, if disposed to be kind, there would be no cost. The discus-sion would however create opportunities for the ill-disposed to cause delays.

Conversely, thanks to David Cameron’s 2011 stance on fiscal union, the 2012 Austerity Pact is separate from the EU Treaty, and so will not come up in an accession negotiation. The Scots would be free to choose whether, like all Eurozone members and most non-members (for instance, the Danes, Swedes, and Poles), they wished to accept common fiscal discipline provisions, or stick with the Czechs and the residual UK in rejecting them.

Similarly, Cameron’s 2012 stance on banking union (accepting the European Central Bank as the EU’s supervisory authority, but not for banks based in Britain) may create future difficul-ties for the City of London, but solves a problem for the Scots. Edinburgh would be free to stay out too, with the Scottish banks remaining under London supervision as well as London control. If that was what the Scots wanted, there would be nothing to

PROSPECT 2014 25DON’T COUNT ON IT

tus might be mitigated if the Scots were to choose to apply EU laws autonomously, while waiting. Brussels could, if there were enough goodwill in other capitals, offer some reciprocal transi-tional arrangements: there is no precedent for such a concession, but the situation has never arisen before.

However, the ratification processes, like the prior negotia-tions, could become protracted were they to coincide with an attempt by the London government to secure a wider revision of the EU treaty, or, after a referendum in the residual UK, to initi-ate the procedure for withdrawal from the EU. Other countries might wish to consider a request from Alex Salmond together with any from David Cameron.

This analysis suggests that the Scots, as they approach the referendum debate, would do well to bear in mind above all that independence from the UK means leaving the EU, with no auto-matic return ticket. Negotiating re-entry could take time, with the shadow of Catalonia long over the table. There would be a recurring financial price to pay, in terms of Scotland’s share of the annual EU budget. And finally, if London, in parallel, sought to change the relationship of the remainder of the UK with the EU, that could land the Scots with an extended hiatus.

Scots, especially Alex Salmond, must read the small print closely. They can’t assume it would be easy, or cheap, to re-join the EU.

The fallout from independence: who said what“What I say to Alex Salmond is he in a way wants to have his

cake and eat it. He wants to say, ‘I want to separate from the UK, I want this new future for Scotland’, but on the other hand, he doesn’t want the consequences that flow from that.”

David Cameron, prime minister“If one part of a country—I am not referring now to any spe-

cific one—wants to become an independent state, of course as an independent state it has to apply to the European membership according to the rules—that is obvious.”

José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Union“We do not agree that an independent Scotland will be in the

position of having to reapply for European Union membership, because there is no provision for removing EU treaties from any part of EU territory, or for removing European citizenship from the people of a country which has been in the EU for 40 years.”

Nicola Sturgeon, Scottish deputy first minister“In the hypothetical case of independence, Scotland would

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-didate country.”

José Manuel García-Margallo, Spanish foreign minister“Assuming there is a yes vote as a result of the referendum,

Scotland will still be at that stage a part of the UK. What we have always accepted is there has to be a negotiation about the details and the terms of Scotland’s membership of the EU. Cru-cially, that would take place at a time when we are still part of the UK, and still part of the EU of which we have been members for 40 years.”

John Swinney, SNP finance secretary“They seem to be saying Scotland can vote to be independent

and not be independent—it’s a ridiculous argument. It is time for the SNP to be straightforward about what independence means.”Danny Alexander, chief secretary to the TreasuryJohn Kerr is the former permanent secretary of the Foreign and Com-monwealth Office

secure a Thatcher rebate for Scotland, the Scottish government would have to convince the governments of every other member state, and their parliaments and voters, many much less rich in per capita terms than Scotland, that the Scots should not have to pay the normal membership fee. That is a Herculean diplo-matic task.

So we should assume that an independent Scotland, like the UK now, would be a substantial net contributor (one of about a dozen) to the EU budget; and that, with no rebate, each Scot would pay considerably more than each Englishman.

To put numbers to these propositions is not currently possi-ble. The sums would depend principally on the size of the EU budget for the next seven year period, the formula for calculating each country’s contribution, and the distribution of expenditure between agriculture, regional development, and other projects over that period.

Standing back from these individual hurdles, my overall assessment is that Scottish negotiations to join the EU need not be particularly complex, and they would cover far less ground than the standard process for the accession of a territory which had not formerly been part of an EU member state. But the pro-cedure would still provide ample scope for trouble-making by those governments concerned about secessionist movements in their own countries. It could therefore prove protracted. If Scot-land adopted a practical approach, recognising the weak hand that any applicant has to play, that would maximise its chances of finding a relatively speedy way through. But there would cer-tainly be a budget price to pay.

When would these issues be tackled? For Scotland, there is a further problem of the sequence.

Pre-referendumBrussels will not wish to address such questions while they remain hypothetical, so Scotland will not be able to begin nego-tiations before the referendum. Nor could much be achieved now by discussions with other national governments individually. It would be naïve, for example, for the SNP to seek assurances of full co-operation from those in Spain, who have the greatest interest in the Scottish debate: they have their own fish to fry. Even the London government, whose voice in a Brussels debate on a Scottish accession bid would be significant, might be reluc-tant to give binding assurances before a referendum.

Post-referendum, pre-secession from the UKIt might well be possible, and would certainly be desirable, to get informal exploratory talks started after a referendum vote for independence but before actual secession took place. If all other member states were prepared to co-operate, much of the groundwork could be done in this way. But formally Scotland would have to be a state before it could accede, and the terms of its disengagement from the UK would have a critical bearing on some aspects of the accession discussions.

Post-secession, pre-accessionThe final formalities can take time: Croatia’s accession negotia-tion was successfully completed in June 2011, but it is not due to join until this July. Timing of national ratifications is entirely a matter for individual member states (the Croatia Bill is now in the House of Lords). The practical problems of an extended hia-

PROSPECT 2014 27

est university, St Andrews. These days, Campbell divides his time between his family home in Edinburgh, his North East Fife constituency and his London flat, which he feels gives him a unique perspective on the independence debate.

“I believe the right thing for Scots to do is vote No, and I believe that will be the outcome. My view is that it will be resolved in the peripheral housing estates of Glasgow, Edin-burgh, Dundee, and Aberdeen. In spite of the best efforts of Westminster, and indeed the Scottish parliament, there’s a dis-tinct lack of opportunity for many in those areas. These are natural Labour constituencies. It took a while, but it seems that the Labour party has woken up to this and is now full throttle behind Better Together, or No Thanks as it’s now known. I think that has helped spark a perceptible, but not enormous, increase in the support for the No vote which is reflected in the polls.”

With support for the Yes vote apparently in decline, (the latest YouGov poll puts it at 35 per cent, and the No vote at 54 per cent), now seems an opportune moment for Campbell, as the chair of the Home Rule Commission, to advocate for a fed-eral alternative.

“The Liberal Democrats were the first to embrace feder-alism as a viable solution. Others are now following suit, for example Gordon Brown’s latest pronouncements indicate that he has turned into a federalist. We welcome all converts. In the first report on Home Rule that I delivered in October 2012, I laid out the case for a federal relationship between Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom. All three parties have now signed up to the idea that Scotland will get more powers, signed up to it in blood it seems. And I believe it will spread around the country. In England, for example support for UKIP is based upon some sense of national identity, which may even-tually manifest itself in a desire for a devolved government. It’s no longer just about the West Lothian question, it’s also the West Belfast and the West Wales question.”

Campbell is confident that the Scottish independence debate has altered attitudes towards devolution, although he admits that previous failed proposals such as John Prescott’s North East assembly have not exactly helped the cause. His conviction that this is the only logical constitutional path for the country is unwavering, and his arguments, at times, per-suasive. It seems fitting that at the end of a long and success-ful career spanning 28 years (“I was only going to do a couple of parliaments and then go back to the bar but somehow it got in my blood”), Campbell is finally getting to focus on what is clearly a pet project. At one point he jumps up and dashes off to get me copies of the Campbell 1 and 2 reports, despite my

“Menzies Campbell is one of the nicest men in politics,” said a Prospect col-league, as I set off to meet the for-mer Liberal Democrat leader and retired athlete to hear his answer to

the Scottish independence question. But, when I finally make it through the airport-style security, there is no trace of the man who some say could save the union. It seems Sir Menzies has stood me up.

A passionate advocate of federalism, Campbell has spent the past two years espousing a positive solution to the Scot-tish question. His most recent report on devolution, Campbell 2 (which could be the name of a spaceship), was published in March and contains a grounding alternative vision for the UK’s future. Think of it as living “apart together”. Despite announc-ing last November that he will retire from political life at the next general election (which could result in a damaging loss for the Lib Dems in his North East Fife seat), Campbell’s energy shows no signs of abating. Which makes his no-show even more surprising.

I’m back in Westminster the next morning, after several apologetic emails. With his lengthy frame clad in navy chinos, blue shirt and tie, Campbell looks more like a dapper, retired athlete than an ageing politico. All that’s missing is the Pan-ama hat. This is possibly due to the fact that “Minger” was once a leading British sprinter who broke the British 100m record in 1967, earning him the nickname “the fastest white man in Britain.” I try to ignore the Chariots of Fire theme tune that’s buzzing around my head and focus on Campbell’s vision for the future of his homeland.

“The voter turnout for this referendum on 18th September is likely to be higher than for next year’s General Election,” says Campbell as I settle into an armchair and take in the view of Westminster spires through his window. “The question of Scotland’s place in the kingdom has been on the agenda since long before Alex Salmond’s SNP won a majority in the Scottish parliament in 2011. It even predates the 1979 referendum on devolution, as the SNP won, and then promptly lost, 11 seats in 1974. It’s time we settled it because it’s clouding people’s per-ception of Scotland,” he says.

Born in Glasgow in 1941, Campbell is the epitome of the proud Scotsman. Yes, the accent has softened, but this is a man who was born in Scotland, who went to school and university in Scotland, married a Scot (the glamorous Lady Elspeth who many credit with persuading him to run for party leader in 2006), qualified in and practiced law in Scotland, represents a Scottish constituency and is the chancellor of Scotland’s old-

The man who could save the unionserena kutchinsky

Published via the Prospect website, 4th July 2014

PROSPECT 2014 28THE MAN WHO COULD SAVE THE UNION

you will not be favoured. A friend of mine told me in confi-dence that the Scottish First Minister called him and spent 50 minutes on the telephone.”

Does he think that nationalism is still a growing force in Scotland, or would a No vote wipe it out? The Scottish gov-ernment has lowered the voting age in the referendum to 16, but says Campbell this is a ploy which could backfire against the SNP. “Schools in Aberdeenshire [which is historically an SNP heartland] staged a recent ballot and the result among 15 to 17 year olds was 75 per cent voting No and 25 per cent voting Yes. My slightly romantic view is that these children of the digital age are citizens of the world and don’t define them-selves by nationality in the way that older people have been inclined to do.”

As our conversation is briefly disrupted by the ringing of the division bell, which calls MPs to vote, my eyes fall on a framed photograph of Campbell with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge [who met at the

university of which he is now Chancellor] proudly displayed over his desk. On another shelf is another snap of Campbell shaking hands with the King of Jordan. With rumours swirl-ing of a republican plot to ditch the Queen in the wake of a Yes vote, this photographic evidence would suggest that Campbell is something of a royalist. Is that the case? “On the monarchy, I’m a pragmatist,” he says wryly. “I think the current system of a constitutional monarchy is better than anything else. The left-wing factions within the SNP would want rid of the Queen if the vote is Yes. There is quite a strong element of republican-ism in the SNP, one or two of its prominent members have pre-viously declared themselves as anti-monarchists.”

Campbell’s surprising vigour is beginning to wane ever so slightly as we reach the end of our allocated time. He may have decided to step down from political life voluntarily but what does he think the future holds for the two key party leaders on either side, Mssrs Cameron and Salmond, if the vote goes against them?

“Cameron won’t resign if there is a Yes vote. He will say that the people have spoken, and then he could run a General Election campaign focused on England, which would satisfy quite a few of his backbenchers. As for Salmond, neither he nor the SNP will give up the cause if the No camp triumphs. If they lose there will inevitably be a period of reflection within the SNP, from which Salmond will still emerge as leader. Although, he is likely to encounter resistance from the funda-mentalists in the SNP who will argue they lost because they weren’t nationalist enough. The SNP might not end up with independence but they will seek to maintain the trappings of it—for them the argument will not be over.”

So, does Campbell’s federalist vision hold the key to a peace-ful future for the United Kingdom, or is just a fantasy? As he predicted, noises are finally being made in favour of increased devolution, as the Strathclyde report delivered in June by the Conservatives indicates. Described by David Cameron as a “thoroughly Conservative vision” for greater devolution, the report includes a promise to pass all income tax powers to the Scottish parliament, as well as giving it additional powers over VAT and welfare. Labour’s vision, unveiled in March, is less dramatic but still promises greater tax powers for the Scot-tish parliament and a pledge to abolish the “bedroom tax” in Scotland. But it all feels too little, too late and as party politi-

protestation that I had already read them online. His pride in this work is clear to see.

“It’s my view that the present constitutional arrangements in the United Kingdom are not sustainable, and that the pro-cess of change will start with Scotland developing a federal relationship with the rest of the UK. You could argue that “devo max” [which would see the Scottish Parliament running everything apart from defence and foreign affairs] comes very close to that. I think the argument against putting devo-max on the ballot paper as an option in this referendum was that if support for independence went down, while support for devo-max went up, then the SNP could still claim a victory of sorts. Mr Salmond is an agile enough politician to capitalise on that opportunity and that would mean the independence question was still live.”

The most headline-grabbing element of the Campbell 2 proposal was a call for a cross-party summit 30 days after the vote, to “secure a consensus for further extension of powers to the Scottish Parliament consistent with continued mem-bership of the United Kingdom.” He also calls for these plans to be included in each party’s election manifesto—the prom-ise of which could potentially dampen the nationalist threat. While Campbell and his party are certainly committed to this, can the same be said of their more powerful allies in Better Together? “No one has actually said yes to me,” he says cheer-fully “Maybe they don’t want to appear arrogant. But, I would be absolutely astonished if after a no vote, the three main UK parties do not come to an agreement.”

Any solution that is forged on this highly emotive issue, can’t be purely political—the fault line it has exposed among families, friends and colleagues runs deep. A recent poll revealed that nearly half (42 per cent) of all Scottish families are divided on whether the country should become independ-ent. ”It’s inevitably been divisive. No one should run away from that and those divisions will still exist afterwards, “ acknowl-edges Campbell. “The main parties have a responsibility to try and ensure that whatever the result is that they make it work. Online abuse is a large part of the problem. Although Better Together supporters write blogs and dish out abuse, the strength of the vitriol from the Cybernats [online support-ers of Scottish nationalism] is of an entirely different nature. There is an SNP MSP who attacked the leadership of the Scot-tish Liberal Democrat and Labour parties saying those that opposed independence are ‘anti-Scottish’.

Campbell’s disdain for the SNP and its leader’s bullying tac-tics is clear throughout our conversation. He claims that the discipline within Salmond’s party is so “ferocious” that MSPs dare not vote against the party line even when it goes against the interests of their constituents. The example he gives is of the SNP MSP for Campbell’s own Westminster constituency who initially came out against the proposal to close the local sheriff court but then voted to do so.

Campbell’s indignation at this political opportunism dom-inates the next 15 minutes of our conversation, and leads him on to imply that the SNP are trying to exert influence over Scotland’s business leaders. “There’s a lot of bullying and intimidation that goes on. Now, it’s starting to surface that some prominent businessmen have been subject to subtle warnings along the lines of there will be a lot of contracts [up for grabs] after independence—the clear implication being if you’re someone who speaks out against the Yes campaign, then

PROSPECT 2014 29THE MAN WHO COULD SAVE THE UNION

image creditsp3 Scottish first minister Alex Salmond: © Getty Imagesp7 A Yes campaign poster in Glasgow: © Getty Imagesp11 The Union Jack projected onto Parliament: ©London News Pictures/Rexp17 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 Commonsp26 Supporters rally for Scottish independence in Edinburgh:

© Andrew Milligan/PA Archive/Press Association Images

© Prospect Publishing Limited 2014