I'm honestly not sure who will win the independence referendum. I follow polling and the
odds that bookmakers give, but it is perfectly possible that they have made
some huge systematic error. We’ve never
had an election like this before. Therefore I will continue to have doubts
about whether my side will win right up until the final count. It’s always best
anyway to suppose that your opponent has a good chance of winning. Aesop showed
us this in his tale of the Hare and the Tortoise. Nationalists keep telling me
that their canvassing shows that they are leading. I suspect that such
canvassing has a certain inherent bias, but perhaps they are right, perhaps
they are going to win. Anyway it is best for us to continue to worry and
campaign as if they might. What would happen if they did?
There are
two competing visions of what would happen after a Yes vote. These visions are
to a large extent governed by our political persuasions. The trouble with
politics is that it is rather like two lawyers in a court case. Each lawyer is
trying to persuade a jury. But the ability to persuade is not necessarily
related to truth. The innocent are often convicted, the guilty often go free.
In any political campaign one party attempts to point out that everything would
be so much better if we won and so much worse if the other side won. Thus likewise
in the independence referendum the Yes camp attempts to point out the
advantages of independence versus the disadvantages of remaining in the UK, the
No camp does the reverse. Both sides are equally positive and negative. Sometimes
both sides tend to exaggerate. All politicians in the end are about as
trustworthy as lawyers. Sensible voters try to see through the spin.
There’s a
tendency among nationalists to portray Westminster [i.e. whisper it softly
English] politicians as uniquely dishonest. Until the independence referendum I’d never heard of the McCrone
report or Alec Douglas Home’s apparent cheating of Scotland in 1979. But I find that the nationalists have been “nursing
their wrath to keep it warm” all these years. At the same time if I point out
aspects of their history that they would rather forget, they ask what relevance
does this have to the referendum today. We know that Mr Salmond spent a large
sum of public money in order to keep secret non-existent legal advice on the EU
and Mr Swinney misrepresented or rather made up non-existent negotiations with
the Bank of England about a currency union. So let’s admit that both Scottish
and English politicians sometimes lie and in their attempts to persuade, just
like lawyers, sometimes depart from the truth. Sensible voters try to see
through these people and reach the truth for themselves.
Most
nationalists want independence come what may. They are like the lawyer who
wants to convict or acquit his client. There is nothing I can do to persuade a
committed nationalist, because he would want independence even if it would make
us poorer. But the task is to persuade the jury that Scotland would be richer. That’s
what he would say even if he knew that it was not going to be the case. When
someone is clearly desperate to persuade, it’s always worth remembering that he
will try to come up with any apparently persuasive argument in order to win his
case.
But would
Scotland be richer? I honestly don’t know for sure. I believe that Scotland
neither subsidises the other parts of the UK nor do we receive a subsidy. Of
course this varies from year to year, but we come out of the arrangement about
equal. How things would go with independence crucially depends on things we don’t
know. In order to continue breaking even, we would need the arrangements that
we have right now to continue much as they do. We would thus need a currency
union, sterlingisation would leave us worse off, perhaps much worse off, we
would need the UK single market not to be disrupted, we would need the EU single
market not to be damaged and for us to have continued access to it and we would
need negotiations with the UK after a Yes vote to be harmonious. If any one of
these things did not happen independence would be liable to leave us worse off.
Independence
is clearly possible. If countries like Latvia can become independent Scotland obviously could also. But most Scots probably haven’t talked with Latvians about
how independence went. If they did, they’d find out that independence was a bit
of a struggle and that the struggle continues today. I’d have an awful lot more
respect for Scottish nationalists if they were similarly honest and simply said
independence would mean we’d have some difficult, uncertain times ahead, but in
the end it would be worth it. I might not agree, but I’d respect the position.
So how would
things go after a Yes vote? The SNP position with regard to the crucial issues
of currency union and EU membership is that everyone else is lying but us.
Again this is like in the trial; the lawyer is trying to persuade the jury that
the defendant is lying, not because he necessarily thinks that he is lying, but
because he needs to say this in order to persuade the jury. The biggest problem
with this argument though, is that politicians depend on public opinion. It’s
just about possible to maintain that the wicked English are attempting to con
the Scottish public again, that after a Yes vote they would announce solemnly
that they were kidding us. It’s just about possible that years later we’d find
secret documents showing how they'd set out to trick the Scots. I can see the
appeal of this to someone who is rather paranoid and who doesn’t much care for
the English anyway. But English public opinion is overwhelmingly opposed to a
currency union. They are not going to vote for a politician who suddenly
changes his mind after a Yes vote and says we just said it to con the Scots.
I hope that
if Scotland votes Yes that the UK and Scotland would remain on good terms. It’s
in the interest of both sides to do so. But there is much uncertainty about how
the negotiations would go. Threats have been made and it looks as if UK
public opinion is minded to drive a hard bargain if we choose to leave the
marriage. The problem for Scottish nationalists is that nationalism begets
nationalism. The EU does not want to see a new wave of nationalism spreading
from Scotland to the continent. Places like Spain have been democracies for a
relatively short space of time and do not need secession movements to add to
what is at present an economic catastrophe. Closer to home there are signs that
Scottish independence might encourage English nationalism. If England became
independent, Wales and Northern Ireland would have to cut public spending by
around 35% in order to break even. That would be some legacy for all those
supposedly left-wing independence supporters, who have no sense of solidarity
with their fellow citizens of 300 years.
The future
is uncertain. But we know that Mr Salmond’s independence plans depend crucially
on the cooperation of others especially the UK and the EU. Failure to obtain
that cooperation would for a number of years put Scotland in the position of
facing a struggle, as is common when countries become independent. We’d
probably have to tighten our belts and face some difficult years. It’s possible
of course that everything after a Yes vote would turn out as Mr Salmond
promises. Everyone else may be lying. But remember he is just like the lawyer.
He doesn’t have to believe it himself, he just has to try to persuade the jury. i.e.
us.
