For nearly three hundred years Scotland was quite
happy to be part of the UK. The rise of the SNP happened for two reasons. One
was Conservative rule in the 1980s, which Scots resented because we voted
Labour. The other was the Scottish Parliament, which was both a response to Thatcherism
and enabled the SNP to gain power in a way that would have been impossible before.
But Scotland was never different enough from the other parts of the UK for
Scottish independence to succeed. To choose to separate and partition a
relatively small island where people are more or less the same always looked
like an exaggeration and so it has proved.
Independence movements need a deep reason to succeed
for it is natural for nation states not to split. These deep reasons may be
that the people in one part of a nation state find themselves to be
religiously, culturally, geographically or linguistically distinct from their
fellow citizens.
It was natural for the USA to seek independence
because there was the Atlantic Ocean between Britain and America. The same applies
to Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
People in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia sought
independence from the Soviet Union because they viewed themselves as
fundamentally different peoples from Russians. But where is the same sort of
difference between Scots and English people?
If you have lived in both England and Scotland, you
will find life in each remarkably similar. Moving to England is not remotely
like moving to Denmark, or France. There is no culture shock. There is no need
to adapt to a different culture and language.
Scotland was very different from England in the
eighteenth century. Our form of Presbyterianism was rather different from the Church
of England. People still spoke Scots in the lowlands and Gaelic in the
Highlands. The Scots spoken by Robbie Burns or Walter Scott was at least as
different from English as Dutch from German or Czech from Polish. But since
then both Scots and Gaelic have declined.
Now Gaelic is spoken as a native language by a tiny
number of people in the Skye and the Outer Hebrides. Scots as a distinct
language has ceased to exist. There is a Scottish accent and there are some
different words, but very few Scots speak anything other than English with a slightly
different pronunciation and a few Scots words added at times for flavour.
I grew up speaking Aberdeenshire Scots or Doric, but
my vocabulary was always limited. If I learn Polish, I can speak about anything
in Polish as I have the grammar and the vocabulary to do so. But I run out of
Scots vocabulary very quickly and if I find myself needing to give a talk about
physics or mathematics, I find myself reliant on English vocabulary and try desperately
to find a Scottish pronunciation and spelling of these English words which is
quite inauthentic. To suppose that modern Scottish people actually speak Scots
is to show a lack of knowledge of actually speaking a foreign language. It is a
wholly different experience involving learning thousands of words and a
distinct grammar.
The rest of the Scottish culture that Scottish nationalists
rely on to create a distinction where there is no real difference is to rely on
things like playing bagpipes, wearing kilts and a selective view of history
that has nothing much to do with modern Scotland. People in ordinary life do
not usually wear kilts or play bagpipes. The history they rely on to demand
secession from England is far more remote to Scots than England is.
We would struggle to communicate with the people who
fought at Culloden let alone those who fought at Bannockburn and would find
their views on almost everything quite alien.
Scottish nationalism desperately tried to create a difference
by means of Gaelic road signs, perverse attempts to speak Scots at Holyrood and
marches involving dressing up in costumes from the past. But it is precisely
this that meant the SNP was unable to properly speak to Scots living now.
Sometimes a political difference can divide a
population so much that they seek independence. A good example is the southern
states in the USA who universally did not vote for Lincoln in the 1860
presidential election. After several decades the USA was unable to solve its
political differences democratically and so fought a war of secession.
But the differences here were quite momentous and the
experience of living in the Confederacy was quite different from living in the North.
The issues that divided them including states’ rights and ultimately slavery could
not be reconciled democratically because the majority in the South had one
view, the majority in the North another and so it came to war. But we can see
that from the perspective of the southern states secession was justified even
if the attempt to retain slavery clearly was not.
But where is a similar difference between Scotland and
England? Thatcher ruled while Scotland went through a period of
deindustrialisation, but this happened also in the north of England, Wales and
Northern Ireland. Scottish voters chose Labour while English votes chose
Thatcher in the 1980s, but this was a temporary difference and is a feature of
all democracies.
It’s only on the assumption that Scotland is already
independent that it can be viewed as unfair if Scotland is outvoted in a UK General
Election. No one thinks that it is unfair if California votes Democrat but gets
Donald Trump as president. To suppose that it is to make democracy impossible or
to treat Scottish votes as more important than a similar number of votes in
another part of the UK.
Likewise, the argument that Scotland was taken out of
the EU against its will is to assume that Scotland joined the EU. But we didn’t.
The UK as a whole joined because of voters everywhere. It took a majority of UK
voters to join, and it took a majority of UK voters to leave. Scottish voters individually
had as much say in the decision both to join and to leave as everyone else.
Again, it is only on the assumption that Scotland was
already independent that it could be considered unfair as if the Netherlands
voting to leave the EU dragged Luxembourg out. But Scotland is not Luxembourg.
It is not a sovereign nation state, and it was never a member state of the EU
either.
Scotland could reasonably complain of a lack of
democracy if we did not have free and fair elections, or we elected fewer MPs
per population than England does. But we don’t. We have just the same amount of
democracy as people in a part of England with five million people. We have just
the same number of MPs we have just the same chance to influence political
decisions. Our five million will naturally be outnumbered by 10 million
elsewhere, but the same could be said for any grouping of voters in the UK. It
is not unfair if parts of the UK that vote Conservative are outnumbered by
other parts that vote Labour. That’s how democracy works.
The failure of Scottish nationalism and the SNP also
is due to independence being an exaggerated response both to differences
between England and Scotland that are largely manufactured, and which simply do
not fit in with our lived experience. We do not view English people as foreigners
because they are too similar.
Humza Yousaf may argue that it is hard to think of
someone more Scottish than he is. He was born in Scotland. He was educated in
Scotland. But Humza Yousaf is far more similar to Sadiq Khan and far more
different from me than I am from the average person who happens to live in
England Wales or Northern Ireland. Where are the grounds for separation if one
person’s family chose to migrate to London while another’s chose to migrate to
Glasow. To suppose that they can’t bear living in the same country because of
the one’s Scottishness, and the other’s Englishness is to beg the question how people
who are dissimilar can manage to form the population of one country? But if
Scots can’t manage to live in the same country as English people, how are we
all going to manage to live with people whose origins are from the whole world
and who have when they arrive nothing whatsoever in common with the people here
already including a shared language?
The idea that anyone just by arriving in Scotland
could immediately and automatically be as Scottish as any of its previous inhabitants
was both necessary for Scottish nationalism to remain respectable, but also
fatally undermined the argument. If Scottishness is such that it can be put on like
a new coat, then where is the need to separate? What indeed is the reason to
treat Scots both as a separate people whose votes must be counted separately
and where they live as a separate country? Civic nationalism thus either
collapses into ethnic nationalism with kilts and bagpipes or else it ceases to
have any reason for that nationalism and collapses into nothing.
The political issues in the UK including Thatcherism have
been resolved successfully politically. If you want to get rid of Thatcherism
you don’t need to vote for independence you just need to vote for Labour. So too
far more English people were disappointed by leaving the EU than Scots and if
sufficient number wish to rejoin the EU, we will do that.
Scottish nationalism looks back to times when Scots and
English people genuinely were different to the extent that we played different
musical instruments, spoke different languages and worshipped at different
churches. But we do none of these things now. If you go to work or walk down
the street in Scotland the clothes, we wear the culture we have and the language
we speak are almost identical to anywhere in England. Scots can move to England
and immediately fit in and vice versa.
The vote for independence was always unwarranted. It
was an exaggeration based on a view of Scotland that is itself an exaggeration.
Scotland was a separate country long ago, but it is not one now. The SNP had to
assume Scottish independence in order to prove it otherwise there was no reason
to complain about Scotland being outvoted.
But this view of the UK as a sort of mini EU confederation
made up of separate states failed as a justification for independence because
you cannot become independent when you already are. It undermined both the need
and the desire for independence. Why go to all that trouble just to become to
become independent if you think you are that already? The SNP therefore fatally
undermined its own argument.
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