The 9th circle

When Theresa May returned to Britain after being humiliated in Salzburg she made a defiant speech where she maintained that she would stand up for Britain and that on certain issues she would not bend.

 She rejected outright that the UK would remain in the European Economic Area (EEA) and Customs Union.

She rejected outright that Britain would be given a free trade agreement but that Northern Ireland would be forced to remain in the Customs Union with in effect a border down the Irish Sea separating the United Kingdom.  

Like many other people I applauded the speech Theresa May made on the 21^st of September. My only caveat was that I was unsure that she meant what she said.

The trouble is that since becoming Prime Minister Theresa May has said rather a lot of things and later we have learned that she didn’t mean what she said. She kept saying “Brexit means Brexit”, which must mean that Brexit will be real rather than fake.

In her Lancaster House speech of 17^th January 2017 she made clear that the UK would leave both the EU’s Custom’s Union and Single Market. The reason for this is that all of the advantages of Brexit depend on us doing so. These points were reiterated in the Conservative Party Manifesto later in 2017.

But the promises Theresa May made ended up with Chequers. This amounted to promising while crossing her fingers. While under the Chequers proposal the UK would technically leave the Customs Union and Single Market we would have had to mimic both of them. Most of the potential Brexit benefits would once more be slipping through our fingers.  

My one fear was that the EU would accept Chequers, but they rejected it, or at least that was the appearance. Theresa May stood up like some latter day Boadicea and said that she wouldn’t budge.

“Here I stand”, she said, “I can do no other, God help me.”

Metaphorically she said “We will fight them on the beaches”

When leaders make speeches like that it is the duty of citizens to be moved and to rally round.

When Churchill made the speeches he made in 1940, it didn’t matter if you were a Labour supporter, a Liberal or a Tory. Here was our leader at a time of national emergency inspiring us. It was time to put aside party squabbles and come together as one. Everyone apart from a few fascists and Scottish nationalists did just that.

But what would we think of Churchill today if he had told us “We will fight them on the beaches” only to surrender a couple of weeks later?

A leader simply cannot make a speech like Theresa May did in September and then back down. It not only makes them look ridiculous it makes them look cowardly. It’s a betrayal of everyone who listened to the speech and believed her.

The trouble is that Dante is quite right to put those who commit acts of betrayal right in the innermost (9^th) circle of Hell.

We must wait and see. Perhaps the EU will reject Theresa May’s plans once more. Perhaps somehow by means of Parliament or by some other means we will end up with a full complete Brexit. But the signs are not looking so good.

The Democratic Unionists are threatening to withdraw support from the Government. It is disgraceful that it has reached the point where they feel the need to do so.

The EU with the connivance of the Republic of Ireland is attempting to in effect annex a part of the United Kingdom. This is the sort of thing you go to war to prevent. Defending our territory from foreign powers is the main reason we have armed forces.

Perhaps the DUP have misunderstood, perhaps they can be bought off, but let’s hope not, there’s a special place in hell too for people who take pieces of silver.

Nothing that might happen in March if there is “no deal” can be worse for our country that betrayal.

We might have a recession if we leave the EU without a deal. It would be worth it. We might have some queues at Dover and the EU might make it a little more difficult for us to go on holiday. It would be worth it. We should be willing to accept almost anything that might happen in order to avoid our Prime Minister breaking her promise to the nation and surrendering. If that happens then Theresa May will have damaged her country more than any Prime Minister in history. She will have betrayed us. She will deserve her place in history. It will be in the innermost circle.

SNP threats over #Brexit are empty

William Hague has recently stated that although he dislikes much about the EU, he will be voting to remain. His arguments amount to the following. He thinks that we have to be in the single market to shape and benefit from it. He thinks that the EU despite its faults helps other countries to become and remain democracies. It is therefore, he thinks, not in the interest of the UK to weaken the EU and add further uncertainty into an already uncertain world. He furthermore thinks that the UK voting to leave the EU may lead to the breakup of the UK itself by encouraging the SNP to have another referendum.

The first thing to realise about the EU single market is that you don’t need to be in the EU to have access to it. There are presently four countries that have this access without being members of the EU. The idea that Britain would not have access if we leave is therefore strange. It’s in no-one’s interest to erect barriers to free trade. Everyone would lose out. It’s in no-one’s interest either to prevent free movement of labour. Imagine if suddenly the EU said that Brits could not live and work in Poland. Well this would affect few of us. I imagine some English language teachers might have to leave Warsaw. But we’d probably be able to survive that. On the other hand if Britain said that Poles no longer had the right to live and work in the UK, this would have rather more severe consequences, both for Poles and the UK economy. Far more Europeans want to live and work in the UK than the other way round. So the likelihood of Brits not being allowed to live and work in the EU after Brexit must be vanishingly small. This is not least because there is no reason to discriminate against Britain when the Swiss have access to the single market and can live and work anywhere in the EU they please. Of course, the EU could decide to take revenge on Britain for leaving. But really the UK and the EU have things that we want from each other, each side would lose out if we started playing tit for tat. This then would form the basis for a deal.

I think Mr Hague is really worried about not being able to shape the EU single market. Whenever there is a summit, he or his friends and colleagues would not be there. That’s tough for them, but I’m not sure it’s of much interest to the average Brit. The truth of the matter is that we have almost no influence as it is. Mr Cameron went to the EU with a list of reforms and has pretty much found them all rejected. There no doubt will be some token gestures, but nothing fundamental. We have minimal influence on the EU for a simple reason. We chose some time ago not to take part in the two key EU projects which would they hope lead to ever closer union. We decided not to join the Euro and we decided not to join the Schengen zone of passport free travel. The reality is that we are not going to shape the single market whether we are in or out of the EU. We are not going to shape anything much as we ceased being a core EU member long ago.

Would Britain leaving the EU damage the EU? The EU has had a pretty rough few years. The economies of the southern European states are in terrible trouble. The Euro far from fulfilling the dreams of its founders has turned into a recession machine. On top of that we have had a crisis in the Schengen zone, with members erecting barriers to prevent migration from outside the EU. Britain leaving the EU would certainly be a blow. We might well set an example to other countries to do likewise. But here’s the thing. If the UK left the EU, we would become once more a fully sovereign state. The UK Parliament would no longer be trumped by anyone else. Our MPs would be the final arbiter of our laws and we would be able to kick them out if we disagreed with them. The fundamental problem with the EU is that we are ruled by people we cannot kick out. We didn’t elect Mr Juncker and we can’t get rid of him. We don’t elect the European Commission. Its members are appointed. No one can kick them out. This is not much of an example of democracy for countries moving towards this path. A fully democratic UK with as much sovereignty as the USA would provide a far better example of democracy. The USA would not allow a foreign court to tell its parliament or its president what to do. Canadians wouldn’t allow this, nor would the Japanese. Each of these countries functions perfectly well without being ruled by a supra-national body. They have free trade and good relations with their neighbours. They are all better examples of democracy than the EU.

For years people have been predicting the breakup of the EU. Whenever there is another crisis in the Eurozone we wait with anticipation for Greece to get kicked out and for the whole house of cards to come tumbling down. If it was going to happen, it would have happened already. The EU and the Eurozone is for life, not just for Christmas.

But the EU is going to change, no matter what the UK decides. There are going to be different classes of membership of the EU. There is going to be the core group of Eurozone members and then there are going to be the rest of us. The latter could even be called associate members and may well include those non-EU members of the single market and Schengen zone. There are going to be different rules according to these factors. Is a country a member of the Eurozone and Schengen? This puts it in the core. Is a country only a member of Schengen? This puts it in the associate members. Is a country neither a member of Schengen nor the Eurozone? This frankly makes it less of a member of the EU even than Switzerland.

The core EU countries are going to move towards ever closer union. The end point of this will be some sort of federal United States of Europe. But however we vote in an EU referendum, we won’t be part of this, not unless we choose to join the Euro and Schengen. Whatever happens we will end up an associate member like Switzerland and any other EU country that decides it doesn’t fancy joining the Euro or Schengen. In one sense, therefore we will leave the EU, no matter what which way we vote.  We’ll be like Switzerland, Norway, Iceland et al, or rather we’ll be less full members of the EU even than they, for they after all are part of Schengen. The reality is that we are this already.  In another sense we’ll remain in the EU whichever way we vote. We’ll keep some aspects of the EU, such as the single market and the rules that go with it and we’ll keep free movement of people, perhaps with some slight modifications. We’ll keep these things no matter what, not least because there isn’t a single country in Western Europe that doesn’t have them. Alternatively you can believe that voting to leave the EU casts the UK into outer darkness.

The issue then is how we get to this associate member status. This could also be described as how do we get to where we in fact are. Do we get there by a process of negotiation or do we get there by being told what the nature of our associate membership will be. If we vote to leave the EU, the end point will be some sort of associate membership the terms of which will be determined by negotiation. The only way to get any sort of renegotiation on the terms of EU membership is to ask to leave. Anyone who doubts this should read the Lisbon Treaty. Only when a country asks to leave the EU can negotiations even begin. Until then it’s just a lot of fluff as Mr Cameron is finding out.

So if we vote to stay in the EU we will end up with associate membership and if we vote to leave we will end up with associate membership. In some ways the referendum is about nothing. But what hand would you rather be playing? That’s the issue. That indeed is the only issue. 

What of Scotland? Well the SNP will want to hold another referendum on independence whether or not we vote to remain or leave in the EU. They don’t need an excuse. Their only reason for wanting a referendum last time was that they won a majority in the Scottish parliament. Even if Britain votes to stay in the EU, it may well be that in a few years that the SNP will want to have another go. The thing with nationalism is that you can’t appease it. You can’t say if only we do this or that the SNP won’t want another referendum. Whatever you do, they will want another referendum. Mr Hague might be better learning from how the Spanish deal with secession movements. It's very easy indeed to make their threats empty. You just have to say No. Sorry Nicola, the people said No. Bye. 

As I’ve long argued however, leaving the EU makes Scottish independence far less likely. It virtually makes it impossible. Membership of the EU is the condition for the possibility of sub-nation nationalism. All the things that everyone in Scotland likes about the UK, such as the pound, such as an open border, depend on Scotland and the UK having the same EU status. If the UK voted to leave the EU and Scotland voted for independence in order to stay, it would be impossible to argue that life would continue more or less the same. In these circumstances independence becomes a massive leap into the unknown. Given the nature of the Scottish economy at present, given our dependence on subsidy from the rest of the UK, the idea that a vote to leave the EU precipitates Scottish independence is very dubious indeed. Nicola Sturgeon would love Scotland to be independent, she will bluster and complain, but she knows in her heart that we cannot afford it. Until and unless that changes Scottish independence is a dead parrot. You can bash it all you like, it won’t wake up.

Almost no-one in Scotland wants to join Schengen and almost no-one wants to join the Euro. A few may fancy being an independent Scotland within a United States of Europe. But small countries with struggling economies are not treated very generously by the EU. In the end no-one in Scotland will object if we end up with associate member status of the EU. Access to the single market plus free movement of people is all pretty much anyone in Britain wants.  How many voters in Scotland are going to climb the barricades for the sake of the Common Agricultural Policy or the latest regulation from the European Commission about light bulbs? There are no grounds for the SNP complaining, though they will of course complain. Scotland as a part of the UK is going to end up with associate membership of the EU, no matter what. But really we have that already, the issue is simply whether we get to renegotiate the terms of our membership. That’s the choice. The SNP do not need a reason to seek divorce from the UK, but even they might realise that these are not grounds, not least because this sort of semi-detached relationship with the EU will be just as popular in Scotland and within the ranks of the SNP as it will be elsewhere in the UK.

Leaving the EU is really just about renegotiating how we relate to this group of countries. You can call this staying in the EU if you like. The difference is as much linguistic as anything. In many ways Switzerland is already more of a member of the EU than the UK is. The same EU single market rules apply to them, plus the additional rules that govern Schengen. The only issue that matters is how best the UK can get the relationship with the EU that most of us whether Europhile or Eurosceptic, or somewhere in between want. Unless you want to join the Euro and Schengen, you want a different relationship to the EU than that which Germany or France has. In that case you want membership terms that reflect this difference. But it is now obvious that nothing whatsoever will change until you vote to leave. At that point we can renegotiate a relationship that reflects the long term fact that we are not a part of the core EU. The rules and duties that apply to Eurozone/Schengen countries as they move towards a United States of Europe ought not to apply to us. It’s not fair that at present many of them do. Mr Cameron has been asking for some of these rules to change. No-one wants to listen. The only way they will listen is if we vote to leave. 

We need to integrate or else build fences

Out of all Eastern Bloc countries the most multi-cultural was the Soviet Union. In Russia today, there are also many different linguistic, ethnic and religious groups. This has been the case for centuries. The Russian Empire, after all, expanded from its historical heartland of Kievan Rus’ and expanded gradually northward, southward, westward, but above all eastward. Eventually this empire stretched across a continent, embracing many peoples who certainly had not been Russian a thousand years ago. It can be described as a form of colonisation without having to travel overseas.

When the Soviet Union collapsed the former Russian Empire lost many of its peoples, but it kept many more. Thankfully Russia itself has been able to remain intact. If Russia were to fall apart, there would certainly be conflict. The various peoples who live in Russia are very mixed and there are frequently no clear boundaries between them. Thankfully also there is little desire for secession. The conflict in Chechnya was the exception. Who knows, perhaps there is desire for secession and independence elsewhere, but we’d all better hope it doesn’t amount to anything. If Russia became one hundred and eight-five countries, corresponding to the ethnic groups who live there, the whole region, perhaps the world would descend into chaos.

For the most part however, people in Russia get on with each other well enough, no matter whether they can also speak a language different from Russian, whether they have a religion different to Russian Orthodox Christianity and whether they are from a different ethnic group.  The Russian Empire was a melting pot. But it must be remembered it took centuries for this melting pot to melt the differences and to a great extent they are still there. Ivan the Terrible captured Kazan’ in 1552, but the Tatars are still there. They are citizens of Russia, but they are still Tatars.  They are not usually even called Russians, nor do they think of themselves anything other than Tatars.

Multi-cultural countries are certainly possible. Russia is one, so is China, so is India. There are many more. But there is always the danger of conflict. There is always the possibility that one group or another might decide to seek separation. No-one thought the Soviet Union would break up, but it did. Who is to say that there is no possibility of another multinational-nation breaking up?

While the Soviet Union was a multi-national, multi-cultural country, the rest of the Eastern bloc for the most part was mono-cultural and has since the breakup of the Soviet Union become, if anything, still more so. Most Eastern European countries are dominated by one linguistic, religious and ethnic group. The south Slavs decided that they could not bear to live together any longer even though they all spoke more or less the same language. They fought a vicious war and split up into Serbia, Croatia et al. Likewise, Czechs and Slovaks decided that they could not endure living together. Their divorce happened almost by accident, but it happened none the less even though to an outsider the Czechs and Slovaks seem more or less the same.

The point is that in recent historical memory most people in Eastern Europe have experience of multi-culturalism and this is therefore something that they now reject. The Austro-Hungarian Empire after all was a multi-national, multi-cultural country, but eventually it could not hold together due to the fact that it contained too many nations. Likewise Czechs and Poles remember the consequence of living in a country which has German minorities. After the war they made sure there were no longer any Germans living in their country. It was vicious the way the Germans were driven out at the point of a bayonet, but the issues that caused such tension in the years before 1939 have gone with them.   

This is our problem. Just as the Tatars of Kazan’ remain Tatars 500 years later, so the Germans who had lived in Poland remained Germans and the tendency was for them to wish to turn Poland into Germany. The Eastern European countries that are most diverse now are places like Latvia and Estonia, with large Russian minorities. But it is an uneasy truce. The Latvians and Estonians would prefer that there were no Russians there. The Russians, no doubt, would prefer that Latvia became part of Russia again.

It is the experience of the difficulties of multi-culturalism that makes the present day Eastern Europeans so reluctant to accept immigration. Hungary has a population that is more than 95% Hungarian. They want it to stay that way. The reason for this is two-fold. Their own history tells them of the difficulties of multi-culturalism. But furthermore they look at the experiment with multi-culturalism in Western Europe and they don’t like what they see. Who can blame them?

The only way to make mass immigration work is to have a melting pot. But the melting pot takes centuries and even then it does not always work. Ukraine and Belarus’ split from Russia though they all had the same origin and had been part of one country for centuries. We have not completely melted the difference between Scotland and England, Catalonia and Spain or else there would not be the demand among some people for independence. But if Scots and English people cannot bear to live in one country, though there is little to distinguish us, how can we all live in harmony with people who are very different indeed? If we cannot fully integrate Scots and English people so that they think of themselves as one people, how can we expect to integrate those who are in every respect different except sharing a common humanity? The reality is that it is a part of human nature to wish to live together with those who have similar beliefs and speak the same language. If that were not the case we would not have countries at all.

Hungarians want to live with Hungarians. They too once were immigrants. They migrated to the land that is now called Hungary some time over one thousand years ago. No-doubt they fought their way there and drove out those who were there before them. It may be unfair that they who are quite literally a nation of immigrants want to keep out others who are also immigrants. They probably would be willing to accept some. But above all they recognise that there is a limit. The character of Hungarian society would radically change if twenty or thirty percent of the population was not Hungarian. Who knows what problems that would store up? It is for this reason that they build fences. It is human nature that they should do so. Who am I today to tell them that they can’t?

It’s time to tell the truth. No more platitudes. The Hungarians were right. I bet today they are all very grateful for their fences. 

Nationalism is destroying the Eurozone

There is a recent example of a reasonably long lasting currency union between peoples who spoke different languages that is often forgotten. Not very long ago I could spend the same Rouble whether I lived in Moscow, Vilnius or Kiev. Further afield I could spend it in Yerevan or Tbilisi. This currency union endured for at least 70 years and if you count the time when these places were part of the Russian Empire it existed rather longer than that. What made this possible? The most important was that throughout all of these places there was a common language. While people spoke their own languages at home, at school and at work they spoke Russian. Not only this, but in every tiny Soviet town and village there was the same ideology. The streets were called the same sort of names such as Lenin Prospect, Marx Street etc. There were the same statues of Lenin stretching out his hand. People watched the same films and the same television. They more or less eat the same food and drank the same drink. They believed the same things and they were taught to think of themselves as one Soviet people. For this reason Roubles were transferred around the Soviet Union without anyone counting the cost. What the Soviet Union had the Eurozone lacks.

I followed the recent Greek crisis from afar. I was in a pretty little German town and every morning I would read the headlines in the German newspapers. There were two I particularly remember. One had Angela Merkel dressed up as Bismarck and called the Iron Chancellor. The other complained of bailing out Greece with “our money”. I think people have been pretty tough on Germany in recent days. I don’t think that people in the UK would be particularly keen on sending much of our money to Greece either. These are not trivial sums.  But if you think of it as "our money" you frankly should not be in a currency union with the people you think of as them.

But this is the problem altogether. People in the EU are not coming closer together they are moving further apart.  If the EU was serious about creating a single European state it would have made sure by now that everyone was working towards speaking the same language. It doesn’t matter much which one, but let there be one, or else free movement of people really means free movement of people to do menial labour. If we all grew up speaking the same language in school, then I really could work anywhere. As it is, in most EU countries I would only be able to clean floors.

But can we really imagine an EU with a common language and a common ideology, where people felt themselves to be part of one common European people? Can we imagine that Germans will willingly and gladly send money to Greece and think of Greeks as more or less the same sort of people as themselves? If this was going to happen it would have happened by now. This #Grexit crisis was the crisis that was supposed to bring about closer monetary union in the Eurozone.  Perhaps it will. Perhaps 10 or 20 years from now we will have a transfer union  and a full political union in the EU and this will be seen as the first step towards it. But no, I can’t see it.

Where I stayed in Germany there were German flags on every building in a way that would have been unthinkable 20 or 30 years ago. There was a statue of Frederick Barbarossa (1122-1190) standing next to Wilhelm the First (1797-1888). It was just fine to celebrate the First Reich (962-1806) and also the Second Reich (1871-1918), there was a gap and some things that were never to be mentioned, but then we could all just leap right over to a new Kaiser and a new Reich.

This is all, no doubt, terribly unfair to Germany, which remains one of the most pleasant, liberal places imaginable. It should be remembered that Germany had no vote on joining the Euro and the people would undoubtedly have preferred to keep the D-Mark. But they have been placed in the position of leadership of the Eurozone and that leadership role looks anything but democratic.

When Greece had its referendum on austerity, it was explained very clearly to them by the Eurozone leaders that voting No meant leaving the Euro and probably the EU. They voted No anyway. But guess what they got still more austerity and they still stayed in the Euro. There were two honourable courses of action that were possible for the Eurozone leaders at this point. Either they should have followed through on their threat and kicked Greece out of the Euro, or they should have recognised that the Eurozone must henceforth be a transfer union, where the words "our" and "your" no longer applied.  The EU has too frequently been ignoring the will of the people in recent years and governments, including the Greek Government, have too frequently cooperated. This really is turning the EU into some sort of modern Holy Roman Empire.

Something died last week. I have always been someone who was willing to go along with the EU as an ideal. I thought a democratic, equal EU was a reasonably good ideal. Let’s bring down borders rather than erect new ones. But that ideal has gone. The Soviet Union fell apart because of its own contradictions, it would be better if the EU did the same. In the end even with a common language and a common ideology the Soviet Union could not overcome the differences that existed in the peoples who lived there. That as much as anything split the whole thing apart. Yet those differences were small compared to the difference between a Greek and a German.

This is our problem. If Czechs cannot bear to live with Slovaks in the same country, if Scots cannot quite bear to live in the same country as English people, how on earth do we expect Greeks and Germans to become one people? The problem as always is nationalism. It is something instinctual and goes back to when Germans were tribes waiting to be united by a great leader. But what unites these self-same Germans today divides them from all others. Germans will give to Germans, but they won’t give to Greeks and this is for reasons that happened both in the 19th century and a thousand years ago.  

If we can’t find a sense of being the same people then it is hard see the EU surviving other than as an Empire held together by an undemocratic bureaucracy. An EU that is willing to crush democracy in Greece and ignore the will of the people living there is not a force for good. Until and unless it can show itself to be a force for good I want no part of it. If Scotland really thinks in terms of "ours" and "yours" with regard to the people in the other parts of the UK, then I want no part of that either. Either we are one British people who share without limit or in the end it would be better for those who don’t feel a part of our common journey to leave. Choose #Scexit, choose independence within the Fourth Reich, after all small countries do wonderfully well there, but I’ll not share it. I want no part of it.  

If you like my writing, you can find my books Scarlet on the Horizon, An Indyref Romance and Lily of St Leonards on Amazon. Please follow the links on the side. Thanks. I appreciate your support.

Independence is becoming ever less likely

The SNP’s defeat in September has had a startling effect on Scottish politics. Huge numbers of people appear to have switched allegiance from the party they supported for years Labour. This is liable to greatly influence UK politics for some time. It makes it much harder for Labour to win a General Election. It potentially gives the SNP influence over UK matters that it has never had before. It enables the argument to continue that Scotland votes one way while England votes another. It makes Scottish politics tend to resemble Northern Irish politics with the major party in Scotland, just like in Northern Ireland, only standing there. If only the No parties joined together to form a common opposition to the SNP we could all vote according to our respective tribes just as if we were in Belfast. But does any of this bring independence any closer? The answer to this question has to be no. Independence is less likely than it was a year ago, indeed it is much less likely.

Over the medium term there are only really two interesting political questions. The first is how to solve the problem of living beyond our means, make our debt levels sustainable and continue to obtain a degree of economic growth. The major UK parties have reached a consensus on this. The programme of austerity that the Lib Cons in the end followed resembled very closely the programme set out by Labour. They followed plan B. If Labour get in next time they too will follow plan B. Each party will seek gradually to reduce the deficit. There will be differences in emphasis and differences in supposed timetable, but the market will determine the progress.  The rest is noise. The main political issue then is one of competence. Who is most competent to run the economy? Well in this your prejudice is as good as mine. The SNP, of course, are not part of this consensus. Their fundamental goal is to break up the UK. Naturally enough their economics would make the UK broke. After all it’s the UK they are set on destroying. But in fact even if they did get into a coalition, the SNP’s policy of spending ever more money we don’t have could not last long. There is a clear majority among UK parties for gradual deficit reduction and the SNP cannot change this. Nor can they change the fact that the bond market ultimately controls the actions of a chancellor. So assuming we don’t go down the self-destruct route,  à la Grecque, austerity will continue no matter how many nationalists are elected in Scotland.

The other interesting issue is Britain’s relationship to the EU.  If the Conservatives are elected there is likely at some point to be a referendum on EU membership.  This issue has to be faced anyway whether there is or is not a referendum as Britain’s relationship with the EU is changing whether we like it or not. In fact the difference between being in and being out is not that different. Even if Britain voted to leave, it’s hardly likely that we would cease to have some sort of trade agreement with the EU and we would still therefore be liable to adhere to some of the EU’s rules. Alternatively even if we choose to stay in the EU, we are going to be part of a different club from those countries who chose to enter monetary union with each other. If they go further down that path of integration and union we are going to find ourselves on the outside looking in whichever way we might vote in an EU referendum. The difference between voting to leave and voting to stay is a matter of degree. However, voting to leave would have major consequences for Scotland.

The SNP think their best chance of obtaining independence is for England to vote to leave the EU while Scotland votes to stay. With a Scottish parliament packed with nationalists they hope to engineer this into a divorce. It’s worth looking in some detail however at this scenario. Firstly, it is simply false that in a nationwide referendum, parts of the UK can have a veto.  When we voted on whether to remain in the EU in 1975 no-one seriously thought that Scotland could veto our choice. Logically if Scotland could veto the UK leaving the EU in 2017, then the Borders or Aberdeenshire should be able to veto Scotland leaving the UK. So if the whole UK votes to leave, the whole UK will leave. But what if an SNP majority in the Scottish parliament attempted to organise a second independence referendum? I have no idea if this would succeed. The UK Government of the time could block it in the same way that Spain has blocked Catalonia. But it is possible that the UK would permit such a second referendum, for the simple reason that the SNP would self-evidently lose it. It’s worth looking at why this is so.

If Scotland had voted for independence in 2014, there would have been no chance whatsoever of the UK having a referendum on the EU in 2017. The reason for this is that breaking up the 300 year old Union would haven been so complex that it would have had to have been completed prior to any divorce negotiations with the EU. But the same applies in reverse. It would be so complex for any Government to negotiate a withdrawal from the EU that there simply would not be the time or the energy to negotiate Scotland’s withdrawal from the UK. Trying to have two divorces at once would be a recipe for chaos. It’s rather hard to get a rational electorate to vote for chaos.

The whole long term “independence in Europe” strategy of the SNP is not really about Europe at all. Few Scots live and work in the EU and those that do would most likely be able to do so whether the UK were in the EU or not. Huge numbers of Scots however live and work in other parts of the UK. The SNP’s strategy was always about the UK. The key issue for SNP strategists has always been how to secure the long terms rights of Scots to live and work in the UK if Scotland became independent. Without that you could never persuade rational Scots to vote for independence.  The answer that the SNP came up with was the EU. But here’s where things become tricky for the nationalists, for if the UK leaves the EU, a German would prima facie have no more right to live and work in the UK than an American or a Japanese person. Such rights if they existed would depend on bilateral agreement and negotiation. The same at least in the long term would apply to an independent Scotland. The EU was the guarantor that everything would stay more or less the same after independence. But if the UK left the EU, it would be very hard to argue that everything would stay more or less the same in Scotland. All would be changed, changed utterly.

If Scotland were in the EU, while the UK was not, the border between Berwick and Gretna would be the border between the EU and the non EU. It would become the equivalent of the border between Belarus and Poland. It’s hard to see how the EU could not require such a border to be manned.

If Scotland were in the EU while the UK was not, it is hard to imagine that there could be a currency union between them. A currency union between separate nation states is hard enough, but one between those who are in different trading blocs is harder still to contemplate. Moreover, how could Scotland remain part of the UK single market if we chose to be in a different trading bloc? In general it makes little sense for Scotland to choose to leave a trading bloc (the UK) with which we do upwards of 70% of our trade in order to remain in a different trading block (the EU) with which we have comparatively little trade. Much of the Scottish economy, especially in financial services depends on being in a close economic relationship with the UK. But this close relationship would simply not be possible if Scotland were in the EU while the UK was not. The paths of our economies would diverge. There might be tariffs between non EU UK and EU Scotland. It is obvious that the economic harmony, which exists between Scotland and the other parts of the UK, would be hugely damaged if we chose the EU route rather than then UK route. Our prosperity would therefore be damaged. It is going to very hard to persuade a rational electorate to vote for this assuming it remains rational.

The SNP are not going to be able to win a referendum in 2017, because it is going to be still harder for them to make a rational case for it than it was in 2014. Imagine if a year ago the oil price had suddenly fallen as it has in the past few months. Would it have made a vote for independence more or less likely? The fact is that at present the only parts of the UK that are making a profit are parts of the south of England and London. Tax raised in London especially is transferred around our country, helping people everywhere including Scotland. This is the major benefit of being part of a single nation state. We help each other out. While Scotland in the 1970s contributed more than we took out, at the moment we contribute less. These things go in cycles. This is how we maintain a currency union. It is the fact that we are also a transfer union which maintains the stability of our economy. We have a transfer union because we are a single nation state.  Leaving this transfer union would obviously make Scotland poorer, for at the moment we are taking out more than we put in.  But we would be poorer in another sense too, not merely because we would have less money. The most important loss would be the special relationship which exists in the UK which enables us to transfer money freely between the various parts according to need. This special relationship is the key to successful monetary union. It exists in every nation state, but never between nation states. It is indeed what defines a nation state. Think of why there is a dispute in the Eurozone at the moment. Greece is living beyond its means. It has debts that it cannot pay. What Greece wants is for other members of the Eurozone to transfer money to it. If the Eurozone were a single nation state this wouldn’t be a problem. It would be automatic. But fundamentally Germans are unwilling to transfer money to Greece, because Greeks are not Germans. It is for this reason above all that they should never have decided to share a currency, for without transfers it is doomed to fail. On the other hand we transfer money between the various parts of the UK because we are all British. We are one people or else we would be foreigners to each other. If that were the case there would never have developed the monetary union, the shared pound that underpins our prosperity. Currency union in the end requires a common people united by history. It is this that we have that the Eurozone lacks. 

Scotland’s choice then in a 2017 referendum would be between remaining in a Union where we are treated as family (the UK), hardly something to be given up lightly, and leaving in order to stay in a Union (EU) where we would be treated as foreigners. We could in the end expect no more from the Germans than can the Greeks.

Scottish politics has become irrational. Huge numbers of people were caught up in the emotion of the referendum and the legacy of that continues. But the SNP know that any second referendum would mean that their case would once more be examined in close detail. They must know in their hearts that they simply cannot win that argument rationally and if they lost it a second time it would be game over for their dream. They could try to win using irrationality and emotion, but Scotland has shown already that we have too much sense in the end to be taken in. We rejected the SNP in September 2014 when they had a better argument than now. We would reject them again if they asked us again with a worse argument. So my prediction is this. No matter how many SNP MPs are elected, no matter whether the UK votes to leave the EU or not, there will be no second referendum any time soon. The reason for this is simple. The SNP would lose it.

If you like my writing, you can find my books Scarlet on the Horizon (book, Kindle) and An Indyref Romance (book, Kindle) on Amazon. I appreciate your support.

Don't trust someone who would say anything to win independence

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. 

A summary with two months to go

We’re approaching the end of the longest political campaign any of us can remember. I suspect the result is already determined and that it would make no difference if the referendum were next week or in two months. However, there are some Scots who have yet to make up their minds and there is a lot of confusion because the claims of both sides are so contradictory. Here’s what I think of the main issues.

Polls

I follow polls and I’m pleased when my side appears to do well and less pleased when my side appears to do less well. However, I try my best not to be too bothered by them either way. Anyway it’s best to campaign as if you were behind and never to say “we’re way ahead”, “it’s over” and “we’re going to win easily.” Complacency is the biggest danger to No, continuing to fight hard is the best chance for Yes.

There’s a systematic error in the polling. Someone is wrong. The No lead can’t be both small (Survation) and large (Yougov).  There’s not much point debating something, which the facts will determine on September 19th. But it’s best to campaign as if the lead were small and try to make it larger.

Economy

Scotland will remain a relatively wealthy Western European economy whatever the result of the referendum. Wealth comes from the activities of people and more or less the same people will probably be here next year. Independence would neither be an economic disaster nor would the streets be made of gold. An independent Scotland’s extra share of oil revenue would be more or less cancelled out by the loss of economies of scale and UK government funding (Barnett formula). Whether independent or not, how Scotland fairs economically in the future depends on the sorts of choices politicians make. The best choice politicians can make is to interfere as little as possible in the market. I don’t believe however, that this is the route that an independent Scotland would take at least initially and for this reason economically independence might be damaging at least in the short term.

EU

International relations are frequently carried out ambiguously. Diplomacy is often a matter of trying to please both sides. It’s considered poor form to interfere too much in a country’s internal affairs. However, when someone like Jean-Claude Juncker says that he’s not planning to expand the EU beyond 28 countries, of course, he’s also talking about Scotland. His office might deny that he is, because it would be interfering, but these sorts of remarks are calculated. The EU does not want secession to take off in Western Europe like it has in Eastern Europe. Changing international boundaries is historically   problematic and can lead to unforeseen, unintended consequences. It is the opposite direction to the one Mr Juncker wants Europe to go.

What matters anyway is not whether Scotland is in the EU, but that we have the same EU status as the UK. If they voted to leave (I think they won’t in the end), we would have to go with them whether independent or not. Scotland is too integrated into the UK economy to be able to be in the EU while the UK is not.

Pound

The lesson of the Eurozone is that currency union without political and fiscal union does not work. When countries become independent, even tiny ones like Latvia, the norm is that they set up their own currencies. Using the pound without a currency union would send Scotland’s financial sector down south, along with the associated jobs and wealth and would mean that our savings lacked a lender of last resort. The best option for an independent Scotland would be to set up its own currency. This however would be damaging to Scotland’s trade and integration into the UK economy.  

Lots of Scots did not appreciate George Osborne & co. saying that we could not keep the pound after independence. Did they mean it? There’s no way of knowing until and unless negotiations begin after a vote for independence. You take your pick according to what you want to believe and which side of the debate you support. These matters however, in the end are determined by self-interest and public opinion. Anyone who thinks the other parts of the UK are going to vote for a Eurozone style currency union with Scotland after rejecting it with the EU, does not understand their fellow citizens.

Conduct

With a short time to go it is more and more important that when campaigning we do nothing that harms the image of the side we support. Don’t hate or insult the sort of people you meet every day in shops, on the bus or at work. I find it best simply to ignore any insulting language online. We’re all very passionate about the issues and we’ve all said things that are unkind. That’s the nature of politics. But there are lots of good people on both sides and it’s possible to have reasonable, informed conversations with them. You often learn something too and make friends.

Conclusion

Independence is clearly possible. The issue is whether it is the best course of action for Scotland. Many independence supporters want independence as an ideal in itself. They want it come what may. The rest of us have to balance up the advantages and disadvantages of what we think would happen. There is much that is uncertain, especially with regard to the key issues of currency and the EU. How someone is liable to vote may be influenced by their attitude to risk. Scotland is a great place to live now. It’s a great place, at least in part, because we’ve been in the UK for the last 300 years. No doubt Scotland would still be a great place to live after independence, but that Scotland is another country where I have never lived a new nation state with an international relationship with places I have always thought of as part of my home.  

Why an independent Scotland would face a demographic challenge

One of the biggest challenges an independent Scotland would face is demographic.  People in Scotland are living much longer than they used to, which of course is great, but so too are fewer babies being born which is less great. Under these circumstances any country will eventually struggle to pay for the public services that we all want. After some decades of ever increasing longevity and ever fewer babies the Scottish population has become more and more unbalanced. Ever fewer working age tax payers have to find ever more to fund the care of those who have ceased working.

What can a country do about this situation? One thing you can do is to encourage more children to be born. The SNP’s plan to help women with child care is an excellent idea, flawed only by its not properly being costed. It’s important to admit that free childcare for everyone would be very expensive, but it would also be worth it. Here I think all parties in Scotland should work together no matter the result of the referendum. Scotland’s low birth rate amounts to a national emergency and a united approach is needed if we are going to do anything about it.

But even if you can increase child birth, it will take a long time before it makes a noticeable difference to the work force. There are only so many women in Scotland and they can only have so many babies. You have to wait twenty years or more before a new generation of mothers is available.

It is for this reason that an independent Scotland would significantly need to increase immigration. Estimates vary but it is likely that we would need somewhere between 500,000 and one million extra immigrants over the next 30 years.

The demographic situation facing Scotland is not unique. It is something that we have in common with much of the developed world, but it has to be admitted that our situation is rather worse that the other parts of the UK. England especially has rather less need of immigration now partly because they have had much more over the past 50 years than Scotland. If Scotland were to remain in the UK we would not need the extra immigration for our demographic situation would be counterbalanced by that of England. This is one of the main benefits of being in the UK. The relatively younger English population makes the relatively older Scottish population unproblematic simply because we live in the same country and fiscal transfers happen automatically.

One of the difficulties that an independent Scotland would face is that immigrants are clearly more attracted to living south of the border rather than here. Why is that? Perhaps it’s the weather, perhaps the size of London, most likely it’s because immigrants prefer to move to where there are already immigrant communities.

This though would present a challenge to an independent Scotland in trying to come up with an immigration policy designed to attract more immigrants to Scotland than the UK. How are we to keep them here, if where they really want to go is London? Moreover, if the UK Government decided they would prefer rather fewer immigrants than Scotland, how could they prevent people, who have been admitted to Scotland, simply moving south? The challenge for Scotland would be to have an immigration policy that satisfied Scotland’s needs without being so different to that of the UK’s needs that it would be incompatible with the existence of the Common Travel Area.

Scotland needs people. But out of all the people living in Scotland, who were not born here, where do the vast majority come from? The answer is obvious. They come from the other parts of the UK. But why do people move here from places in England, Wales and Northern Ireland? We all know that there are lots of great things about life here, but one of the fundamental attractions to people from other parts of the UK about Scotland is that they would not be immigrants. At the moment, if you move to London to Edinburgh you are not emigrating, but rather moving to a different part of the same country. Anyone who has lived abroad knows that an international move is a much bigger step. Moreover many people are reluctant to live where they are not a citizen. For this reason the number of people moving to an independent Scotland from the UK is bound to decline. In this way independence is rather self-defeating with regard to immigration. Fundamentally if you want to attract people to Scotland you ought not to put an international border between Scotland and the greatest source of those people. 

Anecdotally I’ve come across quite a lot of Scots, especially those with high paying jobs who are making contingency plans to move south if Scotland votes for independence. They’ve looked at SNP plans and worked out that it is likely to be them that foot the bill.  I’ve met people who say they simply could not afford to live in an independent Scotland.  Surveys suggest that the people who are most opposed to independence are highly qualified, relatively affluent professionals. But these are exactly the sort of people who can vote with their feet. The immigration situation of an independent Scotland may therefore need to take into account the loss of some Scots who perhaps find that the business they work for needs to move from Edinburgh to London or those who simply don’t like the direction that nationalists are liable to take our country.

Where is Scotland then going to get the extra people we would need? Well one source is clearly the EU. Access to the EU labour market is one of the major benefits of being in the EU. Given our demographic situation, only a fool would complain about people coming here from Eastern Europe. It is the fact that we have been able to attract people from elsewhere that has enabled us to continue funding our pensions and health service without massively having to increase taxation. The likelihood however is that an independent Scotland’s path into the EU would be rather tricky and there could be a period when we were not in it. What would happen to those EU citizens already living here? The basis for their right to live here would have ceased. How would we be able to attract more EU citizens if for a time we were not even a member?  These kinds of uncertainties are liable to have a detrimental effect on EU immigration.

But even if an independent Scotland were to remain seamlessly in the EU, it’s important to be aware that many EU citizens are attracted to Scotland precisely because we are part of the UK. The Russian word for England is the common way to refer to the whole of the UK. Just as many Scots are unfamiliar with the geography of Eastern Europe, so Slavs are often unaware that the UK has parts. (How many republics in Russia can you name?) What they are attracted to is the traditional image of Britain picked up from films and literature. They generally see the Union Jack as a positive fashion statement that signifies being in the West. Again, putting an international border between Scotland and the British brand is hardly going to attract immigration, especially when so many Scots openly express such hostility to that brand.

The level of immigration we get from the EU is unlikely to increase whether we are independent or not. It may decline. Where else can we obtain people? There are lots of people from outside the EU who would love to come to Scotland. We have a much higher standard of living than much of the world. But then one of the difficulties for an independent Scotland would be to persuade the seven out of ten Scots who want stricter immigration controls.

I think these people are mistaken. Scotland’s choice will be between immigration and maintaining public services. But it’s also important to realise that there are significant challenges that go with increasing immigration. If a million more people come to live here in the next 30 years, where are they to live? We would need to build another three Edinburghs. What jobs would they have? How would we maintain a cohesive society with a common Scottish identity? How could we maintain an open border if we want to allow many more non EU immigrants than the UK?

There are lots of advantages to Scotland increasing its population. It would almost certainly be beneficial economically. London is in part wealthy because it can attract people from all over the world.  An independent Scotland would need to do likewise. But nationalism, which immigrants can rarely share, is hardly something that attracts; rather it is something that frequently repels.  The contradiction at the heart of the SNP’s policy is that increasing immigration is about bringing down borders not erecting new ones, it’s about recognising what we share with people from elsewhere rather than what makes us different, it’s about internationalism rather than nationalism. 

Independence movements like UKIP and the SNP are enemies of the EU project

Like many Scots I have mixed feelings about the EU, I’ve even in the past been somewhat sympathetic to some of the Eurosceptic arguments. I’m becoming more and more in favour of the EU however, and this has most to do with my reflecting on the arguments for and against Scottish independence.

What do I like about the EU? Well I like the fact that I am able to live and work in any EU country. I used to work at the University of Copenhagen. I sometimes wonder if it might not be nice to retire to one of the Canary Islands or Portugal. I rather like the fact that there’s passport free travel in the Schengen zone and on the whole wish that the UK was a part of this. It would make life easier for my Russian husband. It’s much easier to be able to use the same money in Spain and Germany.  The thing I like most about the EU however is the single market. This is the major achievement of EU integration. The fact that we have access to European labour markets is one of the main reasons why the UK economy is doing so well just now. People complaining about Poles coming here to work understand nothing about economics.

What don’t I like about the EU? Fundamentally I don’t like the fact that power rests with unelected officials or the European Commission. I don’t like the fact that unelected people, whether they be civil servants or judges, can tell democratically elected politicians what to do.  I don’t like the way the EU seems constantly to try to make everyone follow the same rules. Some of this is necessary no doubt, but some is petty and pointless. The thing I like least about the EU is their attempt to have monetary union without a political, fiscal and transfer union. For all the convenience for tourists like me it has been a disaster especially for southern Europe.

What sort of Europe would I like to see? I suspect that many people in Scotland would like to see an EU like the one we voted for all those years ago, a trading block of sovereign independent states. But this is not on offer, and really we’ve been kidding ourselves if we thought that it was ever on offer. It is even less on offer now. The structural problems in the Eurozone can be solved only by breakup or by much closer integration. There may have been a time when large, sovereign, independent states could maintain a currency union without a political, fiscal and transfer union, but that time has clearly passed. There may be any number of reasons for this. Perhaps the sheer speed of modern currency transactions and the way markets work today makes such currency unions undesirable. Really the reasons don’t matter. The Eurozone is an experiment in currency union without political union and the experiment has failed. This is one of the main reasons why Quebec has pretty much recognised that independence is off the agenda. They know that the rest of Canada would never agree to a currency union. It would be crazy for them to do so.

The breakup of the Eurozone could turn into a catastrophe that would make 2008 look like a blip. But anyway if the Eurozone were going to breakup, it would have done so by now. The EU then is going to move towards becoming a single nation state a United States of Europe (USE). It has no choice. It has been moving towards this goal anyway from the beginning. What I hope is that this USE comes to resemble the USA. The USA has a democratically elected president and bicameral parliament. Each state in the Union has considerable devolved power, but is neither independent nor sovereign. If that model existed in the EU, I would grab it with both hands. I would also recommend that the UK join such a USE. It would be stupid not to. I strongly suspect over the next 20 or 30 years that this will be the choice for semi-detached countries like the UK or Denmark. The choice will be between remaining an independent nation state and remaining in the EU.

In the 60s the French blocked the UK from joining the EU, correctly fearing that we would act as a hindrance to EU integration. Countries that focus too much on their independence and their sovereignty are always going to act as a block to the EU project. But they cannot possibly allow this now. Too much is at stake. Eventually for the Eurozone to work, each nation state will have to forget that it is independent and treat everyone in Europe as if they were a fellow citizen. Thus wealthy Germans are going to have to be willing to transfer money to impoverished Spaniards in exactly the same way that they transferred money from West Germany to East Germany.  If that doesn’t happen and happen rather soon the impoverished parts of Europe, including France, will not sit idly while they endure permanent recession and austerity. They will break the Eurozone no matter what the cost.

It should be obvious now that the slogan “independence in Europe” is at best a misunderstanding at worst a lie.  If Europe becomes the USE we would have a devolved parliament in Edinburgh and we would vote hopefully for a democratic president and parliament in Brussels. But we would not be independent, for sovereignty would be in Brussels, just as sovereignty in the USA is in Washington. Fundamentally this is no different from what we have now. We have devolution and we are going to get more of it if we vote no. Sovereignty, beyond mere flag waving, in the end is not on the agenda no matter which way we vote in the referendum. It’s becoming an archaic concept.

There are huge advantages of being in a union of states. The USA has such economies of scale that it would be wealthy even if it only traded with itself. A democratic union of states in the EU would likewise be massively advantageous economically and socially. It would bring living standards in southern Europe up to those in northern Europe. But the price that has to be paid for this is that the various parts of Europe give up nationalism. If you can’t work successfully in a four nation state like the UK how do you suppose you’re going to work in a 28 or more member state like the USE. If the Scots and the English cannot bear to live together in one nation state, how are we to live together with the peoples of Europe in one nation state? If you’re unwilling to transfer your wealth around the UK, what are you going to say when told that you must transfer it to Portugal or Greece? Nationalism is the enemy of EU integration. So long as people focus on resurrecting historical borders, they will not be looking towards a future when such borders are no more. People who understand the European project realise that it is not only unnecessary for a place like Bavaria to seek the independence it lost in 1871, it would also be futile and self-defeating. Secession is the opposite of what is required and for this reason, if for no other; the EU would look on an independent Scotland’s application with distaste as something unhelpful and not to be encouraged.

Scottish nationalists who really want independence as opposed to merely creating a border between Scotland and England realise that real independence is incompatible with EU membership. It is for this reason that many of them are just as much Eurosceptics as UKIP. This position at least has the virtue of being consistent and logical, but it ignores the merits of countries pooling their sovereignty and working together. The process by which the UK came together all those centuries ago is precisely the example that the EU needs to become a successful nation state. There too former enemies are putting aside their differences and finding what they have in common and pooling their sovereignty to create a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. They must find our focus on refighting medieval battles rather quaint.