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The UK Survives
About seven hours ago, the BBC called the vote for Scottish Independence in favor the “No” camp. I guess Long Shanks wins this one. Now we get to see Westminster try to give the Scotts more devolution, but without independence.
Watching the results come in was very anticlimactic. I guess the Scotts didn’t have that much rebellion in them after all.
Published in General
It isn’t that Scots don’t have rebellion in them. Close to half of them voted for independence. It’s just that enough of them had more common sense.
One thing is clear, the English press remains pathetic.
Cameron has committed himself to support for devolution of power to England now too. A truly federal Britain might end up being a positive development. If so, it will be the most important consequence if the Scottish vote.
It seemed like the rational thing to do. I’m not British, but from an outside perspective there seemed to be very little upside to pulling out and a lot of potential downside.
It sounds like it was close enough and the objections primarily are in the “Independence isn’t cooked soup yet” category, that around 5 years of solid work building up an independent infrastructure could make it a serious possibility in the future.
It shows you if you really want independence, you have to use the American model of 1776. ;)
When I stoped watching it was not that close, 46 to 54. That was with all the big Yes regions having reported in. Maybe it got closer. It seems like the No camp freaked out over a few polls.
That is close.
Anything not ~80/20 in an independence referendum is a fundamental problem.
Especially when the entire NO rational are addressable practical considerations.
Basically the referendum said the only social glue was money and material things, that should be terrifying for a government.
Ricochet member, Stephen Bishop, posted Gordon Brown’s impassioned speech encouraging a “No” vote yesterday. If you watch, it becomes clear the Scots were choosing between international socialism administered by the EU, or international socialism administered by the UK. Brown even quoted Marx’s “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” He used words like “social justice” liberally. And he talked about the UK’s “welfare state” as an accomplishment. I don’t think unity, or lack thereof, is the UK’s problem. They’re all commies now.
I agree. The next few years could prove very interesting. A more federalist UK would (IMHO) be better for the constituent parts of the UK. They should try for the US state-federal balance (circa 1900) and do pretty well.
Barring some future catastrophe, this may be the high water mark for an independent Scotland. No future PM wants to be the one who lost Scotland and will be acting accordingly.
The model is right there, staring them in the face – The Isle of Man, Jersey, and Guernsey.
Westminster handles their foreign policy, defense, and monetary policy, they handle the rest.
Easy, peasy, lemon squeezy.
well the 1861 method did not turn out so good for those trying to leave.
That is setting the bar way too low.
If the Crown had been as responsive in 1776, we’d still be part of the Commonwealth.
Oh well. How boring, Scottish independence would have been such a lively thing to watch!
The reality is that no region should be given a vote to simply split off without having gotten the consent of the rest of the nation. This whole thing was a bad idea from the get go in my opinion. No unilateral secession should be granted to any region that has democratic representation in a national government. In fact this whole devolution idea I think guarantees that this problem will never go away. Every time Scots are slightly upset they will threaten to leave the union only to try to extract more goodies.
Do we label this a ‘conservative’ vote from a political constituency that loathes the British political conservatives?
Breaking News: Alex Salmond has resigned as Scotland’s First Minister.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2761216/Scotland-independence-referendum-results-announced.html
For me, this is proof that the referendum wasn’t really about Scottish “independence”, per se. Rather it was a vote-of-non-confidence in the coalition of socialists and environmentalists who wanted to rule Scotland’s resources.
Also, in David Cameron’s post-referendum speech, he promised “English votes for English laws”, alluding to some sort of (alas, probably pretty weak) British federalism.
It’s not the best-case scenario, but I’ll take what I can get.
It loathes English Conservatives, not necessarily British conservatives.
After all, it soundly voted against a coalition of avowed socialists, and voted in favour of a coalition of Scottish conservatives and liberal-democrats (oh, and Labour, but you know…). That’s a good news takeaway, as far as I’m concerned.
The 1995 Quebec referendum was 50.58% to 49.42%. Nineteen years later, and Canada still stands.
I’m at sea here, can you help me know what the distinctions are?
One is a political party. The other is a philosophical/cultural identity.
But isn’t this a significant minority constituency in Scotland?
Being a minority constituency is not the same as being “loathed”.
Not what I meant. Isn’t the ‘conservative’ political/cultural constituency in Scotland a significant voting minority? Yet this 55/45 no vote appears conservative to my eyes.
I think we’re getting hung up on the use of the term “conservative” here. Is Gordon Brown one of the British “conservatives” of whom you speak, Mis?
The question suffers, as many do, from the fact that the definition of the word “conservative” is almost always rather flexible.
The “No” campaign was a coalition of the Scottish Conservative Party, the Scottish Liberal-Democratic Party, and the Scottish Labour Party.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Together_%28campaign%29
The “Yes” campaign was a coalition of the Scottish National Party, the Scottish Socialist Party, and the Scottish Green Party.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes_Scotland
In that way, I agree that the vote was a conservative result, but I wouldn’t say it was a Conservative result.
Nope.
But their french. They don’t count.
Only 78% French….
;-)