I’ve always felt that Scotland is different. I once went out for an early morning walk (I
think it was in Stirling) and whilst musing on the distinctive features of
Scotland’s education system, its legal structure, its distinctive architecture and
so on I stepped off the kerb having looked the ‘wrong’ way (thinking I was
somewhere else in Europe) and got a mouthful of distinctive Scottish vernacular
from a passing cyclist.
So I have what might be called ‘cultural’ sympathies with
those Scots who argue for independence – such sympathies being based on issues
of identity rather than on hard economic, geopolitical or other logics.
The Scottish National Party leader, Nicola Sturgeon, has
again set forth the case for an independence referendum for Scotland. I recently heard Sturgeon speak, and she was
extremely impressive - indeed, the most impressive politician I have heard for
some time. She gave a cogent,
well-argued and principled lecture lasting 40 minutes and then proceeded to
field a variety of questions from a big audience for a further 45 minutes with
clarity, honesty and consistency (in answering the final question she cross-referred
to her answers half an hour earlier).
Although the Westminster government will repeatedly cite the
SNP’s own declaration at the time of the campaign leading up to the 18
September 2014 referendum that this was a ‘once in a lifetime’ opportunity, the
SNP has a justifiable counter to that in pointing out that the ‘Better
Together’ campaign put considerable emphasis on the argument that the way of
keeping Scotland in the European Union was to stay part of the United
Kingdom. That assertion turned out to be
wrong. In the 2016 referendum on EU
membership, 62% of Scottish voters supported ‘Remain’ and every single Scottish
council area produced that same result.
Yet the weight of the Brexit vote in England (and Wales) produced an
overall result in the opposite direction.
The European Union lies at the heart of the SNP argument for
independence. Yet I suspect that if and
when a second referendum campaign gets going it will also be attitudes within
the EU that will lead Scots to vote once again not to take independence. The EU won’t help the cause of the SNP. And it will be Spanish attitudes that will be
to ‘blame’. What I find somewhat
surprising is that there seems to be little recognition in the British media of
what is at stake for Spain in the possibility of Scottish independence. I’ve scoured today’s newspapers and found
only one small paragraph in the Guardian
that recognises Spain’s interest.
The SNP argues that Scotland should stay in the European
Union, and that the only way to do that now is to become independent within the European Union. I have italicised those four words, because they
are crucial. So where does Spanish
interest come in? It is in Spain that
there is another major independence movement – that of Catalonia / Catalunya. Were Brussels to indicate that it would easily
accept an independent Scotland into the EU as a ‘remnant’ of the departing United
Kingdom, then the way would be open not just for the break up of the UK but
also for the independence of Catalonia / Catalunya from the rest of Spain. So in any discussions in the EU Council of
Ministers or the European Parliament about the attitude the EU might take to an
independent Scotland, Spanish voices will be loud and hostile.
There are interesting parallels between the Catalan and
Scottish independence campaigns.
Catalonia / Catalunya intends to hold a referendum in September 2017,
which the Spanish government has declared illegal. The SNP wants a referendum before the end of
the Brexit negotiations, and the Westminster government has indicated that it
will refuse permission to do so. In 2014
a non-binding referendum was held in Catalonia / Catalunya and 81% voted for
the region to become an independent state – but the turnout was only 42%. Today approval for independence seems,
according to the latest polls, to be running at around 48% - around the same
proportion as in Scotland. But the
claims of Catalonia / Catalunya are economic as much as cultural, and that
creates some differences with Scotland where the economic arguments are less
strong.
So the Westminster and Madrid governments share common
interests in opposing the break up of their current states, and the lever of
European Union attitudes could be a crucial factor. If the EU, under Spanish pressure, makes it
clear that a newly independent Scotland would not be automatically to join the EU but would have to go through
the long ‘acquis’ process, then Scottish electors might vote as they did in
2014 – to reject independence. But,
interestingly, once the UK leaves the European Union – whether Scotland by then
has gained independence or not – there will be no natural ally for Madrid in
arguing that an independent Catalunya would need to apply from scratch for EU
membership (the process Spain is arguing Scotland would need to go through)
because no other remaining EU country has as strong a separatist movement as
that in Catalunya.
The emphasis in the British press is continuously on
Scotland. But let me put a different
scenario forward. Before the UK’s June
referendum on EU membership I wrote about another possibility in a blog
envisaging a vote for Brexit. I was
writing as if from 2026 looking back on events over the preceding decade:
What surprised me at
the time, and still surprises me, is what happened in Ireland. I suppose
I should have expected the Northern Ireland electorate to vote to stay in the
EU, but the way in which the financial turbulence in what was still then the UK
played out during 2016-18 was very interesting in the one part of the kingdom
that used both the Euro and the pound. The Irish government played its
cards very well, but they were helped by the assertive UKIP / Conservative
coalition in the UK who proposed sealing the border between Northern Ireland
and the Republic, just as they were doing between Scotland and England.
In effect now, in 2026, Northern Ireland is in a limbo position -
effectively reunited with Ireland with the apparent agreement of the Protestant
community who see themselves as better off than they would be allied to England
and Wales where economic growth over the last few years has been poor.
Yet that de facto position
has not yet been fully ratified internationally.
(From: http://www.paulwhiteDVC.blogspot.co.uk
entry for Monday 13 June 2016)
Back in June I was wrong about some things here – that UKIP
would be likely to get into a coalition government, that the SNP would quickly
get agreement for Scottish independence, and that financial turbulence would
begin straight after the referendum result.
Enda Kenny’s Irish government is in a weak position and facing
elections, but they have still expressed the strong view that they don't want
to see the return of a hard border within the island of Ireland, and that negotiating
point is likely to create great difficulties in the Brexit discussions around
the freedom of movement of goods, capital and people between Ireland and
Northern Ireland. And the Dublin
government is unlikely to allow Ireland to be swept into the fortress that the
rest of the UK may become.
I know that the majority vote in Northern Ireland in June
2016 to ‘remain’ in the EU was partly due to the overwhelming preference of
Catholic voters for that outcome, but a significant number of Protestants must
also have voted the same way – a welcome example of the expression of
non-sectarian opinions. I know several
Protestant Northern Irish who are applying for Irish citizenship (something
which the Irish constitution automatically offers to all those born in Ireland,
North or South, before 2005) in order to retain their personal membership of
the European Union. The current disarray
of the Stormont government, and the role of the apparent intransigence of the
leader of the Democratic Unionist Party in prolonging uncertainty, seem also to
be driving some Protestants to think they would be no worse off with closer
working relationships with the rest of Ireland.
The strength of the Euro against the pound could be another element
tipping some in Northern Ireland – a region that already uses both currencies –
to move towards the more ‘European’ one.
Back in June 2016 I was not envisaging a united
Ireland. But I was envisaging a peculiar
sort of half way house in which the island of Ireland effectively operates as a
single unit largely within the European Union.
Politically Northern Ireland would still be part of the United Kingdom,
but pragmatically and economically its citizens could be members of the
European Union in many other respects.
And I could not foresee Spain or any other remaining EU member objecting
to that.
So despite the noise and fuss about possible independence
for Scotland, my view is that attention within the UK should be turned in a
different direction. What happens in
Northern Ireland could be much more transformative because it would not
contradict the interests of any other EU state – indeed it would work for the
interests of Ireland. Will Scots still
fly off to holidays on the Costa del Sol if Spain thwarts their ambitions for
independence? I don’t know.