I have been in and around the debate on independence for Scotland for a long time and am fairly familiar with all the lines of argument about the break up of the United Kingdom. As a Unionist it is natural for me to see them as making little sense. There is so much of myth, spin and prejudice surrounding the whole thing that I have more or less given up arguing about it.
It is of no use you see. There is Faith and there are articles of Faith and Creeds and beliefs and truths that may not be denied without the penalties of Heresy. There are saints and sinners, evil villains and wonderful people who do no wrong and to whom nothing sticks.
What then is the use of arguing about these things? If there is one thing which has struck me about the entire cacophony of voices, high and low- sometimes on both sides, it is the utter futility nowadays of attempting any sort of ‘debate’. I confess that at times I have been reduced to making fun of the absurdities I have so often seen online from people who, it seems, will believe anything that makes the UK look bad.
So many of the Opposition are truculent, arrogant, edgy and never wrong; even in the face of overwhelming evidence that what they say is not so. It’s all blithely waved away. The abuse they come out with is tinged with acid and bile, explosive in denial of all that may seem positive about the UK.
There is no neutral ground; I remain a Unionist because it seems to me that Nationalism rests on a set of premises which are either false or shaky. Some of them, such as the price of oil have been proven to be false whilst others have been so twisted out of shape that they are no longer recognisable. And the lies and stories that float around by people once honest tradesmen about their business, now experts on MI5 infiltration, are astonishing.
The White Paper as a prospectus for an independent country was an insult in the thinness of its provisions and its plans for the future- a bad joke which no serious mind could accept as capable of delivery.
But the chief premise that I cannot and do not accept is that the elected government of the United Kingdom has been lying to the people of Scotland about absolutely everything you could possibly think of. With 59 Scottish MPs, Scottish Prime Ministers and Ministers and Secretaries of State I am sure that somebody would have found out and said something before now.
So I assume that the pooling of resources across the united economy of the UK does right by Scotland; that her share of public spending is indeed higher per capita than in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. I have to because this notion is based on GERS, the Scottish Government’s own figures.
I also know that Scotland could be independent and I do not think that the figures worked out in the Scotland analysis, prepared by the Scotland Office are an exaggeration. Anybody and everybody must know that Independence would come with a price and it would be a high one; that is only a reasonable assumption because to think otherwise would be foolishness beyond belief.
Money does not grow on trees and things must be paid for. Before sneering and dismissing, the truth, or not, of this needs to be weighed in the balance.
Yet a wave of popular feeling has swept across Scotland, caution thrown to the winds, and the SNP rides high in the polls, borne up by optimism and enthusiasm that has no price tag, supported by sentiment, economic myth and national pride. The present system of running the Union has lost credibility in the minds of many people and it fuels a tidal wave of protest votes.
It is therefore very possible that the SNP will gain a large number of seats in the UK Parliament very soon and that the break up of the United Kingdom will follow within a relatively short time.
Down here in England where I live there is little of the fervour that is setting Scotland alight. Particularly there is nothing of the animosity and anger which characterises this campaign towards Scots in general; I cannot say the same about Scotland.
As anyone knows who has spent any time online in these matters this last few years, there is a strong core of anti-English feeling among Nationalist supporters in Scotland. Anti-Scottishness does not exist down here in the same degree though the odd idiot can always be trawled out of the stygian depths of the net from somewhere; the mass of the population of England appear to have bought far more into the project of Britain than the average 45 percenter north of the border. As far as I can detect there is a general feeling that we are all Brits and fellow citizens of the UK.
It’s somewhat strange since the English were dead against the Union when it was first mooted and rejected it three times between 1691 and 1703.
That fellow feeling among the British will go. It will be destroyed.
To some extent it has already been destroyed in Scotland; the unity of the British has gone and the seeds of division and difference have grown in bitter soil.
Scotland is not the place it was.
It feels hostile, volatile and unsafe.
It is an odd thing, but the strength of the Nationalists actually depends on one thing and one thing only.
The rest of the Union are reluctant to see it broken up and in order to avoid that they have been prepared to make concessions in the constitutional arrangements between the home nations in order to accommodate Nationalist demands. These have, of their very nature, weakened the UK as a unitary state.
The Nationalists believe that rUK is wanting to hang on to Scotland because Scotland is rich; because she subsidises rUK and that rUK, particularly England, would suffer if Scotland pulled her money out and went alone.
This is far from the case, but this is not the place to argue this matter; it would be useless in any event.
My point is that the SNP know this and will very shortly push rUK to a point where they no longer wish to sustain the Union- and then the sole leverage that the Nationalists do possess, will have gone.
Scotland will get her independence as rUK waves two fingers at her and says ‘Good riddance’.
Nicola Sturgeon will then get the Full Fiscal Autonomy [FFA] she has been backing away from and all that goes with it.
I won’t examine that scenario further save to say that the black hole is real. It happens every year. And it all hangs on the price of oil.
And fracking of course- which will happen.
It will have to.
And ‘Britain’, the political concept and dream of a Scottish dynasty, will have been destroyed.
But this destruction will not be all. The Scots will be foreigners to rUK and talk of social union will be nonsense; that feeling of one-ness and unity within these islands will have been subjected to a destruction which would not be reversed. More than that, the dislike which thousands of Scots feel for their fellow citizens south of the border, unreciprocated right now, will be returned with interest.
Yet in me there is a doubt because I always treat fanaticism with suspicion. The fanatic has a weakness and it shows in his or her behaviour.
Why do they shout so loud? Why do they sneer?
Why do they refuse to accept facts and figures, cry them down as propaganda and close their ears and eyes to all that does not favour their side?
It took me a while to realise it.
In each of them is a grain of fear and doubt and they must shout loud to drown it out so that even they cannot hear it.
They cannot even allow dissent in their own core because it might crack in its fragility.
They have to keep up grievance, momentum, the party atmosphere, the flags, the displays- and not allow time to think.
People must be caught up in an exciting whirl of protest, combat on social media, insulting the opposing side, ostentatious patriotism and even in hectoring enemies; anything that distracts from the reality of what is actually happening.
Their support is soft.
In them is destruction and the will to destroy like the Vandals breaking the gates of Rome, pausing momentarily to wonder at the august appearance of the Senate before they slew its members.
Yet they doubt. How can they not?
With the IFS, the markets, big business, finance, the price of oil and Scotland’s black hole all staring at them, and the proven feet of clay of the SNP- how can they not doubt?
So they doubt.
If they doubt, then non-fanatics must mak siccar’ and buy the time for their fellow citizens to think. Vote by the wheel on 7 May and send them homeward to think again.
Doubt is the friend of sanity, reason, and in this instance, of the United Kingdom.
Think well on it.
‘Gramus’
