If you want to save the Union…

On 5th May 2011, Scotland voted in a majority SNP government therefore sometimes during this parliament there will be a referendum on independence.

I’m sitting on the fence over the issue of independence or a union. There is a liberal argument for independence. No government, no country should be able to tell another, how to run its own affairs especially one that is so different from the other. England’s values and needs are so very different from Scotland. England is a much more Conservative country whereas Scotland is very much a country on the centre-left.

When i was about 12 (in 2000) and learning about the Scottish wars of independence, then the Union of the Crowns and finally the Act of Union which united the parliaments of Scotland & England, I thought the Union was the natural, logical and right thing to happen.

It was right because at the time, there was no way that the English were going to give up trying to conquer Scotland. There was no way that Scotland was going to stop being anti-English. No way were the Scots going to try pulling things like blackmailing the English parliament and the monarch to sign a piece of legislation by threatening to pull out Scottish armed forces from a war that the English were fighting. To me the only way out was a union. I do not think the union settlement was right however which is why we have the current UK limbo state.

I fear those tensions will arise once more if Scotland were to go independent. I have to admit I still sort of have some romantic attachment which I don’t think my generation in Scotland does. I well remember sitting in class watching England play in the World cup in japan and my classmates supporting anyone but England whilst I was secretly cheering on England. This might be friendly rivalry like siblings but with countries who have such a tormented history, I don’t think you can’t rely on that being the case.

I think the last Labour government made a very big mistake when it came to the governance of the UK. They cooked up devolution on the back of a napkin and I’m sad to say that this government is continuing that approach. The mistake, treating the home nations as individual nations & not part of a bigger entity.

It is of course right that Scotland decides how Scotland is run but treating Scotland each as special cases and not part of a bigger united kingdom will always lead to independence. The natural state of any nation is independence. If you treat Scotland as separate or any of the other home nations as separate nations whose governance won’t affect any other home nation then independence is an inevitability. If you treat us as a nation within a bigger state then the UK might just last.

The way the UK is governed is for the UK to decide not each individual nation deciding how they each want to be governed.