A creaking and ineffective British constitution could be the first casualty should Scotland achieve independence. Bram Gieben debunks some of the myths circulating in the independence debate.
If you were to judge by the press coverage of the last few years, you could be forgiven for assuming that the following is what “everybody knows”:
The recent election victory for the Scottish national party shows most Scots are in favour of independence. The Scots are subsidy junkies, enjoying benefits paid for by English taxes, and would lose out if they gained fiscal independence. If Scotland voted for independence, they would not get the oil, which in any case is running out. Actually, most English people are not much affected by what happens in Scotland. It’s a matter for the Scots: “if they want independence, good luck to them”.
Well, most of these statements are false, and the rest are highly contestable, with powerful arguments on the other side. Let's start with the last Scottish election.
The SNP won its election victory because it is a well-organised social democratic party which had run Scotland competently for 4 years. The Scottish Labour party fought a terrible campaign, failing even to get most of its leadership team elected. But if Scottish Labour get their act together, they could certainly win the next Scottish election. It is important to understand that the Scots vote very differently when it comes to UK elections: they continue to send a majority of Labour MP’s to the UK Parliament, but vote more tactically in their own backyard
There has never been a majority in Scotland in favour of independence. Polls vary with how the question is asked, and with changes in the public mood. (The Scots feel a bit more confident when their football team is doing well.) The number of Scots who say they would vote for independence has varied between 20 and 40 per cent. For many of them the crucial question is whether they would be better off economically. It has been remarked that this shows the Scots have no burning desire to leave the UK: when Ireland and India fought for independence, the passion was not about living standards
The facts about whether England subsidises Scotland are interesting. It is true that some areas of the UK receive more public spending per capita than others. But the biggest winners are not the Scots: the real winners are the people of London.
There simply is no agreement about how far the amount of money raised in Scotland covers the annual block grant and other funds spent on Scotland by the Exchequer. For one thing, it depends on whether the oil revenues going south every year are included in the calculation. For another, the whole of Britain has been running for decades with a spending gap in which public borrowing makes up the difference between what the government spends and what it receives in tax. It has been argued that Scotland alone carries a lower proportion of public debt than the UK as a whole, and that in the four years to 2008-9 it actually had a budget surplus
On oil, the SNP used to have a clever campaign slogan that Scotland was the only country to have discovered oil and become poorer. The discovery of oil by Norway, a nation of comparable size to Scotland, has utterly transformed living standards there. Investors are now buying Norwegian Kronor alongside Swiss Francs as amongst the safest currencies in the world.
In the UK, there can be no doubt that since the time of Margaret Thatcher oil revenues have been an enormous source of funding for the British State, and that most of this has not been spent on Scotland. Recent new oil finds west of Shetland indicate that the oil has by no means run out, and the Scottish government has recently published a legal opinion from academic authorities in Scotland that the Scottish continental shelf, containing about 90 per cent of current UK oilfields, would belong to Scotland on gaining independence.
On the subject of English attitudes, it is quite wrong to think that England would be very little affected by Scottish independence or even a radical increase in devolution. (The so-called Devo Max would mean full fiscal autonomy and Scottish control of almost everything apart from defence and foreign policy). If Scotland became independent, there would be a permanent Conservative majority in England, until the party system evolved.
The arrival of Devo Max in Scotland would have huge knock-on effects on Wales and Northern Ireland, probably resulting in demands for more autonomy and pressure to create a federal system in Britain, including an English Parliament.
Actually, the political settlement in Scotland could be a chance to overhaul a British constitution widely recognised as creaking and ineffective, and rethink how a currently discredited democracy could work better in these islands. About time, too.
This post will also be published shortly on a political blog readers might find interesting.
Bram Gieben Friday 27 January 2012
Bram Gieben is a Staff Tutor in Social Sciences for the OU in Scotland.
