Edison Chen
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In his recent Hugo Young lecture about Scottish independence, Alex Salmond used some of the lines of Robert Burns, which was predictable of the Nationalist leader, and, which was more unexpected, he quoted GK Chesterton, a quintessentially English writer. On the future of the Union, said Scotland's first minister, he was reminded of Chesterton's reference to "the people of England who have not spoken yet".
That they have not. As the SNP leader has wrangled with Downing Street about the nature and timing of a referendum in Scotland, the arguments about the future of the United Kingdom have been framed almost exclusively in terms of the hopes, fears and desires of the minority of Britons who live north of the border. The majority of the citizens of the United Kingdom – the people of England – have been treated as an irrelevance, a nuisance or an afterthought. The people of Wales and those of Northern Ireland also have a major interest in the future of the UK and have likewise been ignored.
It has been so for years. The presumption among politicians of nearly every stripe has been that the Union Question only animates Scots and is for Scots alone to answer. While expressing a polite interest in what the rest of the UK might think, this remains the stance of Mr Salmond who says: "The future of Scotland is for Scotland alone to determine." In taking this position, he has some strange bedfellows in other parties. I recently suggested to a senior Tory that it would only be fair to give England the chance to have a say on whether it wanted independence from Scotland. He spluttered that this was a mad idea because "the Union is not an issue" for the English. This scoffing response to the idea that the voters of England might be consulted may have been coloured by the fact that he is one of the many Scottish Tories who have taken refuge in English seats in the Commons, an escape from their party's unpopularity north of the border that will no longer be available if the two countries go their separate ways.
The English have themselves to blame for this lack of interest in their opinion among the politicians. That Scottish Tory was broadly right, at least about the past; the future of the Union hasn't been a hot issue south of the border. Some people have been exercised about the imbalances created by the devolution settlement, but it is fair to say that the "West Lothian question" has been a minority passion. The campaign for an English Parliament claims to have hundreds of thousands of supporters, but it has thus far not managed to rouse them on to the streets. As an issue with voters in England, the future of the Union has for obvious reasons always had much lower salience than it has in Scotland. That, though, is surely going to change as the arguments come to a head. Indeed, there is some evidence that the prospect of a referendum in Scotland is already beginning to concentrate the minds of English voters on what sort of bargain they get from the Union.
An ICM poll for the Guardian, published last week, had a 55% majority of Scottish respondents agreeing with the SNP leader that "Scotland's future is a matter for the Scottish people alone". In England and Wales, two-thirds of those surveyed thought: "Scotland's future is very important for the whole UK and so should not be settled without the people of England and Wales being consulted in a referendum too." Tory-leaning voters were especially emphatic about that, three-quarters of them saying the fate of the Union should be decided by everyone in the Union.
It would be wrong, though, to conclude that the people of England want their own referendum in order to try to hold Scotland in the Union against its will. The opposite would be closer to the truth. Another recent poll, by YouGov for Prospect, indicated that only a small minority of English voters would be all that bothered by a break-up. Most were relaxed, and rather a lot positively embraced, the idea of a divorce. By 52% to 32%, English voters favoured either maximum devolution for Scotland or independence – a bigger margin of support for the SNP prospectus than there is in Scotland itself.
Research by the Institute for Public Policy Research suggests some reasons why. The number of people in England identifying themselves as English rather than British is rising and with it is a growing feeling that England gets a raw deal from the Union. There is English irritation about the financial deal that allocates more public spending per head to Scotland. In my experience, a sense of unfairness is felt most keenly in northern England where people look on with understandable annoyance at the superior political clout and more generous cash transfers enjoyed by the Scots.
As the debate about the Union grows more intense, an English resentment that has simmered for years could well come to a boiling point. The YouGov poll found the English feel that the Scots get a better deal from the Union by a whopping margin of 11 to 1.
Also influencing English attitudes towards the Union is the belief that England could get on very well without Scotland. On the rare occasions when any politician bothers to address the English on the Union, they usually contend that it enhances global influence. This is not an argument that the voters buy into. Less than a fifth of English voters think that Scottish independence would diminish the rest of Britain's clout in the world. Without Scotland, the UK would shrink fairly dramatically in geographic size, but not all that much in terms of population. There are roughly 5.5 million Scots, which is rather less than the population of London. The ranking on the economic world league table would not much change. England and Scotland already play their football and rugby in separate teams. The departure of Scotland might make it a bit harder to justify having a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, but that has been an anomaly for years now and yet we have somehow contrived to hold on to it. YouGov found that more than two-thirds of English respondents felt that the departure of Scotland would make no difference at all to the rest of Britain's international standing.
Opinion may shift towards a warmer attitude about the Union when the debate is fully engaged, but sentiment could also jump in the other direction if the English feel any new relationship is being dictated entirely on Scottish terms. If Scotland moves towards independence, there will be some very contentious negotiations about the divorce settlement. Should an independent Scotland continue to use sterling and can the Bank of England remain the lender of last resort for Scottish banks? That sort of question can't be just for Scots to answer. The English, Welsh and people of Northern Ireland are entitled to have an opinion on that and many other issues that will fundamentally affect their future.
This places David Cameron in a double bind. He already knows that he and his party, such a marginalised rump in Scotland, are not very persuasive advocates for the Union there. If he denies England any voice, he will also be setting his face against feeling south of the border, feeling that is especially intense among his own supporters. Mr Cameron, who leads a party that is still at least nominally "Conservative and Unionist", has nightmares when he contemplates going down in history as the prime minister who presided over the break-up of the Union. But I sense that a growing number of his English MPs share the views of most of England's voters: they would be indifferent or even enthusiastic about separation from Scotland.
Ed Miliband and senior Labour figures have a different nightmare: losing the chunk of Labour MPs that Scotland sends to Westminster. If they are to save them, it will not be enough to persuade Scots that there is continuing value to the Union. Labour will have to address the harder task of convincing the English too.
Paradoxically, though, the attitudes of England may not be entirely good news for the cause of Scottish independence in the long run. The Nationalists have historically fed on and fuelled Scottish resentment about "alien" English rule from London. In the past, Mr Salmond has referred to Westminster as "a government of occupation" on Scots. In recent times, the SNP has endeavoured to offer a more positive account of why Scotland ought to choose independence, but nationalism still veers to arguments about casting off the "English yoke" and leans heavily on Braveheartish symbols. The SNP leader would like to stage the referendum in 2014, the 700th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn, one of those rare Scottish victories over England on the battlefield when Robert the Bruce and his stubborn warriors defeated a large and haughty force of English knights.
Arrogant English opposition towards the break-up of the Union might very well play into Mr Salmond's hands. But blissful indifference among the English? Eager relish even? That may be trickier for him to handle. The English saying that they'd love to see the back of Scotland might just make cussed Scots determined to stay.
That they have not. As the SNP leader has wrangled with Downing Street about the nature and timing of a referendum in Scotland, the arguments about the future of the United Kingdom have been framed almost exclusively in terms of the hopes, fears and desires of the minority of Britons who live north of the border. The majority of the citizens of the United Kingdom – the people of England – have been treated as an irrelevance, a nuisance or an afterthought. The people of Wales and those of Northern Ireland also have a major interest in the future of the UK and have likewise been ignored.
It has been so for years. The presumption among politicians of nearly every stripe has been that the Union Question only animates Scots and is for Scots alone to answer. While expressing a polite interest in what the rest of the UK might think, this remains the stance of Mr Salmond who says: "The future of Scotland is for Scotland alone to determine." In taking this position, he has some strange bedfellows in other parties. I recently suggested to a senior Tory that it would only be fair to give England the chance to have a say on whether it wanted independence from Scotland. He spluttered that this was a mad idea because "the Union is not an issue" for the English. This scoffing response to the idea that the voters of England might be consulted may have been coloured by the fact that he is one of the many Scottish Tories who have taken refuge in English seats in the Commons, an escape from their party's unpopularity north of the border that will no longer be available if the two countries go their separate ways.
The English have themselves to blame for this lack of interest in their opinion among the politicians. That Scottish Tory was broadly right, at least about the past; the future of the Union hasn't been a hot issue south of the border. Some people have been exercised about the imbalances created by the devolution settlement, but it is fair to say that the "West Lothian question" has been a minority passion. The campaign for an English Parliament claims to have hundreds of thousands of supporters, but it has thus far not managed to rouse them on to the streets. As an issue with voters in England, the future of the Union has for obvious reasons always had much lower salience than it has in Scotland. That, though, is surely going to change as the arguments come to a head. Indeed, there is some evidence that the prospect of a referendum in Scotland is already beginning to concentrate the minds of English voters on what sort of bargain they get from the Union.
An ICM poll for the Guardian, published last week, had a 55% majority of Scottish respondents agreeing with the SNP leader that "Scotland's future is a matter for the Scottish people alone". In England and Wales, two-thirds of those surveyed thought: "Scotland's future is very important for the whole UK and so should not be settled without the people of England and Wales being consulted in a referendum too." Tory-leaning voters were especially emphatic about that, three-quarters of them saying the fate of the Union should be decided by everyone in the Union.
It would be wrong, though, to conclude that the people of England want their own referendum in order to try to hold Scotland in the Union against its will. The opposite would be closer to the truth. Another recent poll, by YouGov for Prospect, indicated that only a small minority of English voters would be all that bothered by a break-up. Most were relaxed, and rather a lot positively embraced, the idea of a divorce. By 52% to 32%, English voters favoured either maximum devolution for Scotland or independence – a bigger margin of support for the SNP prospectus than there is in Scotland itself.
Research by the Institute for Public Policy Research suggests some reasons why. The number of people in England identifying themselves as English rather than British is rising and with it is a growing feeling that England gets a raw deal from the Union. There is English irritation about the financial deal that allocates more public spending per head to Scotland. In my experience, a sense of unfairness is felt most keenly in northern England where people look on with understandable annoyance at the superior political clout and more generous cash transfers enjoyed by the Scots.
As the debate about the Union grows more intense, an English resentment that has simmered for years could well come to a boiling point. The YouGov poll found the English feel that the Scots get a better deal from the Union by a whopping margin of 11 to 1.
Also influencing English attitudes towards the Union is the belief that England could get on very well without Scotland. On the rare occasions when any politician bothers to address the English on the Union, they usually contend that it enhances global influence. This is not an argument that the voters buy into. Less than a fifth of English voters think that Scottish independence would diminish the rest of Britain's clout in the world. Without Scotland, the UK would shrink fairly dramatically in geographic size, but not all that much in terms of population. There are roughly 5.5 million Scots, which is rather less than the population of London. The ranking on the economic world league table would not much change. England and Scotland already play their football and rugby in separate teams. The departure of Scotland might make it a bit harder to justify having a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, but that has been an anomaly for years now and yet we have somehow contrived to hold on to it. YouGov found that more than two-thirds of English respondents felt that the departure of Scotland would make no difference at all to the rest of Britain's international standing.
Opinion may shift towards a warmer attitude about the Union when the debate is fully engaged, but sentiment could also jump in the other direction if the English feel any new relationship is being dictated entirely on Scottish terms. If Scotland moves towards independence, there will be some very contentious negotiations about the divorce settlement. Should an independent Scotland continue to use sterling and can the Bank of England remain the lender of last resort for Scottish banks? That sort of question can't be just for Scots to answer. The English, Welsh and people of Northern Ireland are entitled to have an opinion on that and many other issues that will fundamentally affect their future.
This places David Cameron in a double bind. He already knows that he and his party, such a marginalised rump in Scotland, are not very persuasive advocates for the Union there. If he denies England any voice, he will also be setting his face against feeling south of the border, feeling that is especially intense among his own supporters. Mr Cameron, who leads a party that is still at least nominally "Conservative and Unionist", has nightmares when he contemplates going down in history as the prime minister who presided over the break-up of the Union. But I sense that a growing number of his English MPs share the views of most of England's voters: they would be indifferent or even enthusiastic about separation from Scotland.
Ed Miliband and senior Labour figures have a different nightmare: losing the chunk of Labour MPs that Scotland sends to Westminster. If they are to save them, it will not be enough to persuade Scots that there is continuing value to the Union. Labour will have to address the harder task of convincing the English too.
Paradoxically, though, the attitudes of England may not be entirely good news for the cause of Scottish independence in the long run. The Nationalists have historically fed on and fuelled Scottish resentment about "alien" English rule from London. In the past, Mr Salmond has referred to Westminster as "a government of occupation" on Scots. In recent times, the SNP has endeavoured to offer a more positive account of why Scotland ought to choose independence, but nationalism still veers to arguments about casting off the "English yoke" and leans heavily on Braveheartish symbols. The SNP leader would like to stage the referendum in 2014, the 700th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn, one of those rare Scottish victories over England on the battlefield when Robert the Bruce and his stubborn warriors defeated a large and haughty force of English knights.
Arrogant English opposition towards the break-up of the Union might very well play into Mr Salmond's hands. But blissful indifference among the English? Eager relish even? That may be trickier for him to handle. The English saying that they'd love to see the back of Scotland might just make cussed Scots determined to stay.
