Does the credit crunch weaken the case for Scottish independence?

TevorsDen

HBOS is predominantly English is it not, at best Anglo Scots ... but anyway even is we had an independent Scotland all the major companies and businesses theoretically based there would have to chose exactly where their head office was as part of any settlement.

But to answer your question it probably has totally knocked on the head any idea of Scottish independence. Will it do for the SNP though?

I think it will. Salmond - if he is to survive - MUST
1 - nail this disaster down to bad management by Brown
and
2 - contend that if there had been an independent Scotland there would have been far superior regulation.
plus maybe
3 - point to another small country Ireland which is surviving (at the moment)

Lets see what he does.

But in any case all other things being equal - what this shows up is the amazing amount of needless duplication that an independent Scotland would generate.

Gavin

Economic arguments for and against independence miss the point that nationalism determines economic perceptions, and not the other way round. When nationalism conflicts with economic reality, the contradiction will be denied or ignored for emotional reasons. So by all means keep your eyes open for ammunition to be used in anti-nationalist arguments. But let the sneeps expose themselves on this one by making it an issue first.

Chris

There is no case for Scottish independence, so it's hard to see how it can have been weakened.

Susan Hill

There is no case but why don`t we just let them become independent all the same, and find out the hard way ? You know how it is - you don`t learn a lesson, however much someone else tries to teach it to you, half as well as you learn it by bitter experience.

Forlornehope

There is a rather good book "How the Scots invented the modern World" by Arthur Herman. While demonstrating the impact of the Scots since 1707 it should make every Scot proud of their nation and highly resistant to the blandishments of the nationalists.

William

Fraser, the quote wasn't from an anonymous banker but from an economist called John McLaren. At least if I've read the article correctly.

I would hope the crisis would shake some of the delusions from Nationalists minds - Scotland as a bountiful country with too much money, if anything, and everyone having a job that they love, etc, etc. Never any mention of Scottish share of UK debt, welfare bill, etc. Going by the Nationalist comments in the Scotsman article, though, the fantasy remains intact for some. I would suspect and hope that for a lot of the population, however, it will serve as a stark reminder of the importance of the Union.

I agree with TevorsDen about needless duplication. If it was next to impossible to extract HBOS from Lloyds then I don't know how the Nationalists can suggest a Scotland-England divorce will be anything other than expensive, complicated and painful.

Gavin

There are plenty of Scots- like me - who reject the SNP's simplistic Anglophobia. Treating us all as if we are nationalist bigots who require a dose of reality to bring us to our senses is counterproductive. I don't imagine that will worry an equivalent narrow-minded English nationalist, but if you value the UK and a British identity it should. Leave the childish national antagonisms to the SNP and their cohorts.

David Lindsay

Not only national sovereignty, but also the United Kingdom as such, have been significantly secured today.

The Bank of Scotland, 1695's definitive break with usury and entry into modern economics, the last institution to have been created by the old Scottish Parliament and to survive down to the present day, the pioneer of overdrafts and bank notes, is today effectively under the control of the British Government.

So too is its great historic rival, the Hanoverian Royal Bank of Scotland, set up to counteract the Bank of Scotland's Jacobitism, a rivalry which long extended to hording each other's notes in order to turn up with them, annually, at each others headquarters, there to demand, as "the bearer", to be paid "on demand the sum" stated on each of them.

The circumstances giving rise to the Union of 1707 have effectively arisen again, and have been addressed in pretty much exactly the same way.

Much the same people in Scotland overreached themselves, and that for the very same reason (the desire to be world players), so they have had to be rescued from London, itself acting under the direction of London-based Scots, but with everything that being rescued entails in terms of future control.

And why not? Remember, oh Scotland, that while there is the Union, neither the Bank of Scotland nor the Royal Bank of Scotland will ever go bust, just as you will always have a National Health Service, old age pensions, and all the rest of it.

Effective central government control of the Bank of Scotland, and outright central government ownership of the Royal Bank of Scotland, are very clear reminders of that.

More than that, they are constitutional safeguards of it, from today an integral part of the constitutional settlement that is the United Kingdom, a settlement now significantly stronger, safer and more secure than it was even yesterday.

How could any conservative and Unionist be anything other than delighted?

mac

Gavin, you say "There are plenty of Scots- like me - who reject the SNP's simplistic Anglophobia". Of course that's true, but for very many people south of the border it seems that most Scots who aren't SNP instead contribute to the size of the Labour majority at Westminster and a disproportionate number of powerful Scots ministers there. Politically, Scotland is so unlike England - how many MPs are in Scotland representing the second biggest party at Westminster? - that many in England can now readily countenance a split. Brown's recent discovery of his Britishness is so risible that it serves only to accentuate the feeling of being taken for a ride.

Contributing to the developing sense of alienation is a growing perception that the partisan Scots Raj-istas are inclined to pork-barrel politicking: the populace of towns with British banking HQs located in England believe that the priority for the member for Edinburgh South is preserving jobs in Gogar and Gyle above all else. Similarly, people in Plymouth feel that, ultimately, naked political considerations will see Rosyth preferred to Devonport Dockyard as the Navy is shrunk to a tiny size to help find funds for more of the Fife PM's social engineering sacred cows.

David Lindsay

Mac, the real oddity where England and Scotland are concerned is that issue-by-issue public opinion is practically identical, yet they vote in totally different ways, and all attempts to explain this are ultimately just guesswork.

Gavin

Mac, sorry, but regional particularism has always meant that Scotland and Wales have provided more than their fair share of Labour MP's and ministers - the same can easily be said for the representation of south-east England in the Tories. The demise of the Tory party north of the border was almost entirely due to the legacy of the introduction of the Poll Tax, where exceptional treatment was repaid by exception voting patterns; the fact that this has persisted is, to some degree, due to the failure of Conservatism to transcend what is rightly or wrongly perceived as Little Englanderism. As it happens, while I'm no fan of Brown, his Britishness is genuine, and Labour remain a unionist party. The pork barrel stuff is true, but then the corruption of Labour in its single-party heartlands of north-east England has to be seen to be believed - it's not specifically a Scots/English issue. The naval cutbacks are another issue - the spending policies which are seeing a crisis in defence spending which will hit local facilities no matter what. The real solution is to revise the tendency of both Labour and Tory governments to underfund their preferred military strategies. Meanwhile let's not get sucked into self-destructive nationalist antagonisms on the back of the Telegraph's reflexive 'anti-Scots in a Labour government' attitudes. I appreciate that the Anglophobia and victim-culture agenda represented by the SNP provokes an understandable response from many English people, but the only people to gain from inflaming nationalist passions are the nationalist bigots on either side of the border. Why let them determine the nature of the debate?

Craig Strachan

Hmm. I am also a Unionist, but seeing as we are in the realm of speculation: if Scotland had been independent, would Bank of Scotland - the solid, stolid, conservatively managed bank we remember ruefully - ever have merged with the Halifax in the first place? And wouldn't it have been better for Scotland had it not?

mac

Gavin, at root, I suspect that my own hymn sheet is pretty much the same as yours. And having lived in the North East during the Poulson/T Dan Smith years I agree with your opinion of 'Our Friends in the North'.

Mike

When the island of Ireland was divided up in 1922, the process was described as partition. Why is it that the planned division of the island of Britain by the Scottish separatists is not described as partition? Because partition it quite simply would be - border posts north of Carlise and Berwick, and passport checks, and differential pricing of goods and services north and south of the border. Just like Ireland.

Craig Strachan

Mike: "border posts north of Carlise and Berwick"

No, Berwick would be reclaimed and would be on the Scottish side of the border fence.

Gavin

Craig, if we're going to indulge Scots nationalist irridentist fantasy, let's at least do it in style and to the maximum: return Cumbria to Greater Caledonia now!

Craig Strachan

Gavin: "return Cumbria to Greater Caledonia now!"

Nah, we don't want Carlisle. Who in their right mind would?

Mike

Craig -
Would the people of Berwick have any say in that? Or would you have them transferred to Edinburgh rule whether they liked it or not? Great way to start off independence - with a bit of honest to goodness imperialism. "Ve haff vays off making you Scottish...."

Craig Strachan

Mike:

"Would the people of Berwick have any say in that? "

I believe there are already semi-serious moves afoot in Berwick to enable them to have a say.

Michael

Sinn Fein always argued that it should be an all Ireland vote that should decide whether Ireland should be partitioned, and not just the vote of the people of North of Ireland. Maybe the decision to partition Britain should be decided by an all Britain vote rather than merely a referendum in the north of Britain only.

Actually, my Grandad was a Scot, so I would be eligible for a Scottish passport no doubt. In fact, half the population of England (and Wales even) probably has at least one Scot in their recent ancestry. We could all get Scottish passports then so that there would be more Scots outside Scotland than inside. Make a bit of a nonsense of Scottish "independence" then, wouldn't it.