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Friday 5 September 2008

Shared Opinion

If Scotland is to be independent, then why not London? And good luck to what’s left

True, Holyrood still mainly attracts a fairly poor calibre of jumped-up councillor Schmo (note that even the SNP’s rising talent still heads to Westminster) but time might change that, and independence might not. Scotland has a robust internal debate, far-reaching powers over public services, and some powers over tax. Tinker with the Union by all means, but end it? What is the point? There is little for Scotland to want that it doesn’t already have.

And yet, sooner or later, that referendum is going to come. It’s like a bleak, closing-time argument in a pub that nobody but the bampots want, but nobody else has the guts to stop. Some suggest we need a UK-wide referendum, so the whole Union can be saved or damned. Ye Gods, must we? Have we really the stomach for the hellish UKIPishness of that? English separatism is even more nonsensical than its Scottish counterpart. From the blogs and the messageboards and the letters in newspapers, suddenly, there are Englishmen who genuinely seem to think that jettisoning Scotland would improve their lives. For a Scot, that’s terrifying.

The urge for Scottish independence merely baffles me. The urge for English independence, fringe as it is, I find genuinely offensive. Does that sound ludicrous to anybody who isn’t a fellow chippy Caledonian? Could be. But Scottish independence merely advocates separatism. English independence advocates exclusion. It takes this great United Kingdom we’ve all made, and it sets about kicking people out of it.

Damn you. I won’t go. And look, England doesn’t really subsidise Scotland. Please stop saying that. It doesn’t help. In truth, London and the South-east subsidises everywhere else. The Barnett formula may need a little work, but if there’s a coherent moral case that my London Scottish taxes should benefit Northumberland and Cornwall more than they benefit Sutherland and Strathclyde, I’ve yet to hear it.

So, I’ve been thinking. How to make the English care? I mean, really care? How can we make sensible English as keen on the Union as sensible Scots? Here’s a plan. A modest proposal. If the referendum really is coming, if the loons of north and south really are going to team up and try to force the end of this Union upon us, let us take it all a little further. More options. Not just an independent Scotland, but an independent London, too.

More articles from: Hugo Rifkind | this section

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