The Union is safe

The Union is safe — at least if last night’s Spectator debate was anything to go by. The motion ‘It’s time to let Scotland go’ was defeated by 254 votes to 43. The SNP weren’t present (they demanded two representatives on the panel, and we refused), but independent nationalist Margo MacDonald opened the debate. I thought CoffeeHousers may be interested in a summary of proceedings.
 
1) Margo MacDonald (for the motion) focused on foreign misadventures: Scottish soldiers should not fight American wars with British guns that were a greater threat to their own side than to the enemy. Money saved would go to essential social security. She explained that very many teachers take food into schools to give to hungry pupils; that’s what’s going on north of the border. She said that independence need not inaugurate massive change: ‘An independent Scotland will look very much like the devolved Scotland right now; you won’t notice the difference.’ Her final analysis concentrated on identity. She wants the Scots to know who they are and recognise that it does not matter what other people call them. She conceded that Alex Salmond has ‘made a mess of the referendum to date’, but insisted that the cause of independence is sound. Scotland knows which powers it wants and why: they add up to sovereignty.

2) Sir Malcolm Rifkind (against) said that great leaders emerge when nations feel oppressed: look at Gandhi. But Scotland does not feel oppressed: that’s why it’s landed with Alex Salmond. And what is the cause of independence? Not education, housing or health: they’re already devolved. It can’t be agriculture or trade, because Salmond wants to stay in the EU. The only argument the SNP ever use is North Sea oil, which will be there for 30 years at most. Independence would be forever, not just for Christmas. Whatever decision is taken will last for the next 300 years. For the past 300 years, the UK has been seen as perhaps the best example of the rule of law, and as ancient enemies living together in friendship but with separate political and legal institutions.

3) Kelvin MacKenzie (for the motion). With a name like Kelvin Calder MacKenzie, I am anxious to persuade you that this proud Englishman is not anti-Scottish; but he does want to end this one-sided relationship. Scotland is wasteful, Kelvin said. ‘When my friend Andy Coulson’ was arrested by Scottish policemen, he was driven to the border and then, when the Scottish police took over, outriders were sent to run ahead of him. The money that the Scottish police wasted there is a small example of wider waste. In the 1970s, Treasury officials thought that Scotland could comfortably pay its own way, but not anymore. As Kelvin put it, ‘[The English] have plundered the best of everything; we can leave the dregs to others.’ Salmond is betting the wind farm on renewable energy. His Scotland will be dominated by the three Ms: McEwans, Mars bars and Money. But the financial services industry is, like the oil, on the slide. There was a time when putting the word Scotland in a business name was enough to reassure. Now we’ll find Royal Bank of Knightsbridge, and Croydon Widows. If there were to be independence, Scottish financiers would run south ‘as fast as their hairy legs will carry them’. And for the rest? Kelvin said that there should be a seven-year moratorium before Scots come down here looking for work. But the main question is: how are going to get rid of the Scots if polls show just 30 per cent support independence? But press ahead anyway and remember: the Welsh are next!

4) Iain Martin, ex-editor of The Scotsman (against) said that Kelvin moans about the Welsh and the Scots, but what does he feel about Scousers and Northerners? Or even Midlanders? Sooner or later, it will just be Kelvin MacKenzie in Weybridge. [Kelvin smiled and gave a double thumbs-up to the idea]. In fact, Scots are pretty small-c conservatives. Look at the Jubilee and Olympics, both celebrated in Scotland — imagine either event without the Union flag. This isn’t a choice between the past and the future: we can have both. It’s not that Scotland can’t be independent; of course it can. But this would bring dislocation and chaos for no gain.

5) Gerry Hassan (for the motion) says that Britain isn’t working for the British. Economic power is concentrated in London, the most unequal city in the world. Scots want to concentrate on inequality and poverty. They don’t want NHS privatizations, but they do want to talk about the shame of sectarianism. [He later observed that the sole Tory councillor in Glasgow was in the ‘Rangers part’ of the city]. Scotland needs independence to take a stand against the inexorable right-wing drift of British politics.

6) Rory Stewart MP (against) describes himself as half-Scottish, half-English. He said that however we dress this up it’s a project about splitting: countries, farms, families and ‘splitting people like me straight down the middle.’ And for what? English irritation at Scottish free eye tests? For 40 years, Salmond has had an economic vision — a strange one, which he presents as pragmatic. Actually, it’s a product of the late 1970s, when Scots believed their wealth was being drained into England. Stewart said, ‘It’s the product of a post-colonial imagination; it’s a vision 30 years out of date.’ Look at his speeches from the early 1980s, he’s repeating them: fantasies of national occupation and colonization, not sound economics. In the end, it’s a fantasy of smallness. It’s not a vision that Scots like Macaulay or Carlyle would have understood.
 
I’ll leave CoffeeHousers with one of the many anecdotes from Kelvin. He said that his surname — MacKenzie — was conferred on his family by an American serviceman who once employed his grandfather, David Calder. The young David was a ‘twinkle-toes’ and signed up to a Scottish dance troupe being run for American servicemen. But young David was told he had to change his name because no American would believe you were a Scot unless you had Mac in your name. So David Calder changed his name by deed poll to David MacKenzie.