Spectator letters: In defence of the EU, the Welsh and Mary Wakefield

Breaking the unions

Sir: By the time this letter appears we shall know whether the land of my birth has separated from the land of my life. I hope not. But is there not an uncanny parallel between the rise of the Scottish desire to quit England and the English desire to quit Europe? The same arguments about control from a city outside the nation; about elites and technocrats dictating to and imposing upon a sturdy independent people; the belief that outside the union (with England, with European partners) a radiant future beckons; endless columns, pamphlets and books explaining why rule from London/Brussels must be overthrown; and a charismatic, one-liner leader worshipped by his followers and given uncritical support by the BBC and other media. For 25 years the Scots have been told with increasing intensity that union with England is a bad thing, and the English have been told that being in Europe is like being ‘shackled to a corpse’, to use Douglas Carswell’s metaphor.

If, as I hope, the United Kingdom is still around, I wonder if all the ultras of the anti-EU crusade will pause for thought. I doubt it.
Dr Denis Macshane

London SW1

Lay off the Welsh, Toby

Sir: Writing as a Welshman, and a strong unionist and former Conservative MP, to me it was always obvious that Labour’s wheeze of devolution was a self-seeking racket, designed to contain nationalism and embed socialist administrations in Wales and Scotland in perpetuity. The racket has rebounded on them, for devolution has only served to nourish the nationalist appetite. The cause of Union is not helped when your associate editor, Toby Young, a self-styled ‘munificent Englishman’, takes gratuitous potshots against the Welsh and the Welsh language (Status Anxiety, 13 September).

Mr Young casts the Welsh as being the ‘chippiest in Europe’: ‘quarrelsome… hobbits’.