Should Scotland be independent? I’d have thought that only a few people — most of them Scottish — would care enough about the question to come to a debate hosted by a think tank, but the Policy Exchange fight club was packed last night. The sole nationalist was the SNP’s Pete Wishart, allied with Sir Simon Jenkins making his English Nationalist points. Sir Malcolm Rifkind spoke against the motion, with yours truly his support act. As you might expect from a London audience, those opposed won easily. But two things struck me.
The first is Sir Malcolm’s eloquence. He was brilliant, better than Salmond, a reminder of what was cut dead in the 1997 election — perhaps never to grow again. When Wishart spoke of the 31 countries that have become independent in recent years, Malky went wild — they were all former dictatorships, he said, how could you make such a comparison? And is it so outrageous that Scotland doesn’t have its own government when England doesn’t either? If it did, it wouldn’t have to had put up with Gordon Brown.
More striking was Wishart expressing constant surprise at the way the debate was going. If this were a debate in Scotland, he said, it would be very different. He even suggested that the SNP would have filled the audience far better (this is what they do in Scotland, apparently). A Scot took issue with Wishart’s now-familiar complaint that Scotland has a Tory government it didn’t vote for. Is this any different from the North East? he asked. Any different from the Home Counties who had 13 years of a Labour government they didn’t vote for? Other questions included: who’d be a lender of last resort? How far would the military be scaled back? How can you fund yourself when the oil runs out? How would you apply for EU membership? What would Salmond have said if Fred the Shred had come asking for a bailout, as he did to Alistair Darling?
For years, Salmond has encountered almost no serious opposition in Scotland. But as the referendum debate draws near, he’s going to find the going gets far tougher. The calibre of opponent will get a lot higher. Searching questions will be asked, like: which of Scotland’s many problems will be solved by independence? The longer the debate is held, the clearer it will be that there is no answer.
Comments