Scottish yes vote would pose major risk for Northern Ireland

LAST Sunday’s YouGov opinion poll showing a lead for the yes side in the Scottish independence referendum, was a bowel- loosening moment for the British establishment. 

Unless the threat to the union, verily the United Kingdom itself, is answered at the ballot box tomorrow week there will be no ‘British’ establishment to speak of. The prime minister was at Balmoral with Queen Elizabeth for the weekend as the poll numbers came through, discomfitingly heralded by Rupert Murdoch on Twitter. Breakfast must have been glum. Ma’am was not amused.

Nothing will be the same after next Thursday, regardless. Profound change will come. If the referendum passes, an immediate constitutional crisis occurs. There is no clear pathway forward, and the questions for now unanswerable, are myriad. In the event of defeat, greater devolution is now certain to follow. Like the ‘Irish Question’ the issue of Scottish independence is unlikely to go away. For nearly 90 years from Daniel O’Connell, to Isaac Butt, Charles Stewart Parnell and on to John Redmond, it recurred insistently. In the Good Friday Agreement, the subsequent devolved administration and the calibrated but continuously open question of the position of Northern Ireland within the now contested union, as well as within the island of Ireland, continues contained, but not settled. A no vote in Scotland similarly settles nothing per se, and probably leaves everything unsettled in the longer run. ‘The concept of a ‘British’ establishment is an oxymoron. It is effectively English. Ironically the union was first proposed when Scotland’s King James VI ascended the English throne in 1603. It was the English parliament who rejected it. In his first speech at Westminster James opined there was “nothing comparable to the Union of the two ancient and famous Kingdoms”. Lest the point be lost, he majestically demanded that “what God hath conjoined then, let no man separate”. Fearful of carpet baggers coming south in the train of the Scottish king, as well as of free trade and cheap wool, parliament baulked. The union being voted on next week was not created until the reign of his great granddaughter Queen Anne; childless and the last Stuart to reign.