Scotland’s day of reckoning - Another terrible beauty born?

Tomorrow the people of Scotland will vote on those most powerful and seductive ideas — the freedom to manage their own affairs and the intoxicating prospect of ending a relationship with a once-brutal and dominant neighbour that Scottish nationalists have, for centuries, described as exploitative, limiting, outdated, unwelcome, and a tarnished relic of a kind of Rudyard Kipling imperialism no longer acceptable, in Europe at least.

That something around half of Scots are prepared to break a link that has shaped their society, character, and history — and offered the kind of security a small country can only aspire to — shows how very strongly the idea of national independence, whatever that really means in this globalised 21st century, beats north of the Tweed.

That just as many Scots seem to prefer the devil they know to an untested and unproven future is testimony to the stability and prosperity many of them have enjoyed under Westminster’s rule. Even if the security offered by sterling and European Union membership influences enough Scots to vote to stay within the United Kingdom-accelerated devolution seems inevitable — and from a neutral standpoint it is hard not to think that this outcome represents the best of both worlds. Whatever the decision, a Rubicon has been crossed and bridges burnt to cinders. The ties that bind — or at least bound — England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland have been loosened in a way never before contemplated much less seen. There has not been a challenge to the unity of what the BBC once routinely described as the “Home Countries” since we secured, or as some would have it, asserted our independence nearly a century ago.

That the issue has reached this point must have especially profound implications for Northern Ireland, a society where a version of hopes at issue tomorrow has defined the faultline dividing that society since its inception. A vote for independence is likely to provoke an upsurge in John Bull nationalism — hardly an attractive prospect for anyone — which must have implications for the North’s on-a-drip-feed economy. Four out of five jobs there are dependent on funding from London and it seems unlikely that support would continue in a diminished United Kingdom.

A yes vote might also encourage those demanding a vote on Irish unity which would raise the possibility that this economy might be expected to pay for a 32-county Ireland by replacing the funding once delivered by London. A yes vote would probably strengthen the hand of English eurosceptics in any vote on England’s continued EU membership. The prospect of England quitting the EU has seismic implications for us. The declaration from Spain that it would oppose EU membership for an independent Scotland because of their fears over the Catalanonian independence movement cannot be discounted either.

Like nearly all nationalist movements, including our own, Scotland’s campaign for independence is fuelled by a volatile mixture of sincerity, fantasy, noble ambition, bitterness, determination, and chip-on-the-shoulder insecurity. These hopes beat fervently in myriad hearts despite the irrefutable and bloody evidence that nationalism, and religion too, are the catalysts for so much human tragedy. The Scottish nationalists have, like any movement fuelled by emotion, insisted that Scotland’s natural resources are abundant enough to support their ambitions, that they can continue to use sterling as their currency, and that an independent Scotland would be a welcome member of the EU. Those assertions are untested. So, if a friendly neighbour may offer a comparison, one where we learnt a very bitter lesson, Scots should consider how they might have fared had they been in our powerless position the night our tottering banks had to be rescued. Would they prefer to rely, as we had to, on the expensive kindness of strangers or on a relationship, for all its faults, that has stood the test of time?