Forever is a long long time

Tweet Over the weekend, Cameron set out to make it clear that a vote for an independent Scotland is irrevocable.  Strictly speaking, it’s not entirely true; I can think of no good reason why an attempt to recreate the union a generation or three hence would necessarily be ruled out if it appeared to be in the best interests of all concerned.  But in practice, once countries have gained their independence, they invariably decide to keep it, and there is no reason why Scotland would be any different.

That means, of course, that the referendum is not an even-sided contest in one sense.  A decision to remain in the union in this stage does not settle the issue anywhere near as definitively as a decision to leave, even though the unionists seem to speak as though it does. 

Much of what I’ve heard from the Westminster elite during the referendum campaign brings to mind the words of the late Iain McLeod at the time of rapid decolonisation, when he said that people tend to prefer self-government to good government.  It's true, but there’s also a very colonial attitude in the statement, with its implication that ‘good government’ depended on continuing to be part of the empire as was.

And that attitude, albeit unspoken, seems still to permeate the debate from the Westminster side in Scotland.  The Old Etonian and Oxbridge elite which still largely runs the UK really neither understands why anybody might want things to be different nor believes that anyone else can ‘do’ government as well as them.  This lack of understanding at such a basic level has been a huge handicap for the ‘no’ side; it’s as though the Establishment for many months simply assumed that it was as obvious to everyone else as it was to them that the status quo is natural and inevitable.

One might think that a ruling elite which saw the loss, during the twentieth century, of huge swathes of its territory and population might have learned by now that the sky doesn’t fall in as a consequence.  But their increasingly wild and incredible forecasts of “financial meltdown” and other forms of disaster at the thought of a mere 8% of the population going its own way indicate either that they have learned nothing or else that they really don’t believe most of what they are saying.  I tend to the latter interpretation; they may be stuck in outdated attitudes, but I don’t, on the whole, consider them stupid.

Apparently, Wellington never actually said that “The Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton”, but that doesn’t mean that the alumni of that college and other similar institutions don’t end up with a certain feeling of superiority, and a belief that they are born to govern the rest of us.  Whilst they are trying to persuade the Scots that independence would be bad for them, I suspect that it isn’t really concern for what is or is not good for the Scots which drives them.  Their driver probably isn’t even about what’s good or bad for the UK as a whole either, beyond their belief that their continued control is obviously a good thing.  Their problem is that a break-up of the UK challenges what they see as the natural order of things, and that includes both the UK’s role in the world and their own role in the UK.  

And that’s a pretty good reason for anyone to vote yes.