Scottish Independence

[Warspite]

Standby for dozens of links to obscure Croat Power websites.

[Sheilbh]

Because you don't have a clear cut, constitutionally protected division of powers that require a super majority to alter.  Scottish local authority is whatever the UK parliament feels like giving them this morning.

But your immediate assumption was the centre would end up gobbling up power. That's probably because it has in the US despite the fact you've got a clear cut constitution.

More generally from the definition I learned at law school I'm apparently a political constitutionalist not a legal one, though I was the only one

[Josquius]

I disagree on English nationalism emerging, I think it's rather in decline with it being regional identities that are re-emerging.
People in the English regions do tend to see themselves as English but don't underestimate how strong the Yorkshire, Cornish, north eastern (despite the lack of a name they can agree on post john hall) ,etc... identities are.

I just don't see an English parliament working at all. It would by and large just duplicate the british parliament and wouldn't give half of England any feeling of having devolution at all. The southern Tories would dominate and the north would be left to just gaze at Scotland and sigh.


As to the Tories being an English party.... We'll see. Let's not forget they got 17% of the Scottish vote last election. And with the lib dems having totally threw away their credibility as an alternative party and the SNP having shown themselves to be dangerous liars.... I think the Tories will be due to a few more seats in Scotland next time around.

[Sheilbh]

I disagree on English nationalism emerging, I think it's rather in decline with it being regional identities that are re-emerging.

I disagree. I think it's one of the reasons behind the rise of UKIP, but, as in Scotland, isn't necessarily a solely right-wing thing. See Billy Bragg.

People in the English regions do tend to see themselves as English but don't underestimate how strong the Yorkshire, Cornish, north eastern (despite the lack of a name they can agree on post john hall) ,etc... identities are.

I don't underestimate but I think devolution works better if it runs with identities people have not artificial ones drawn up by bureaucrats - we're not France

England is such an identity, so are the councils. I don't think these regions have any reality for people - I mean look at the map you posted and the partition of Wiltshire

Edit: Also I don't know the North-East at all, so I can't comment there. But I know the North-West and there was uproar when Southport got moved into Merseyside. I can't imagine that Cheshire and Lancashire would feel a great deal of joy at being run Manchester and Liverpool, far less that Cumbria feels any connection with them. But I think all of those areas do agree on Englishness.

I just don't see an English parliament working at all. It would by and large just duplicate the british parliament and wouldn't give half of England any feeling of having devolution at all. The southern Tories would dominate and the north would be left to just gaze at Scotland and sigh.

Not really. The only general elections that were swung by Scotland were in 64, 74 and 2010. You'd get the same sort of swings you normally get in UK elections in England - though other forces may emerge - in a similar way as Scotland will probably swing between Labour and SNP.

I've not seen any support anywhere outside the Labour-think tanks for regional assemblies and I think Labour's current policy offer of massively increased power for the Scottish Parliament and no settlement of the West Lothian one is bold.

As to the Tories being an English party.... We'll see. Let's not forget they got 17% of the Scottish vote last election. And with the lib dems having totally threw away their credibility as an alternative party and the SNP having shown themselves to be dangerous liars.... I think the Tories will be due to a few more seats in Scotland next time around.

And one MP. That 17% about half what they got in a bad year like 1979, for I think at least two elections there were no Tory MPs north of the border. It's not desolate of Tories but for a party that claims to represent the country it's pretty piss-poor.

Edit: And in the last general election the SNP only got around 19-20% I think. In the Scottish election they got over 40%, the Tories got around 12% despite their then leader Annabel Goldie being the star of the debates.

Having said that I actually agree. I think the Tories in Scotland are set for a bit of a (probably muted) revival. I think Ruth Davidson was one of the better performers for the No Campaign and impressed a lot of people. They may start to give her a look, plus the Tories seem willing to go further on devolution, if there's some accommodation for England, than Labour.

When she won the leadership her opponent (and the favourite) supported disestablishing the Scottish Tories and starting a new centre-right party with a CDU-CSU style relationship with the Tories. But I think if the Tories move to devolution of power for England that becomes kind of inevitable - Scottish Tories will have a different set of priorities and issues than English ones rather than having to broadly sit within the national party.

I've read a few people actually encouraging them to set up as a kind of ultra-liberal tax and spending cutting party which I think could work, especially given their liberal social policy (pro gay marriage) and that she's the first LGBT leader of a 'big' party. Which I think could have a certain appeal. If you're already doomed to being a minority party why not be one with a clear agenda and a set of beliefs. What's the point of trying to pose as a centrist, caring big tent party if you'll never attain that.

[Sheilbh]

Thoughtful piece by a former Blair (and Gillan) aide on Thatcher's weird, paradoxical legacy. I think he's a bit too sanguine about the SNP though:

John McTernan: Thatcher legacy influenced vote

by JOHN MCTERNAN
SCCOTTISH INDEPENDENCE: Scots who took advantage of Right to Buy voted for security of Union, writes John McTernan

In the end, it was Margaret Thatcher who won it for the Union. That may seem an odd thing to say when her name was invoked by so many on the Yes side to express why Scotland should quit the UK. But it's an uncomfortable truth that Margaret Thatcher made modern Scotland what it is today – a middle class, home-owning nation.

In 1979, half of all Scots lived in a council house. Thanks to the right to buy, we now have the same rate of home ownership as the rest of the country. Judging by the way that the schemes in the west of Scotland voted, if we'd still been a country in which the majority of us lived in social housing nation the referendum would have been a runaway victory for Yes.

That change in ownership had a profound political effect. As one activist said to me: "There's no stronger No than a bought council house." Which I found, when I was canvassing and knocking up, was absolutely true. The difference is that this new constituency of home owners did not then cleave to the Tories. Instead they abandoned them for the Labour Party and helped create a proto-New Labour alliance of working class and middle class Scots who first drove the Tories out of Scotland and then helped sweep New Labour to power.

The new middle classes became the largest class in Scotland in the 90s. They are why Scottish Labour received a swing of 3 per cent to it in 2010 even as the rest of the Labour Party was facing the third worst election defeat in its history. They have been wooed by the SNP who have assiduously developed an expensive middle class welfare state – the free stuff only benefits them. But the middle classes simply refused to back the breaking up of Britain.

In some ways this is a very Scottish story – the rapid development of an urban middle class benefiting from Scotland's reindustrialisation as a knowledge economy. In other ways it is reminiscent of the Ukip story. The hordes of voters the SNP wooed from the Labour Party to take the referendum to the wire are the non-home owning working class. They are the victims of globalisation, just as the voters in Aberdeen, Edinburgh and East Renfrewshire are the winners from the changing economy.

The cleavage between the dispossessed and the owner-occupiers has, briefly, turned the electoral map of Scotland on its head: Labour's core supporters voting Yes, and the SNP's heartlands – Morayshire, Perthshire, Aberdeenshire – rejecting separation.

What is intriguing is what the next moves are.

For the SNP this is the end of a journey. If there is no return to this issue for a generation, what is their project? It is, for sure, not social democracy – that language was adopted as a tactic to attract Labour voters. For Labour, it is the chance to reclaim the mantle as Scotland's progressive party. They need a joint Gordon Brown and Jim Murphy road show to tell people about the new powers and to sell the party's new progressive purpose. For the Tories it is the end of an era. Ruth Davidson's campaign has detoxified them. And with Middle Scotland voting No so strongly we can say that not only did Margaret Thatcher save the union, but in doing so she exorcised her own influence on Scottish politics, too.

[Admiral Yi]

That change in ownership had a profound political effect. As one activist said to me: "There's no stronger No than a bought council house." Which I found, when I was canvassing and knocking up, was absolutely true.

[Razgovory]

It was a long term strategy.

[grumbler]

That change in ownership had a profound political effect. As one activist said to me: "There's no stronger No than a bought council house." Which I found, when I was canvassing and knocking up, was absolutely true.

Brits are kinky.  They're always knocking up the couple next door.

[mongers]

That change in ownership had a profound political effect. As one activist said to me: "There's no stronger No than a bought council house." Which I found, when I was canvassing and knocking up, was absolutely true.

It's an obscure medieval game a bit like rugby, played once a year in the Norfolk village of Up-Knocking. 

[Admiral Yi]

In case anybody doesn't know, knocking up is American slang for impregnating.

[sbr]

That's how it works.

You barely can find a francophone who voted No in 95, and yet?!

Indeed.  And from what I can read here, now that the panic over a possible Yes has dissipated, I daresay the Brits will renegade on their promises... As I had predicted.  That's how human nature works: you are afraid and if the fear doesn't materialize you want revenge on whoever induced the fear in the first place.  Witness the 'toy parliament' argument above.  The Scots will soon rue their choice.



G.

So you are predicting that your prior prediction will come true?  Way to go out on a limb.

[Viking]

In case anybody doesn't know, knocking up is American slang for impregnating.

Yeah, it's what happens after you put the todger in the fanny. #SeparatedByACommonLanguage

[Admiral Yi]

A girl can get knocked up from a todger in her fanny?

[Richard Hakluyt]

A girl can get knocked up from a todger in her fanny?

In the UK she can 

Either I'm more mid-atlantic than I thought or the phrase "knocking up" has the American slang meaning in the UK too.

[Viking]

A girl can get knocked up from a todger in her fanny?

in that case the police would probably arrest them both for public indecency.