THE STATE OF THE UNION
We often bridle at outsiders offering us advice. But President Obama’s words carry a deep truth we ignore at our peril when it comes to...
IF the referendum debate has reminded me of one thing, it’s the age-old truth that we Scots don’t always react well to advice received from those beyond our borders. Last week it was the turn of the American President to offer his view on the future of the UK and our place, or not, within it.
Yet, notwithstanding media hyperbole, Barack Obama’s words were characteristically thoughtful and measured. It’s difficult for those who don’t want to listen to vilify the President in quite the same way as they might senior English politicians, but his words resonated precisely because they spoke to an essential truth – the Union has, after all, ‘worked pretty well’.
In a campaign where, at times, both sides have been accused of negativity and scaremongering, it’s worth thinking again about the historical narrative of the Union before we make sweeping claims for what the future holds.
Much of the pro-independence rhetoric has been framed in a version of history that sees the Union very much in terms of domination and oppression, an English-dominated Britain with Scotland’s interests at the very best playing second-fiddle.
And yet, rereading historian Linda Colley’s Britons, a bestseller in its time, I am struck by a point she makes in her preface; that Britain worked after the Act of Union because it offered Scots and English alike new ‘ways to get ahead’. She muses that ‘if Great Britain fissures in the future into autonomous Welsh, Scottish and English nations… this will in part be because its different peoples have decided that they can get ahead better without it.’ The lad (and lassie) o’pairts, in short, did do well out of it.
This, then, is the essential question asked in the referendum, one that is echoed in the title of the pro-Union campaign but not always articulated in positive terms. Both sides have argued that Scots will be worse off if they opt for the opposing camp; but in the past, seldom have they coherently put forward a vision of why their own position ensures better chances for Scots in the future. Both sides have invoked history to debunk their opponent’s claims.
Sometimes it seems as if the Yes camp believes that a vote to remain in the Union is no more than a vote for subordination to Westminster, and by extension to the descendants of Margaret Thatcher and every other English hate figure back to Edward I. And, truth be told, sometimes it has appeared that for the No camp, a vote to leave the union is a vote for economic Armageddon and international isolation.
As a proud Scot, whatever the outcome in September, I believe Scotland could, and would, be a success. I just happen to believe that seldom has the Union been more necessary to Scotland and seldom has Scotland been more necessary to the Union. AT times of national commemoration such as this, remembering both the D-Day landings and the origins of the First World War, it’s easy to point to the shared inheritance the Union created in terms of sacrifice and heroism on the battlefield. Scots distinguished themselves alongside the English in every theatre of war in the past century and beyond. What’s less easy to discern sometimes is the role the Union has played in economic exchange, often in the form of migration.
Adam Smith, the great Scots philosopher and economist, moved between Glasgow and Oxford. It was Smith who claimed ‘the Union with England… gained a complete deliverance’ for the middle classes ‘from the power of an aristocracy which had always before oppressed them’. His was both a Scottish and a British journey, as so many of ours are.
These journeys are not just of people but of institutions too, from banks such as Sainsbury’s Bank and Virgin Money (English banks based in Edinburgh) to A G Barr’s famed soft drinks plant, which sells 60 per cent of its output to the English.
It will come as no surprise that I agree with President Obama’s remarks. It is important to note that I don’t think this amounts to: ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’. The constitutional changes we witnessed in the 1990s and which Scots of very different political persuasions worked together to introduce created a political settlement both within Scotland and Britain as a whole. Nobody said it was perfect.
As a Highlander, I am only too aware of the centralising tendencies of Holyrood; the transfer of power from Highlands and Islands Enterprise to Edinburgh, not to mention the leaking of authority from the Crofting Commission and lessened local control over emergency services.
I was in favour of home rule for Scotland long before 1997 and remain a passionate advocate for more of it – but the flip side of that coin must be more respect for the wishes of the diverse communities within Scotland from her own legislature in Edinburgh. Home rule was never meant to be static and it is time that those of us who wish to see Scotland remain in the Union say what a postreferendum Union would look like for Scotland.
I believe such a Union should see greater allocation of powers within Scotland as well as to Scotland, a restoration of local community influence over community services where that has been lost and a general empowerment of Scottish civil society.
This echoes the liberal view of home rule for Scotland which was set out in my friend and colleague Sir Menzies Campbell’s commission on more powers. Liberal Democrats continue to lead the way in the debate on more powers, led by our instinctive belief that power should be allocated closest to the communities who need it. I also believe, passionately, that an outwardlooking Scotland must remain at the heart of Europe.
There are debates raging as to whether that is better achieved alone or as part of a seemingly ever-more Eurosceptic Britain. This is where I throw down the gauntlet to my fellow Scots.
The EU has been good for Britain and for Scotland as a part of Britain. The status quo in Europe – as with devolution – is not perfect but it has been and remains a springboard for Scottish economic development. It is our role as Scots and as Britons (however far that identity comes down the list) to make the case for Scotland and Britain in Europe – not one or the other.
BEYOND our borders, the world is as uncertain and dangerous as ever. In the past, Britain has faced these challenges united and overcome them together. In Eastern Europe, the growth of Russian power endangers fundamental principles of sovereignty and international law.
In the global economy, the emerging economies grow in number. A strong Scotland, at the heart of the sixth largest economy in the world and at the centre of a reformed EU, has never been more necessary, both for the international community and, most critically, for the benefit of Scots themselves.
If the financial crisis proved anything, it’s that the Union can still ride out the storms together. As both Scots and Brits, today we have the best of both worlds. Things, as we know, can be better. But, as in the past, they will get better through working together, not drifting apart.
The Union has, as the president said, ‘worked pretty well’. With a stronger Scottish parliament with more powers, building on the best of both worlds, it can work even better.