Forward United
But that's still corresponds to a very significant share of about 45% Yes votes. Want to dare a guess, how many of the No votes were due to the ludicrous political promises Cameron and others made? That could become an important number if those promises are broken. On the other hand, Wales already pointed out that it doesn't see, why Scotland should be the only part of the UK to get such advantages.
As for the number, you have to see this as a two-issue vote. This isn't just a vote for independence, it's also a vote against Westminster. Quite a number of Yes voters are happy with the concept and principal of the Union. The issue is that they're not happy with Westminster and the main UK political parties. What a lot of people in Scotland forget is that
no-one in the UK is happy with them.
If you phrase the vote as "Do you want your country to more outside the control of the UK Parliament?" the majority of the UK - England included - would vote yes. The level of political disaffection within the UK is growing daily. The major parties are trusted less than they ever have been. The problem is that there's nothing to fill the gap.
This will force the issue of English representation, which is something that has been a major cause of anger within England. Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales all have their own legislatures with independent powers, while England has nothing.
Personally, I'd much rather see the UK move towards a Federalist system, with each constituent nation having it's own parliament with extensive powers, with a central UK parliament to act as an legislature for overarching national issues.
For a start, I'd advocate move the legislature from London to a more central location (Manchester for argument's sake). The image of politicians from "far off London" dictating policy is a too damaging and needs to be addressed, and I don't think the UK can be seen to continue to be run from the seat of wealth and privilege. It needs to be more directly accountable to the people.
We believe in the Union, but it's need to be remade into something where each part has an equal say. Right now this simply doesn't happen, and all four of the nations have a right to demand change.
The issue is that the main political parties have a vested interest in stopping us.
I can see the 2015 general election turning into a (metaphorical) bloodbath. I just hope incoherent morons like UKIP don't have the opportunity to take advantage.
that being said, it would have been interesting to see an independent Scotland.
with their tax structure, a sovereign Scotland would immediately have been one of the top-20 wealthiest nations on Earth.
Scotland's GDP is only about a tenth that of the UK's. The SNP's economic policy was basically North Sea oil and Finance. The first of which is declining in production and does not make for a stable long term proposition. The second is a non-starter, as all the major financial institutions in Scotland would disappear south to England so fast they'd be a fucking
blur in the event of a Yes vote.
That leaves manufacturing, but the problem there is that the vast majority of Scotland's manufacturing exports (along with
all of it's exports) are to the rest of the UK. Those jobs would end up in England, Wales and Northern Ireland very quickly, boosting the UK economy at the expensive of the Scottish one. One other thing to note is that it's UK military contracts that are keeping the Clyde ship-building industry running. It's a long-standing and iron-cast policy that all UK naval ships will not be built on foreign soil. Overnight those contracts would go to the dockyards at Portsmouth and other areas in the UK, putting thousands of Scottish workers out of the job permanently.
Add to that the fact that 17% of Scottish adults had already stated in a poll from last week that they would leave Scotland for England if Scotland voted Yes, that's a pretty major bleed-off of the workforce. Add to
that the fact that the better educated Scottish voters were, the more likely they were to vote No and it implies a pretty huge loss of talent from Scotland.
Also, currency. The SNP insisted that Scotland would continue using the Pound as it's currency after a Yes vote. Despite being told categorically by the Bank of England and the UK Government that this was not an option. Leaving an independent Scotland's only other option to create it's own currency and peg the exchange rate directly to the UK Pound. The problem with
that little arrangement is that the EU have already stated that for Scotland to be considered for membership - as it will not automatically become a member, and would have to wait 5 years before it could apply - it would have to use the Euro as it's currency. Something that simply would not fly with most Scottish voters.
Hardly a stable picture of economic stability is it?
