Category Archives: scottish independence

WHAT’S THE SNP PLAYING AT OVER BREXIT?

WHAT’S THE SNP PLAYING AT OVER BREXIT?
Ever since its foundation, in 1927, the Scottish National Party has been loudly dedicated to getting Independence for Scotland from the Union of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. 
During the heady days of Alex Salmond’s leadership it looked as if it might actually achieve that ambition, but with Nicola Sturgeon it would appear that the SNP have lost their way. 
Rather like the questioning about why Theresa May was making such a poor job of Brexit (was it incompetence or duplicity?); we now have to ask the same question of Nicola Sturgeon and her leadership of the Scottish National Party about Scottish Independence and Brexit.
On Thursday last week Scottish Nationalist MPs proposed a resolution in the House of Commons to try to trigger Article 50 being revoked and thus to abort Brexit altogether.
This is a strikingly ironic and an apparently irrational thing for national ‘independence’ campaigners to do.  Not only are they trying to use Westminster parliamentary tricks to block the English Nation’s popular vote for independence from the EU, but also they are voting to block Scottish independence also. 
This last point needs explanation.  

During the Scottish Independence referendum, the then head of the European Commission, Mr Barosso, confirmed what numerous other EU figures had been saying, which was that Scotland leaving the UK would make Scotland automatically outside the EU.  

It follows that if the UK is kept within the EU Scotland cannot become independent of the UK without leaving the EU.  However if the UK leaves the EU and Scotland then leaves the UK, Scotland could apply to become an “Accession State” to the EU.  

Instead the SNP are now trying to block the UK leaving the EU which shows either a startling degree of incompetence, or that their policy on Scottish independence is mere duplicity. 
In weighing up which you think it is, it may be worth considering Nicola Sturgeon’s remarks in saying that she doesn’t like the word ‘national’ in Scottish National Party’s name, to see whether you think that the Scottish National Party is still sincerely committed to Scottish independence or whether it is just parasitically hag-riding the support of duped Scottish Nationalists as yet another Internationalist, Leftist party. 
Here is the BBC report of what Nicola Sturgeon said:-
“Nicola Sturgeon has said she wishes she could turn the clock back and change the Scottish National Party’s name.
The SNP leader admitted the word “national” could be “hugely problematic” during a debate at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.
She was speaking with Turkish author Elif Shafak, who said the word had a “negative meaning” to her.
However, the first minister insisted her party was about self government and was not insular.
Ms Shafak, who was wrongly accused of public denigration of Turkishness for her novel The Bastard Of Istanbul, told the audience at the sold-out event: “Coming from Turkey, seeing the experiences there, not only in Turkey, across the Middle East, the Balkans, for us for instance the word nationalism is, for me personally, has a very negative meaning because I’ve seen how ugly it can get, how destructive it can become, how violent it can become and how it can divide people into imaginary categories and make them lose that cultural coexistence.
“Whereas when I come here, I hear the word nationalism being used in a different way and I felt that, can nationalism ever be benign? Can it ever be a benevolent thing? So there is a part of me that doubts that very much.”
In response, Ms Sturgeon admitted: “The word is difficult.”
She said: “If I could turn the clock back, what 90 years, to the establishment of my party, and choose its name all over again, I wouldn’t choose the name it has got just now, I would call it something other than the Scottish National Party.
“Now people say why don’t you change its name now? Well that would be far too complicated. Because what those of us who do support Scottish independence are all about could not be further removed from some of what you would recognise as nationalism in other parts of the world.
“Two things I believe that I think run so strongly through the Scottish independence movement are firstly that it doesn’t matter where you come from, if Scotland is your home and you live here and you feel you have a stake in the country, you are Scottish and you have as much say over the future of the country as I do. And that is a civic, open, inclusive view of the world that is so far removed from what you would rightly fear.
“Secondly one of the great motivators for those of us who support Scottish independence is wanting to have a bigger voice in the world, it’s about being outward looking and internationalist, not inward looking and insular.
“So the word is hugely, hugely problematic sometimes for those of us who …but Scottish independence is about self-government, it’s about running your own affairs and making your own mark in the world.
“So yes words do matter but I think we can’t change the connotations that the word has in other parts of the world, what we have to do is just demonstrate through words of our own, through deeds, through actions, through how we carry ourselves, that we stand for something completely different to all of that.”
Here is a link to the original report>>>https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-40975105
So what do you think?  Is the SNP’s policy on Brexit incompetent or duplicious?

THE DISSOLUTION OF THE UNITED KINGDOM COMES A STEP CLOSER!

THE DISSOLUTION OF THE UNITED KINGDOM COMES A STEP CLOSER!

Although the “Mainstream Media” (AKA “Legacy Media”) newspapers and broadcasters, such as in the article below by Alan Cochrane, focus on the risk to the Union (of the UK) from Northern Ireland and Scotland, it may well be that the more important longer term “threat” to the Union will be from England and from English Nationalists.  As William Hague when he was the Leader of the “Conservative” Party said:-  “English nationalism is the worst of all nationalisms” for the future of the Union!

The constitutional position about Theresa May’s agreement, if she manages to get it through Parliament and ratified by all the relevant parts of the EU will be interesting, because, if that happens, with the majority Leave vote in England, of well over 15 million English people voting for Leave, can then only be satisfied by the dissolution of the United Kingdom!

From a legal and constitutionalist point of view this works because the dissolution of the UK as the contracting state means that the deal is dissolved too.  This was threatened against the Scottish Nationalists, in the run up to the Scottish Independence Referendum, when the then Commissioner Barosso pointed out that, if Scotland left the United Kingdom then (because the United Kingdom would be dissolved), Scotland would be a new State and therefore not an ‘Accession’ state and so not part of the EU. 

The EU is composed of “Member States”.  If a Member State is dissolved and ceases to exist, then the arrangements with the EU also cease to exist.  The EU is not a territorial entity, nor an entity of individual people, nor of peoples, it is an entity only of accession Member States.  This means that the general legal principles on dissolution or death of a participating entity in an agreement apply.  Generally that means that the agreement itself ceases to exist as well as the dissolved entity upon its dissolution (or death).

I explained this in my Blog article quite a few years ago.  Here is a link to that article >>> https://robintilbrook.blogspot.com/2012/12/england-to-be-free-of-eu-in-2014.html

The article below by Alan Cochrane is also interesting but is of course yet again looking at the Union from the Scottish perspective rather than from the point of view of English nationalists. 

In short I think Theresa May’s proposed deal may actually fill the sails of English nationalists and of English nationalism because our way of thinking will then be the only practical way of coming out of the EU. 

What do you think?  Here is Alan Cochrane’s article :-

Warring Tories have put a hurricane in the sail of the nationalists 

With the Conservative Party tearing itself and the government of Theresa May asunder last night, one of its hitherto more successful parts appeared to be also heading for the intensive care ward.

In a bitter, and unprecedented Cabinet-level war, the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party accused resigning Brexiteer ministers of threatening to wreck the United Kingdom. In one of the most outspoken attacks one senior minister has ever launched against colleagues, former or otherwise, David Mundell, the Scottish Secretary, described Dominic Raab and Esther McVey as “carpetbaggers”.

Just for good measure, he claimed that Mr Raab’s departure was more about a future leadership bid than the Brexit deal.

In their resignation letters, the former Brexit and Work and Pensions Secretaries had both cited the threat to the Union posed by the fact that special provisions were proposed for Northern Ireland in Mrs May’s withdrawal deal.

And there is little doubt that this escalation in insults reflected the fact that the Northern Ireland aspect of the deal has put immediate and intense pressure on Mr Mundell and, also to a lesser extent, Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Tory leader.

Their partnership has been largely responsible for the revival of the Conservatives north of the border – leaping from one MP to 13 at the last general election and forming the official opposition to the SNP at the Scottish Parliament.

However, significantly, at least in terms of their current embarrassment, both signed an open letter to the Prime Minister last month in which they threatened to resign if there was a “differentiated deal” agreed for Northern Ireland. And, no matter how you cut it, that is precisely what is contained in the deal Mrs May put to her Cabinet on Wednesday.

I have a great deal of sympathy with the view expressed in Scottish Tory circles that Mr Raab and Ms McVey used the threat to the Union as “cover” for their resignations. And I can also understand Mr Mundell’s intense irritation that many of the most ardent Brexiteers care little for the maintenance of the Union of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Indeed, I can’t remember any of them making an appearance during the Scottish independence referendum campaign four years ago.

That’s neither here nor there now, however. No amount of name-calling and foot stamping will alter the plain fact that, by including a distinctive feature for Northern Ireland after Brexit in the deal, the Prime Minister has done two things: she’s delivered a major boost to the SNP, whose sole aim is the break-up of Britain, and she’s ignored the warnings she received from Mr Mundell and Ms Davidson.

In one of the great ironies of the situation, the nationalists claim that Scotland should be given a different deal from the rest of the UK but haven’t got it, whereas Northern Ireland is getting one but its majority party doesn’t want it. And yesterday First Minister Nicola Sturgeon claimed that Ulster’s special treatment would give it an unfair trading advantage over Scotland.

There is a hope within Scottish Conservative circles that Mrs May might yet be able to retrieve the situation by clarifying and playing down the differences in the deal for Northern Ireland. But given the furious reaction from DUP MPs yesterday, she has a mountain to climb in that direction.

Nevertheless, the Scottish Tories’ main problem is that threatening letter sent to the PM and signed by Mr Mundell and Ms Davidson. It was seen at the time, by some observers, as a silly piece of grandstanding and it has now come back to bite them – hard.

Ms Davidson is on maternity leave and, last night Mr Mundell said he was staying put, insisting that he would fight on for the maintenance of the UK, adding: “That’s what I’m focused on, not being the heart of some soap opera of resignations and I’m not going to be bounced into resigning by carpetbaggers.”

Notwithstanding his determination to fight on and his angry words about his now former colleagues, I’m sure that he wishes he hadn’t signed that letter. It’s boxed him in, good and proper.

CATALONIA AND WHAT IT TELLS US ABOUT SPAIN, THE EU AND THE UK


CATALONIA AND WHAT IT TELLS US ABOUT SPAIN, THE EU AND THE UK

Catalonia is now amongst the leading nations on Earth in demanding National Sovereignty, National Independence and National Liberty and has done so in the face of outrageous bullying by the Spanish Government and by the EU.

On Sunday, 22nd October the Spanish Foreign Minister, Snr Alfonso Dastis, in his interview with Andrew Marr on the BBC’s flagship current affairs programme, The Andrew Marr Show described the Catalan Government as:- “A group of rebels trying to impose their own arbitrariness onto the People of Catalonia.” And he also said that the outrageous behaviour of the Spanish Police was a “provoked use of force”.

The language spoken about “rebels” must not only have been carefully thought out as it came out of the mouth of the Spanish Foreign Minister who would have been thoroughly briefed by his officials as well as worked with English language interpreters to ensure what he said was exactly what the Madrid Government thinks. For a Senior Spanish Government Minister to use the word “rebels” is therefore highly significant.

From a psychological point of view that is in the same area of words in our language as “civil war”, “guerrillas” etc. It thus portrays a very senior Spanish Minster, and therefore the Madrid Government, generally to be thinking in terms of civil war.

Last time such language was used about the Catalonian nationalists it was from the mouth of Francisco Franco, later to become the Spanish Dictator, el Caudillo.

In short it seems evident that the Spanish Government is gearing up to the point where they will not only send in the Guardia Civil but also the Army. Once the Spanish Army is sent in you can be sure that the consequences will be Civil War. It is hard to imagine the Spanish Army coping with the degree of provocation they are certain to get from the Catalonian nationalists without opening fire.

This is the same army that when my father was the Defence Attaché in Madrid that one of its officers shot dead a conscript soldier on parade whilst inspecting his troops guns because he found that this soldier’s gun wasn’t clean enough. The response of the Spanish Military was to back the officer as being within his rights! You can imagine how that kind of attitude is going to play out on the streets of Barcelona!

The leadership of the EU has already disgraced itself by supporting the Spanish Government in sending in the Guardia Civil to beat up large numbers of citizens trying to vote in the Catalonian Independence Referendum. The EU yet again showed that it is bizarre for any genuine nationalist to support membership of the EU – take note Plaid Cymru and the Scottish National Party!

So far as Catalans are concerned this is particularly a stark betrayal because it is the EU Regionalisation policy which has been busy ever since the Maastricht Treaty trying to create the demand for separatism in the “Regions” of all the bigger states of Europe, including of course Spain.

I expect that most Catalonian nationalists probably originally thought that the EU would support them. If so how misguided they were!

But also how misguided is so much of the multi-culturalist agenda of the EU which is partly responsible for the regionalisation agenda.

Also the UK Government under its inept Remainist Leader has turned its back on the Catalans demonstrating that Theresa May hasn’t really got out of her pro-EU mind-set.

Now that we have voted to come out of the EU, all our leaders should be considering the basis of our foreign policy post Brexit.

For centuries it was England’s policy to ensure that no one Power ruled over continental Europe. All the negotiations with the EU demonstrate, if demonstration was ever needed, that that policy was pure common-sense for England. We ought therefore to be encouraging all the nationalists within the EU to be breaking away, thus dissolving the EU and restoring the balance of power on the continent. 

Catalonia is now also leaving the EU as well as Spain and should be welcomed with open arms by any of our leaders who have any strategic vision or understanding!

LABOUR IN TURMOIL IN SCOTLAND – AGAIN!

LABOUR IN TURMOIL IN SCOTLAND AGAIN


Kezia Dugdale, the Labour Scottish Leader, has just resigned with immediate effect after only serving a two year period since 15th August 2015.

On the face of it as, under her leadership the Party has gone from one MP to seven, you would have thought she might have been considered a success and be wanting to stay on. But she has resigned with all sorts of rumours as to why she has done so now floating around.

I wonder if the answer might be quite simple?

Ms Dugdale has invested a lot of time and effort in trying to move Labour towards a “Federal” system, whereby the different nations of the United Kingdom would have separate powers defined as against the powers of the centre (i.e. more like the United States of America), than was the case before the devolution process started under Blair.

She seemed to be having some success in terms of the newspaper headlines with it being announced only last week that Labour was going to move to a Federal system. 

Here is a link to an article about this >>> Jeremy Corbyn puts federal government ‘on the table’ if Labour win power | The Independent

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/jeremy-corbyn-labour-federal-government-kezia-dugdale-devolution-scotland-wales-northern-ireland-stv-a7913876.html

It then came out that the supposed “Federal System” was one in which England wasn’t going to get any representation, but instead the English “Regions” were going to get some sort of limited representation.

But what must have finished it off for her was Jeremy Corbyn’s remarkably stupid remark in answer to a question at a well-publicised Question and Answer session at the Edinburgh Festival in which he said:-

“We are thinking very hard about what forms devolution would take in the future. Devolution in Scotland has gone a long way.

“We are looking at the way we bring about genuine devolution and particularly economic devolution. Could you have a separate economic and legal system in different parts of the UK?

“I think that becomes difficult and very problematic. I want a Labour government that is going to legislate better working conditions for everybody across the UK.”

Here is a link to an article about this >>> Jeremy Corbyn mocked for saying ‘problematic’ for Scotland to have own legal system – even though it does already | PoliticsHo

https://www.politicshome.com/news/uk/home-affairs/justice-system/news/88503/jeremy-corbyn-mocked-saying-problematic-scotland-have

The fact that Mr Corbyn could say that about Scotland, which has always had a separate legal system not only shows that the man is profoundly ignorant of the basic constitutional structure of the United Kingdom, but also it gives an insight into his real views. What he said is just like a “spoonerism” where you mis-say a word which gives away your real views.

This comment is a political spoonerism where Jeremy Corby has given away the fact that he generally is not interested in any sort of a Federal system, since of course all Federal systems have to some extent different legal and economic arrangements in the different states!

If YOU had been working on trying to make Labour Federal and then your Leader had come up to Edinburgh and at a high profile event made such a stupid remark which gave away his true opposition to everything you had been working on, wouldn’t you resign too?

I wonder whether we will next hear that Kezie Dugdale has joined her new girlfriend the SNP Member of the Scottish Parliament, Jenny Gilrath in the Scottish National Party?

IS A UNILATERAL DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE ("U.D.I.") THE WAY TO GO FOR SCOTTISH NATIONALISM?


IS UDI THE WAY TO GO FOR SCOTTISH NATIONALISM?

Over the last week or so we have been entertained by the spat over the Scottish Referendum between Nicola Sturgeon and Theresa May. Andrew Marr’s programme had it commented that it was “handbags at dawn”! 

Nicola Sturgeon has been saying that she wants to call another Scottish referendum before Brexit is complete, i.e. in about 18 months. Theresa May has been saying that she does not want it called for at least 6 years!

The process is that the Scottish Parliament will vote on the issue this week. Given the political balance in the Scottish Parliament of SNP and the Scottish Greens, it is inevitable that the resolution will be passed.

The resolution will then be formally submitted to the British Government, in accordance with the legislation which was passed by Westminster when it was agreed between David Cameron and Alex Salmond on holding the first referendum.

An interesting and real question will be whether Theresa May actually has legal power to refuse or delay a resolution made by the Scottish Parliament which fully complies with the legislation?

It may therefore be that in the drumroll of press releases one of them will be an Application by the Scottish Government for Judicial Review! If Theresa May loses such a Judicial Review, after her fiasco over the BREXIT case, she, and the British Government, will be utterly humiliated.

Whereas if Nicola Sturgeon were to lose the Judicial Review it could be useful to her as part of the case for the Scottish Parliament to go ahead and hold its own referendum (as an act of non-violent civil disobedience), unregulated by the British State. This would be in opposition to the British State, on much the same footing as Catalonia has held a referendum in which there was a majority for Catalonian independence, but which the Spanish State has sought to quash.

Unlike Spain, Britain no longer has a sizeable army that could be deployed to crush a rebellious civilian population and consequently there will be nothing practical to stop a Scottish Government, which having won an unofficial referendum then declare a Unilateral Declaration of Independence (“UDI”)!

Indeed from the Scottish Nationalist point of view I can see very good reasons to do so which will gel nationalists support into an even harder block of determined supporters than it currently has in Scotland, with Scottish nationalists being literally ready to fight in order to protect Scottish independence.

Much the same process occurred in the early 20th Century in Southern Ireland but then the British State had the whole might of the imperial British army to try to hold down the population of Ireland against its Will. Even so this proved to be an utterly futile and bloody exercise.

BRIT-SCOT MINISTER THREATENS TO BLOCK SCOTTISH INDEPENDENCE VOTE!

BRIT-SCOT MINISTER THREATENS TO BLOCK SCOTTISH INDEPENDENCE VOTE

The ‘Brit-Scot’ who is the current British Secretary of State for Defence, Michael Fallon, has threatened to block any further right for the Scottish Parliament to have a further Scottish Independence referendum.

Michael Fallon is the Tory MP, “representing” an English constituency, who was appointed by David Cameron as the Minister to be involved in transferring the last of English shipbuilding from Portsmouth up to Scotland – when the Cameron Government closed the docks near Portsmouth.

This was done just before the Scottish Independence Referendum with a view to making it more difficult for the ‘Yes’ Campaign to win in Scotland.

At that point it looked as if the Clydeside ship workers might be considering voting for independence. This electoral bribe was to encourage them to vote ‘No’ to keep their jobs. It carried the implied threat that, if Scottish Independence won, the Ministry of Defence’s ship building contracts might go elsewhere!

Now that the “Supreme Court” has ruled that Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland Parliaments/Assemblies and Governments have no legal or constitutional role directly in Brexit. This ruling has, of course, ramped up the Scottish Nationalist rhetoric about going for Scottish Independence. Michael Fallon has now waded into this controversy suggesting that Westminster may refuse to authorise a further Scottish referendum.

I also think Westminster would be within it constitutional legal rights to refuse to authorise a further Scottish referendum and that would mean that it couldn’t legally be held. The effect would be to call Nicola Sturgeon’s bluff.

When you call someone’s bluff you have to bear in mind that there are two possible consequences. One is that they will back down and go off quietly having been humiliated. The other is that they will fully “go for it”!

In this context if Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP were to “go for it”, they would be holding a referendum that was technically illegal. They would also have to ignore all rulings by the courts to the contrary. In that scenario it is not unlikely that they would win, just as happened in Catalonia! If they did that they might well feel entitled to use any methods, including those outside the law, including violence.

Michael Fallon may hold an apparently grand office within the British State as Secretary of State for Defence. He may sit in an office once occupied by titan’s from the days of British imperial power, but he is by comparison the equivalent of the dwarfish wizard of Oz sounding very impressive and frightening, but without the real power that the title once gave.

Michael Fallon is after all the Secretary of State for Defence whose main job from the moment of appointment has been to slash the British Defence budget to the point where the capabilities of the British armed forces have been drastically reduced. It must now be extremely doubtful that the British military would be willing to obey orders to suppress Scottish nationalism.

In those circumstances calling the SNP’s bluff might well be the equivalent of pulling the trigger that blows apart the United Kingdom of Great Britain!

Here is the article which reports Michael Fallon’s comments:-

Michael Fallon: Westminster will block new Scottish independence vote

The UK Government will block any attempts by the SNP to hold a second independence referendum, Michael Fallon has said.

In a further sign of the tensions between Holyrood and Westminster, the Defence Secretary said the Scottish government should “forget” any plans to stage another vote.

Mr Fallon hit out in an interview with The Herald ahead of a visit to the Royal Marine base near Arbroath today.

Constitutional matters are reserved to Westminster, so the UK Government must give permission to the Scottish Parliament if it wants to hold another referendum.

Asked if ministers would facilitate a fresh vote on Scotland leaving the UK, the Defence Secretary said: “No, forget it. The respect agenda is two-way.”

He added: “She [Ms Sturgeon] is constantly asking us to respect the SNP government but she has to respect the decision of Scotland to stay inside the UK in 2014 and the decision of the UK to leave the EU. Respect works two ways.”

Scots voted by 55% to 45% in favour of staying in the union in 2014, but Ms Sturgeon has repeatedly mooted the idea of a rerun following the Brexit vote, in which Scotland overwhelmingly backed Remain.

The Defence Secretary said the SNP government did not have a mandate for a second referendum, because it failed to secure a majority at the last Holyrood election.

He said: “We may well have seen peak SNP. They lost the referendum, they lost seats. There are other voices in Scotland now, not least Ruth Davidson’s.”

But Ms Sturgeon accused Mr Fallon of “backpedalling” after he refused to repeat his comments when interviewed on the BBC’s Good Morning Scotland programme.

When asked whether UK ministers would block a vote, he said: “We don’t see the need for a referendum – this is a diversion.

“What the Scottish government should be focusing on is what it was elected to do, which is to improve schools standards, get to grips with the problems in Scottish hospitals and reverse the serious rise in unemployment.”

The First Minister tweeted in response that such a block would be “disastrous” for the UK Government.

Theresa May’s official spokeswoman said: “The real question here is should there be another independence referendum and our view on that has been clear, which is that the one in 2014 was legal, fair and decisive.

“Our priority here is on how do we look to the future and move forward. We believe that this issue was settled in 2014. I think recent polls don’t suggest there has been a big change in the views around a second referendum, so what we should be focusing on is how do we work together to ensure the best possible outcome for the UK as we exit the EU.”

A spokesperson for the First Minister said: “The arrogance of the Tories knows no bounds. They now think they can do what they want to Scotland and get away with it – not content with trying to drag us out of EU against our will with the support of just one MP out of 59 in Scotland, they are now suggesting they might try to block the nation’s right to choose a different path.

“Any Tory bid to block a referendum would be a democratic outrage, but would only succeed in boosting support for both a referendum and for independence itself – something which the prime minister has previously indicated she understands all too well.

“Our mandate is unequivocal, with a manifesto commitment which makes explicitly clear that the Scottish Parliament should have the right to decide on an independence referendum if Scotland faces being taken out of the EU against our will.””

(Here is a link to the original >>> https://www.politicshome.com/news/uk/uk-regions/scotland/news/82978/michael-fallon-westminster-will-block-new-scottish).

17 WEEKS TO 23RD JUNE – UK’S INDEPENDENCE DAY?


17 WEEKS TO 23RD JUNE – UK’S INDEPENDENCE DAY?


Some people have pointed out that the day after the EU Referendum vote on the 23rd June, when hopefully the result will be announced, is the day on which the blockbuster film sequel “Independence Day 2” is being launched. Let’s hope that is a prophetic coincidence!

Now that the referendum campaign has in effect started inevitably we have had the Remain camp talking up “Project Fear” to try and start frightening people to stay within the EU.

Their argument is that leaving the EU is a jump into the unknown by the country and that those in favour of Leave will be unable to say what exactly the deal will be. This is of course true and it is no use denying it, although arguments can be put forward to show that the risk is not really as serious as is being suggested.

Nevertheless since it is true that those in favour of Leave cannot be precise as to what the arrangements will be it is, in my view, necessary for those arguing for Leave to talk about the uncertainties of remaining within the EU

Whilst the BBC etc. have been keen to publicise the uncertainties of Leave what hasn’t been so well publicised is the uncertainties of Remain.

In particular do we want England broken up into the EU “Regions”? Do we want the UK to become twelve EU “Regions” within a Federal EU? Do we want an EU army? Do we want an EU police force? Do we want an EU judicial system? That is if the progress to “ever closer union” continues.

In the alternative there may be a messy breakdown as further problems with the Greek bailout becomes critical again and with the imminence of financial collapse in the Italian banks. Quite apart from those other parts of the EU which look more likely to want to leave, such as France if Marie Le Pen wins the Presidential election next year? What do you think?

I have also been thinking of what slogan would appeal to English nationalists that has people thinking about this kind of issue and I suggest:-

‘Stop the EU breaking up England. Vote to Leave

What do you think?

For English nationalists there is also the very interesting prospect that many of the likely scenarios in the EU Referendum will undermine the UK. Here is an extremely useful and interesting article by Professor Rose of Strathclyde University which sets this out and in which he has crunched the numbers for us:-

Will the EU referendum trigger the break-up of the United Kingdom?


If England drags Scotland out of the EU, there will be trouble. But if Scotland keeps England inside, it could be double.

On the night of the EU referendum, there will be three counts that matter. The first will show whether there is an overall British majority for staying in or leaving the EU. The second will show whether English voters are on the winning or the losing side. The third will show how likely it is that the United Kingdom will stay together.

That might sound drastic to some readers. But large differences in support for the EU among different nations of the UK mean that many potential results are bad for the Union. Unless England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all agree in their answers to the referendum question, factions in each will be able to reject the result as illegitimate.

England contributes five sixths of the British electorate. To produce a UK majority for leaving the EU, regardless of the preference of other Britons, would therefore require 61 percent of English voters to endorse Brexit.

Opinion polls, however, show English voters tend to be evenly divided, and often in favour of Brexit. Even if a British poll reported 51 per cent in favour of remaining in the EU, a majority of English respondents would be in favour of Brexit. This is because other UK nations are much more pro-European.

The National Centre for Social Research calculates that 55 per cent of Welsh, 64 per cent of Scots and 75 per cent of Ulster voters endorse the European Union on the basis of more than a dozen polls taken in the past year.

These numbers are also more stable than the equivalent figures in England.

So collectively, Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish voters will contribute about 11 per cent of the pro-EU vote. English voters would only have to add another 40 per cent to the UK total to create an absolute majority keeping the UK in Europe. But that would mean most English voters had endorsed leaving the European Union – only to have their wishes overriden by the other UK nations.

On the other hand, if 53 per cent of English voters voted to leave the EU, this would be enough to take the UK out of Europe against the preference of a majority of Scots, Welsh and Ulster voters.

The only result which would keep the UK united would be a narrow English majority in favour of remaining in the EU. In that scenario, all four parts of the United Kingdom were of one mind. For this to be true we would expect to see a UK-wide majority of more than 53 per cent.

On the basis of current polling, that is unlikely. Of 30 major British polls I have analysed, only ten reported a pro-EU majority so large that most English respondents agreed with their fellow Britons. An additional 13 polls showed majorities of up to 53 percent in favour of remaining in the EU, but such a narrow lead implies that most English people would be held in Europe against their will. And seven of the 30 polls actually showed enough English opposition to the EU to overpower the other nations’ leads.

A conflict between Britain’s nations on future relations with the EU would be a huge headache to the Prime Minister. Part of the argument for Scottish independence in 2014 was that England would no longer be able to “impose” decisions on Scotland. An English-led withdrawal of the UK from the European Union could trigger another referendum in Scotland on the linked issues of leaving the UK and joining Europe. That would confront the Westminster government with simultaneously negotiating the UK’s withdrawal from Europe and Scotland’s withdrawal from the UK.

Yet the opposite outcome – a UK majority to remain in the EU, and an English majority to leave – would also be a nightmare for Downing Street. Conservative Eurosceptics could denounce the result as illegitimate, but it would be politically impossible for the Eurosceptics to win a referendum on the issue of England withdrawing from the United Kingdom.

Even if a narrow English majority went along with other Britons and voted to stay in the EU, there could still be an absolute majority of Conservatives voting to leave. Determined Eurosceptics could then adopt Jeremy Corbyn’s doctrine that the party leader should represent his party’s members. This argument could be used as a weapon to extract promises of further anti-EU actions from Cabinet ministers wanting to succeed David Cameron as the next Conservative prime minister.

Whatever the feelings of English voters on the emotive issue of Europe, there is no escaping the fact that the outcome of the forthcoming EU referendum will be decided by the total vote of the United Kingdom. That is the price England pays for being British.

Richard Rose is a professor of public policy at University of Strathclyde Glasgow and a commissioning fund awardee of The UK in a Changing Europe

Click here for the original article>>> Will the EU referendum trigger the break-up of the United Kingdom? – Telegraph

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/eureferendum/12114578/Will-the-EU-referendum-trigger-the-break-up-the-United-Kingdom.html

DID HER MAJESTY, THE QUEEN, BEHAVE UNCONSTITUTIONALLY IN THE SCOTTISH INDEPENDENCE REFERENDUM?

DID HER MAJESTY, THE QUEEN, BEHAVE UNCONSTITUTIONALLY IN THE SCOTTISH INDEPENDENCE REFERENDUM?


The highly respected journalist, Severin Carrell, who writes for the Guardian has published this detailed account of the Scottish referendum campaign. I have put the parts of his narrative that relate to the Queen in bold at the beginning of the article and then reproduced the whole of the article. The reason for doing this is that he states, as a fact, matters which do raise constitutional concerns.

If what he says is correct, then it is at least arguable that the Queen stepped outside of the proper role of a constitutional monarch in intervening in the Independence referendum.

See what you think, but bear in mind that while it is proper for a constitutional monarch to discuss policy with individual politicians and perhaps even to some extent lobby them in the way of trying to persuade them of the monarch’s view, it would never be proper for the monarch to push their view too firmly towards elected representatives, nor should the Queen be seeking to intervene in a democratic decision. It is only by not doing so that the role and position of the monarchy can be maintained in any State which has a claim to be a functioning democracy. It is therefore at the very least of concern that it seems from Severin Carrell’s narrative that the Queen may have over-stepped that very important demarcation line.

First here are the relevant passages relating to the Queen:-

“In a quaint ritual of Britain’s political calendar, the prime minister repairs to the Queen’s Balmoral estate in the Scottish Highlands for a weekend break at the end of every summer. The atmosphere is meant to be relaxed: the prime minister is treated to an annual barbecue served up by the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, who do the washing up afterwards. Tony and Cherie Blair entered into the spirit during their Balmoral stay in 1999 by conceiving their youngest son, Leo.

But there was a distinct sense of unease this year when David Cameron arrived for his stay on Saturday 6 September. The Queen was taking a close interest in the referendum, and was said to have noted a poll published in the Times earlier that week, which found the no side’s lead had shrunk to only six points.

The news was even worse that Sunday morning as the prime minister came down to breakfast with the Queen – on the day that the banner headline in the Sunday Times declared “Yes vote leads in Scots poll”, reporting the shock YouGov survey putting independence in the lead for the first time.

You could imagine the chilly atmosphere at the breakfast table, the prime minister is said to have remarked to friends afterwards.

One Whitehall source insisted that the atmosphere was friendly, as the Queen resorted to her famous – and at times pointed – humour. “I think there were one or two bits of humour,” the source said. “Obviously it is not the ideal thing to come down to breakfast and there’s the Queen with a little pot of marmalade or whatever and porridge and kippers and you see the headline. I think the Queen, as far as I understand – I mean I don’t know, obviously, none of us know – likes having the prime minister there because he does all the stuff that well brought up young men know how to do. So I don’t think it was frosty. I think there might have been the odd humorous comment over the porridge about supposing he had some work to do next week.”

It turned out that it was not just the prime minister who had his work cut out that week, as No 10 went into “meltdown” – in the words of one senior Downing Street source – as the full (peaceful) force of the British state was mustered to save the union. Senior figures in Whitehall were so worried by the prospect of a collapse of the union that it was suggested to the palace that it would be immensely helpful if the Queen could say something publicly.

Sir Jeremy Heywood, the cabinet secretary, and Sir Christopher Geidt, the Queen’s private secretary, embarked on discussions to work out how the Queen might register her concerns at the prospect of a yes vote while upholding her constitutional duty to remain wholly impartial. The Whitehall machinery was fully apprised of the prime minister’s concerns that the yes side was developing an ominous momentum.

The talks between the most senior civil servant in the land and the palace’s most senior official, the two key figures at the heart of what the Whitehall source described as the “deep state”, focused in the first place on the wisdom of a public intervention by the monarch, who has been scrupulously impartial during her 62 years on the throne. Once it became clear that the Queen was minded to speak out, Geidt and Heywood then needed to fashion some words that would ensure that the she remained within the bounds expected of a constitutional monarch.

I don’t think it was frosty. There might have been the odd humorous comment over the porridge.

Jim Lawson, a veteran freelance reporter who has dutifully covered royal visits to the Scottish Highlands for decades – he remembers covering Prince Charles at Gordonstoun boarding school in the 1960s – got the answer a week later on Sunday 14 September, outside Crathie Kirk, the small church where the Queen attends Sunday services while at Balmoral. As he has done at these events for years, Lawson wandered over to the crowd behind the barriers after the Queen had departed, to harvest quotes from her greetings to wellwishers. To his surprise, one woman disclosed that the monarch had offered a coded warning about the impending referendum, telling her: “Well, I hope people will think very carefully about the future.”

“The Queen looked almost uneasy,” Lawson recalled. “It was strange. [She] didn’t look supremely confident.” When he asked the woman who had spoken to the Queen for her name, a friend standing with her urged her not to reveal it. When Lawson asked her why not, she replied “It’s my job.” For Lawson, this was a first. “It has never happened in my life before,” he recalled. “Normally if the Queen has talked to someone, they’re delighted to give you everything. I was baffled, to be honest.”

Buckingham Palace declined at the time to comment publicly on the Queen’s remarks, but in private, officials were keen for reporters to broadcast every syllable uttered by the monarch. The Whitehall source said that the Queen’s statement was no accident: “She knew exactly what she was doing. There are two possible responses on the referendum: one, you buy into this as a fantastic festival of democracy; or two, you suggest this is a decision filled with foreboding. So by saying I hope people will think carefully, you imply the second. If they’d said: ‘What do you think of the referendum Ma’am’ and she’d said: ‘Oh it’s lovely’, that would be very different. Without her taking a side, it cast just the right element of doubt over the nature of the decision.”

The Queen’s remarks were crafted with great care by the two men at the heart of the “deep state” to ensure that she did not cross a line – as some had alleged she did decades earlier, when she spoke of the benefits of the UK in her silver jubilee address to a joint session of parliament in 1977. In remarks that were seen as an attempt by the Labour government to warn of the dangers posed by the SNP after it had won 11 seats in the October 1974 general election, she said: “I cannot forget that I was crowned Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Perhaps this jubilee is a time to remind ourselves of the benefits which union has conferred, at home and in our international dealings, on the inhabitants of all parts of this United Kingdom.”

It was felt, 37 years later, that it would have been wholly inappropriate for the Queen to make such pointed remarks in the heat of an independence referendum. It was decided that she would make remarks which were wholly neutral but which would leave nobody in any doubt about her support for the union – as she made clear she had no intention of reverting, as Alex Salmond had suggested, to the ancient title of Queen of Scots.

The delicate negotiations explain why the prime minister was so relieved by the result of the referendum, a point illustrated when he told the former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, in an unguarded moment a few days later, that she had “purred down the line” when he informed the monarch that her kingdom remained intact.

The Queen’s intervention showed the stakes could not have been higher for the pro-UK side, which had started the final countdown to the referendum amid rancour, divisions and bust-ups.
………………………………….
In the end the union was saved, allowing the prime minister to telephone a mightily relieved monarch.”

Here is the full article:-

The real story of the Scottish referendum: the final days of the fight for independence

As the vote neared, Britain’s breakup seemed a real possibility. In the second part of their series, based on extensive interviews with key players, Severin Carrell, Nicholas Watt and Patrick Wintour track the final days of an epic campaign 


In a quaint ritual of Britain’s political calendar, the prime minister repairs to the Queen’s Balmoral estate in the Scottish Highlands for a weekend break at the end of every summer. The atmosphere is meant to be relaxed: the prime minister is treated to an annual barbecue served up by the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, who do the washing up afterwards. Tony and Cherie Blair entered into the spirit during their Balmoral stay in 1999 by conceiving their youngest son, Leo.

But there was a distinct sense of unease this year when David Cameron arrived for his stay on Saturday 6 September. The Queen was taking a close interest in the referendum, and was said to have noted a poll published in the Times earlier that week, which found the no side’s lead had shrunk to only six points.

The news was even worse that Sunday morning as the prime minister came down to breakfast with the Queen – on the day that the banner headline in the Sunday Times declared “Yes vote leads in Scots poll”, reporting the shock YouGov survey putting independence in the lead for the first time.

You could imagine the chilly atmosphere at the breakfast table, the prime minister is said to have remarked to friends afterwards.

One Whitehall source insisted that the atmosphere was friendly, as the Queen resorted to her famous – and at times pointed – humour. “I think there were one or two bits of humour,” the source said. “Obviously it is not the ideal thing to come down to breakfast and there’s the Queen with a little pot of marmalade or whatever and porridge and kippers and you see the headline. I think the Queen, as far as I understand – I mean I don’t know, obviously, none of us know – likes having the prime minister there because he does all the stuff that well brought up young men know how to do. So I don’t think it was frosty. I think there might have been the odd humorous comment over the porridge about supposing he had some work to do next week.”

It turned out that it was not just the prime minister who had his work cut out that week, as No 10 went into “meltdown” – in the words of one senior Downing Street source – as the full (peaceful) force of the British state was mustered to save the union. Senior figures in Whitehall were so worried by the prospect of a collapse of the union that it was suggested to the palace that it would be immensely helpful if the Queen could say something publicly.

Sir Jeremy Heywood, the cabinet secretary, and Sir Christopher Geidt, the Queen’s private secretary, embarked on discussions to work out how the Queen might register her concerns at the prospect of a yes vote while upholding her constitutional duty to remain wholly impartial. The Whitehall machinery was fully apprised of the prime minister’s concerns that the yes side was developing an ominous momentum.

The talks between the most senior civil servant in the land and the palace’s most senior official, the two key figures at the heart of what the Whitehall source described as the “deep state”, focused in the first place on the wisdom of a public intervention by the monarch, who has been scrupulously impartial during her 62 years on the throne. Once it became clear that the Queen was minded to speak out, Geidt and Heywood then needed to fashion some words that would ensure that the she remained within the bounds expected of a constitutional monarch.

Jim Lawson, a veteran freelance reporter who has dutifully covered royal visits to the Scottish Highlands for decades – he remembers covering Prince Charles at Gordonstoun boarding school in the 1960s – got the answer a week later on Sunday 14 September, outside Crathie Kirk, the small church where the Queen attends Sunday services while at Balmoral. As he has done at these events for years, Lawson wandered over to the crowd behind the barriers after the Queen had departed, to harvest quotes from her greetings to wellwishers. To his surprise, one woman disclosed that the monarch had offered a coded warning about the impending referendum, telling her: “Well, I hope people will think very carefully about the future.”

“The Queen looked almost uneasy,” Lawson recalled. “It was strange. [She] didn’t look supremely confident.” When he asked the woman who had spoken to the Queen for her name, a friend standing with her urged her not to reveal it. When Lawson asked her why not, she replied “It’s my job.” For Lawson, this was a first. “It has never happened in my life before,” he recalled. “Normally if the Queen has talked to someone, they’re delighted to give you everything. I was baffled, to be honest.”

Buckingham Palace declined at the time to comment publicly on the Queen’s remarks, but in private, officials were keen for reporters to broadcast every syllable uttered by the monarch. The Whitehall source said that the Queen’s statement was no accident: “She knew exactly what she was doing. There are two possible responses on the referendum: one, you buy into this as a fantastic festival of democracy; or two, you suggest this is a decision filled with foreboding. So by saying I hope people will think carefully, you imply the second. If they’d said: ‘What do you think of the referendum Ma’am’ and she’d said: ‘Oh it’s lovely’, that would be very different. Without her taking a side, it cast just the right element of doubt over the nature of the decision.”

The Queen’s remarks were crafted with great care by the two men at the heart of the “deep state” to ensure that she did not cross a line – as some had alleged she did decades earlier, when she spoke of the benefits of the UK in her silver jubilee address to a joint session of parliament in 1977. In remarks that were seen as an attempt by the Labour government to warn of the dangers posed by the SNP after it had won 11 seats in the October 1974 general election, she said: “I cannot forget that I was crowned Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Perhaps this jubilee is a time to remind ourselves of the benefits which union has conferred, at home and in our international dealings, on the inhabitants of all parts of this United Kingdom.”

It was felt, 37 years later, that it would have been wholly inappropriate for the Queen to make such pointed remarks in the heat of an independence referendum. It was decided that she would make remarks which were wholly neutral but which would leave nobody in any doubt about her support for the union – as she made clear she had no intention of reverting, as Alex Salmond had suggested, to the ancient title of Queen of Scots.

The delicate negotiations explain why the prime minister was so relieved by the result of the referendum, a point illustrated when he told the former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, in an unguarded moment a few days later, that she had “purred down the line” when he informed the monarch that her kingdom remained intact.

The Queen’s intervention showed the stakes could not have been higher for the pro-UK side, which had started the final countdown to the referendum amid rancour, divisions and bust-ups.

March 2014: Bitching sessions

When the Scottish Tory leader, Ruth Davidson, sat down for a discreet lunch at a Holyrood restaurant with a few close advisers on 27 March, the no campaign still enjoyed a comfortable lead in the polls. But George Osborne’s rejection of a currency union appeared to be backfiring, as the yes side gained momentum in opinion surveys – while Better Together was about to be plunged into “a week from hell”.

Davidson had been lunching with Professor Adam Tomkins, a constitution expert from Glasgow University, Eddie Barnes, her trusted head of communications, and Chris Deerin, a Daily Mail columnist. Craig Harrow, a leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats and a Better Together board member, was at a neighbouring table – and when Davidson left her guests to return to her office, he joined the others. It was already a “bitching session”, Harrow said, so he unburdened himself.

He described a major dispute within the pro-UK campaign over the tone of its advertising, its failure to energise middle-class no voters, and its perceived negativity – which pitted Harrow and Phil Anderton, a marketing expert and executive known as Fireworks Phil after he introduced pyrotechnics to Scottish Rugby Union matches at Murrayfield stadium, against senior executives at Better Together, particularly Labour’s chief strategist Douglas Alexander and its Labour chief executive, Blair McDougall. The three Tories were very sympathetic: there had been debates for months about whether Better Together needed to be more positive. “Labour ran [the pro-UK campaign] as a national by-election and we wanted it to have a bit more to it. We wanted a concert, something that took it beyond politics [such as] some of the things you saw develop, some of the celebrity stuff from down south, Let’s Stay Together and all that sort of stuff,” Davidson recalled.

The next morning that story was splashed across the front of the Scottish Daily Mail under the headline “Campaign to save the UK in crisis”, reporting Harrow’s case that “hard-hitting messages about the disastrous consequences of a yes vote appear to be backfiring.” The no campaign had another setback later that night, when the Guardian published a story revealing that a member of the UK government had said that a currency union would be formed after a yes vote.

Alistair Darling and the Better Together campaign are wounded by the yes side’s claim that the NHS would be under threat if the Conservative-backed no side won the referendum. Illustration by Ellie Foreman-Peck

The Guardian story was seized upon by a jubilant Alex Salmond: it was proof, the first minister said, of the UK government’s “bluff, bullying and bluster” over currency. The opinion polls were starting to shift towards yes – some putting the yes vote as high as 46%, and the yes campaign had widened dramatically to involve groups beyond the SNP. such as the National Collective group of artists, musicians and cultural figures, the Common Weal left-green think tank and a new radical left umbrella group called the Radical Independence Campaign (RIC).

Yet behind that upbeat front, Yes Scotland was suffering its own turmoil at its headquarters on Hope Street in Glasgow, leading to increasing involvement from SNP executives and Sturgeon, then deputy first minister and referendum minister.

After a purge of senior staff in 2013, yes campaign chief Blair Jenkins and the SNP, which dominated the pro-independence campaign’s strategy and messaging, sacked the last two executives hired in 2012 as part of Jenkins’s “vastly experienced” team. Sources involved say Jenkins was deeply unpopular among senior staff, who were unhappy about his taking several long holidays; on at least one occasion, staff staged walkouts. There were significant tensions over the campaign’s lack of a clear strategic plan and the factional disputes within.

As the two sides jostled for position over the summer, the yes campaign sought to establish its credentials as a mass movement; in contrasting style, Better Together strived to be seen as sober. The no camp got an unexpected lift at the start of June from US president Barack Obama, who said he hoped the UK would remain “strong, robust and united”. Better Together strategists believed the White House and Obama had been considering for months whether he should intervene: Darling was approached during a visit to Washington for an IMF event in April by what one source described as “very nervous” British diplomats, who were worried an Obama intervention would backfire. The message from Darling was clear: it would be extremely helpful because Americans have more latitude in Scotland than England does. A few days later, JK Rowling donated £1m to Better Together, describing independence as an “historically bad mistake”. It was a crucial gift, largely enabling Better Together to pay for the final 100 days of campaigning – though Rowling was less generous than the SNP’s most lavish funders, the Euromillions winners Chris and Colin Weir, whose donations to yes and the SNP topped £5.5m by early September.

The SNP had hoped that the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, at the end of July, would give the independence campaign a lift by boosting national pride. But non-partisan audiences at the Games treated it as a festival of sport, often applauding English and Welsh athletes as heavily as their own. Salmond broke his own pledge to keep the Games non-political by referring to Glasgow as “freedom city” – an ill-concealed reference to the prediction that Scotland’s largest city was already on the brink of voting yes. In private, discussions of the referendum were unavoidable: on an official bus to the opening ceremony, Danny Alexander and Nick Clegg pressed Ed Miliband to be more ambitious on agreeing to a joint strategy on more powers. But Miliband was reluctant to allow his name to appear alongside the prime minister’s – for Labour, there was a danger of being associated too closely with the Tories.

5 August: Salmond and Darling face off

Two days after the Games ended, and after much wrangling with broadcaster STV, Alex Salmond confronted Alistair Darling in the first televised debate of the referendum – a duel that set the tone for the last six weeks before polling day. In the weeks before their setpiece confrontation at the Royal Conservatoire in Glasgow, Scotland’s premier music and drama academy, Darling’s team had been coaching the former chancellor at Better Together’s wood-panelled offices on Blythswood Square.

The two men had never debated each other, and their styles were quite different. A former advocate – the Scottish version of a barrister – Darling was an experienced Commons debater after nearly 30 years as an MP, and had withstood torrid encounters at the dispatch box as chancellor. But he was dry, managerial. Salmond, in contrast, was famous for this rapier wit and putdowns.

Darling was put through training bouts with Scottish Labour’s master of first minister’s questions, the party spin doctor Paul Sinclair, pretending to be Salmond. He also received detailed briefing on how to behave in a TV debate by Scott Chisholm, the broadcasting adviser who had prepped Nick Clegg for his definitive general election debates in 2010.

Distracted by the Commonwealth Games, Salmond was snatching training sessions as he travelled the country, even dragging his team up to Inverness. His colleagues implied that he was under-prepared, but he was also more nervous about the encounter than expected.

Salmond was clearly tired; Darling more aggressive and intense than expected. Despite delivering well-aimed punches on Darling’s lack of detail about future tax powers and Scotland’s viability outside the UK, the first minister flailed on his “plan B” proposals for a currency now that the UK parties had vetoed a deal on the pound, relying on poorly judged quips about no campaigners worrying about aliens invading Scotland.

Darling’s camp had decided to focus their fire on Salmond’s weakness on an independent Scotland’s currency options, now that the UK parties had vetoed a currency union. Darling deployed a line he had written the previous weekend: “Any eight-year-old can tell you the flag of a country, the capital of a country and its currency … you can’t tell us what currency we will have. What is an eight-year-old going to make of that?” The first debate was notable for its unexpected outcome: a Darling victory. A snap ICM poll for the Guardian put Darling head by 56% to 44% for Salmond.

But the no camp’s jubilation was short-lived. The yes team had already begun unfolding a far more damaging campaign for the final weeks: attacking the UK government and Better Together over the future of the NHS.

Better Together officials insist that the decision to focus on the NHS was a panic measure after Salmond’s debate defeat. They were wrong: Yes Scotland and the SNP had put the NHS on their campaign grid months before, after watching the powerful reaction on Facebook and YouTube from yes voters to a speech by Dr Philipa Whitford, a Glasgow-based breast surgeon, claiming that privatisation could kill the NHS within a decade. Within the yes movement, Whitford’s speech had gone viral.

Nicola Sturgeon said the NHS was always in mind. As Scottish health secretary, she had rehearsed the key arguments at an SNP conference speech in spring 2012.

“It was always an argument we intended to make and I am absolutely convinced beyond the shadow of a doubt that the reason the Better Together parties reacted so ferociously to that was that they knew how important it was,” Sturgeon recalled. “It was one of the arguments that I think started to shift opinion towards yes.”

It was immensely effective and played very well indeed in Labour-voting neighbourhoods, largely because it triggered a gut anti-Tory reaction and played to Yes Scotland’s conceit that Scots were more socially liberal than England. Yes and no campaigners began hearing the Yes Scotland arguments played back by voters on the doorstep: proof that it was hitting the target. The SNP’s private and unpublished polling had already found that warnings around NHS privatisation and spending in England could flip no voters into yes: one showed that the number backing independence jumped from 45% to 55% when the NHS was raised to voters. “It was very effective,” said Kevin Pringle, the SNP’s director of communications. “It was a very powerful dramatization of what the yes vote was for.

After two weeks of floundering in response, Better Together eventually ended the crisis by asserting that Scottish ministers had complete autonomy over NHS policy and spending in Scotland. But Blair McDougall, the chief executive of Better Together, admitted that the NHS issue cost the no campaign up to three points on referendum day, losing it some 110,000 votes. A senior Scottish Tory source, and other no campaign executives, put the damage higher, estimating that without the impact of the NHS campaign and Darling’s hammering in the second TV debate, the no vote could have hit 60%.

Welfare issues and the Tories’ toxic reputation in Scotland were serious problems for the no campaign: remarkably, Darling had managed to block Iain Duncan Smith, the Tory secretary of state for work and pensions, from coming to Scotland in April 2014 to launch the Scotland Analysis paper on welfare and pensions.

The NHS campaign fuelled an upsurge in mass events by yes activists and supporters, who swelled a series of demonstrations in Glasgow’s George Square, and Buchanan Street, where they gathered under the statue of Labour’s first first minister, and the father of devolution, Donald Dewar.

By the second debate, staged by the BBC in the Edwardian grandeur of the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum and screened live across the UK and overseas, Salmond was in sharper form and better briefed, largely thanks to Sturgeon.

Pringle argues that Salmond is more self-critical than his enemies realise: “Alex is most often at his best when he is in a situation of adversity. When things are going very well he sometimes gets a bit impatient as to why they are not going better, but he was actually very calm after the first debate,” he recalled.

Faced by a more combative, vocal audience, Darling was comprehensively outboxed, appearing wooden and incoherent. Salmond hit him with well-aimed jabs over the alliance with the Tories, increasing poverty, and the vague offer of extra powers. Afterwards, Better Together were furious, blaming the BBC for shambolic security which allowed yes campaigners to confront Darling as he arrived at the Kelvingrove, and poor screening that seemed to result in two-thirds of the audience being ill-disciplined yes voters. It went very badly for Darling. An ICM snap poll for the Guardian gave Salmond a convincing 71% to 29% victory.

2 September: Poll dancing

The Westminster elite, who had assumed that the referendum would be easily won by the no side, started to stir when the shadow cabinet minister Jim Murphy suspended his 100 town Irn-Bru crate speaking tour at the end of August in the face of intimidation from yes supporters. But the first major jolt that woke London from its slumber came on 2 September, when a YouGov/Times poll found that the no side’s apparently impregnable lead had shrunk from 14 points to six in under a month. Alistair Carmichael, a Liberal Democrat bruiser who had been drafted in as Scotland secretary a year earlier to confront Salmond, told the cabinet on the morning of the poll that the union was in grave danger. “This was a time to hold your nerve and to take the prospect seriously but we had to stick to the strategy,” Carmichael said of his intervention. Later that week, a meeting of the “quad” – the coalition’s senior members – was called to hone the message on the risks posed by independence. The government’s aim was to counter the threat from the yes campaign by fleshing out new powers for the Scottish parliament. On the following Sunday, 7 September – while Cameron was visiting the Queen at Balmoral – the referendum finally became a story of global proportions when a YouGov/Sunday Times poll put the yes side in the lead for the first time – by 51% to 49%. “God, it was nerve-racking, I don’t ever want to go through that again,” Danny Alexander said.

But UK ministers and senior civil servants had already had private warnings about the sharp surge in yes support. Because of the unprecedented threat posed by independence to the future of the UK and the state, the Cabinet Office commissioned more than £537,000 worth of extremely detailed but unpublished polling from Ipsos Mori between May 2013 and the end of the campaign – at one stage paying up to £100,000 a month for these surveys, in what is believed to be a record sum spent by Whitehall tracking one political event.

Those Ipsos Mori surveys, which included conventional opinion polling, focus groups, and qualitative attitudinal research into how voters behaved, had tracked the rising support for yes since chancellor George Osborne’s currency zone veto in early 2014. They also echoed the sudden sharp rise in yes support in the closing weeks of the campaign, and confirmed what YouGov and TNS BMRB had discovered: that the referendum vote was too close to call. The Cabinet Office refused to publish the poll findings, insisting they were wholly confidential, and it is now vigorously resisting freedom of information act requests for disclosure.

Ipsos Mori executives had also briefed Whitehall that the last Quebec independence referendum suggested that polling figures could exaggerate support for yes – Ipsos Mori staff in Canada had advised their UK colleagues to assume that on polling day, undecided voters would break two to one for no; that had been the experience in Quebec, where the polls had over-estimated the pro-independence vote. In hindsight, the Better Together chief executive Blair McDougall described the YouGov polls as a “godsend”: “Those two YouGov polls were the best thing that happened to the campaign in terms of making the economic risk real, in terms of energising activists and getting the parties to work through the painful process of sorting out this stuff,” he said.

8 September: Gordon takes a Vow

The new urgency of the pro-UK campaign saw the return to the frontline of the man who had suffered Labour’s second-worst election defeat since the introduction of suffrage. Gordon Brown had delivered many speeches on the referendum, but they had barely received any attention outside Scotland – until he roared into action in a speech on the evening of Monday 8 September in the small Midlothian town of Loanhead. Addressing a packed meeting of Labour supporters at a miner’s club, Brown said, “What people are looking for is a timetable, a plan, a mechanism for delivery and a clear idea of what would happen after a no vote.” His crucial intervention was to provide wavering voters a guarantee that further devolution would be delivered on a clear timetable, with a broad plan finalised by the end of November and a final agreement reached in January 2015. The former prime minister had managed to fire up natural Labour voters, after a month in which it seemed the key theme of the no camp – the danger posed by independence – had been seized by the yes side, as Salmond hammered on the risks to the NHS if Scotland remained in the UK. There was also the small matter of Labour’s neglected base in Scotland. “We realised that the Labour party in Scotland was a bit like the Russian army in the first world war,” a Downing Street source recalled. “Superficially it was impressive but the reality was it wasn’t there in numbers or in fighting energy.”

The “silent nos” – Better Together’s description of the voters who eventually swung the referendum – were mobilised in what will be remembered as one of the most gripping weeks in modern British political history. The shock YouGov poll on 7 September prompted a fall in sterling and knocked billions off the value of companies with exposure to Scotland. One government source spoke of “an air of disbelief” among senior officials in Whitehall. The source added: “So [there was] disbelief, helplessness, a sense among the senior civil servants that, Christ, if this goes the wrong way, we have got our work cut out.”

Ed Miliband and Douglas Alexander, the Scottish shadow foreign secretary, were so alarmed that the Labour leadership suggested to David Cameron that they should abandon prime minister’s questions at Westminster and travel instead to Scotland. It was a difficult judgment call: the pro-UK leaders’ trip north of the border risked looking “heavy-handed”, according to one government source. In the end, the three main party leaders travelled separately to Scotland in a move that eventually won widespread praise from the no side. “On balance I still think it was the right judgment in that it robbed our opponents of the argument that somehow the choice was for us as Scots but the consequences wouldn’t fall elsewhere and it rendered transparent the fact that the whole of the UK was engaged,” Douglas Alexander said.

Alex Salmond mocked the “total disintegration” of the no campaign, but day by day, Better Together was moving into gear as business leaders at last began to voice their private concerns about the dangers of independence. As shares in Scottish companies tumbled, Danny Alexander and Paul Sinclair, a senior aide to the Labour leader in Scotland, cooked up a headline that made the front page of the Daily Record – the key paper to reach out to core Labour voters: “Salmond’s Black Wednesday”.

But the defining moment of the final phase of the campaign came six days later when Gordon Brown persuaded the Daily Record to emblazon across its front page a declaration by the leaders of the three main UK parties that they would start the process of delivering “extensive new powers” to the Scottish parliament. The Vow, which appeared on mock parchment paper on Tuesday 16 September, was so named by imaginative editors. But it was almost wholly the work of Brown, who is credited with doing the most in the final two weeks of the campaign to stabilise the no vote and save the union – in the words of the veteran Whitehall watcher Peter Riddell, it was “Gordon’s second premiership”.

Douglas Alexander, who had been drafted in by Darling to take day-to-day command of Better Together in its final months, was in regular contact with the prime minister’s Scotland adviser Andrew Dunlop in the negotiations over the Vow. But Downing Street was also kept informed by another route – Brown sent regular emails, in his trademark capital letters, to senior civil servants including Sir Jeremy Heywood, the cabinet secretary. Cameron also spoke to Brown in the final stages of the negotiations over the wording of the Vow, though their conversation focused on the prime minister’s final speech of the campaign, in Aberdeen on Monday 15 September. The prime minister had sent the man he dislodged from Downing Street a copy of his speech, asking for suggestions. These were then incorporated into the speech, in which Cameron warned that independence would lead to a “painful divorce”.

A Downing Street source says the prime minister took an “indulgent” view of his predecessor. Recalling their telephone call ahead of the Aberdeen speech, the source said: “Gordon Brown couldn’t resist saying I’m the saviour of the world and you take my advice. I think the prime minister’s view was indulgent – that is Gordon, Gordon has a role to play, there you are. It wasn’t the case that he felt, why is this man so central to this situation? It was just, we’ve got to win, he has a part to play, if I have to cope for half an hour as he tells me why the campaign should have been run in an entirely different way, then that’s fine, OK I’ll do that.”

Douglas Alexander, a former protege who fell out with Brown over the abortive plans to call a UK general election in 2007, experienced something of a reconciliation with his mentor, whose role he likened to that played by the Quebecois former Canadian prime ministers Pierre Elliott Trudeau and Jean Chrétien in the closing stages of the 1980 and 1995 Quebec referendums. “I was clear that we needed a Scottish voice closing the campaign, the most powerful and eloquent voice that we had in our side of the argument was Gordon, and that was why we scored him for the closing days of the campaign.” A self-confessed political anorak, Alexander’s study of the Quebec referendums also provided an answer to one of the dilemmas of the pro-UK campaign: how to dress up No as a positive message. Pierre Trudeau, Alexander discovered, had made his final speech in front of a banner saying “Non Merci”. Alexander says: “As soon as I found ‘Non Merci’ we put that into qualitative research and it tested out the park. I mean, one of the ways you can tell in a campaign that your messaging is working is when your merchandise flies out the door, and just as soon as we produced ‘No thanks’ badges, buttons, leaflets, they flooded out.”Following a series of successful public appearances, Brown gave a barnstorming speech in a community hall in the Maryhill area of Glasgow on the eve of the poll in which he warned that independence would be irreversible: “Once it’s done, it’s done.” Willie Rennie, the leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats who watched the speech from the stage, was blown away. “I thought he was going to chew the heads off everybody in the front row, he was that dynamic.”

Brown had, in fact, first raised his concerns with Cameron and Osborne more than two years earlier, in March 2012, complaining that the SNP had been allowed to set the terms of debate by framing the referendum as a clash between Scotland and London. Brown warned the pair who had ended his premiership that the majority of Scots now felt more Scottish than British, and suggested English politicians wrongly believed these identities to be equivalent north of the border.

Leading figures in the no camp found it hard work to pin down Brown on his plans during the campaign. “As ever with him, you dance through intermediaries,” one source said. But in the end they were immensely thankful for Brown’s interventions, though his impact was not clear until the last hours.

The final polls – and the visible jitters among the British elite – gave the yes side confidence that they were on course for victory. But Pringle acknowledged that amid the excitement, the yes campaign failed to appreciate the late surge for no.

Sturgeon said voters were subject to an “onslaught of fear-mongering” after a second YouGov poll gave the yes side a lead. “The Vow and [the poll] came together for enough people who in their hearts probably wanted to vote yes, but for reasons that I totally understand, were scared of what they were being told might be the consequences. Suddenly they had something that sounded as if it were the safer option to give them a lot of what they wanted, but without the risks,” Sturgeon recalled. “If that poll had been the following Sunday we’d have won. It was too soon. We had private discussions in our campaign meeting about not wanting to go ahead too early.”

The mood in the Better Together camp in the final days was supremely nervous. Ed Miliband was forced to abandon a walkabout in an Edinburgh shopping centre as pro-independence supporters drowned him out with cries of “serial murderer”. In the final days of the campaign the Labour leader struggled to move much beyond his hotel.

“[The SNP] presumed that the closing 10 days of the campaign would be a cavalcade towards independence,” said Douglas Alexander. “They wanted to suggest Better Together was in a perpetual state of crisis and that ever more support was coming to ‘yes’. So when we set out the strategy – ‘faster, safer, better change’ on the Monday evening, they had very little in their locker to push back with.”

18 September: Up all night

A period of almost unbroken sunshine ended on the eve of referendum day, forcing voters to trudge through the rain when the polls opened at 7am on Thursday 18 September. Undeterred by the return to normal autumnal weather, voters came out in their millions to record the sort of turnout (84.59%) unseen in a UK general election since 1950 when 83.9% of voters turned out.

The yes side thought their chances were strong as vast numbers of supporters turned out. “It felt to me on polling day as if we were winning,” one SNP source says.

But the Better Together camp knew they were in a strong position after the final polls gave them a lead and the postal vote returns showed they were comfortably ahead in areas where they could have faced trouble. By midnight, after a YouGov poll suggested a 54%-46% no win, the momentum was clearly with the no camp. Muted celebrations became a little more joyous around 1.30am when tiny Clackmannanshire, which had been in the sights of the yes camp, voted for the union by 53.8% to 46.2%.

Salmond was pictured looking dejected as he was driven from his north east home in the early hours for the flight down to Edinburgh (aides later said he was simply monitoring results on his iPad). Hundreds of miles south in London the atmosphere was looking up in Downing Street where George Osborne had hosted a takeaway curry dinner for the prime minister and their close aides in No 11 in the final hours of polling. The Tory leadership were so nervous about the results that camp beds were brought in for staff to ensure that everyone was on hand if the prime minister had to go out into Downing Street to admit that he had outdone Lord North, the prime minister who lost the North American Colonies, by losing the United Kingdom.

In the end the union was saved, allowing the prime minister to telephone a mightily relieved monarch.

Amid the rejoicing, the unlikely allies who had secured victory for the no campaign would soon be back at each other’s throats, after Cameron seized the moment of triumph to play the English card – providing the SNP a quick route back from defeat. But one prominent Scottish unionist urged that the outcome not be forgotten. “The dream that Salmond had campaigned for all his life had come to a halt,” said Lord Strathclyde, the former Tory leader of the House of Lords. “He had done everything in his power to make sure that the vote went his way. He decided the date of the referendum, he decided the length of the campaign, he decided the question, he changed the franchise so that schoolchildren had got a vote, he was wholly in control of the Scottish government and the civil service. There was nothing more he could do. So he lost. The people have spoken. The sovereign will of the Scottish people has been heard. A once in a generation – once in a lifetime – opportunity occurred in September, and the decision is final.”

Here is the link to the original article:- The real story of the Scottish referendum: the final days of the fight for independence | Severin Carrell, Nicholas Watt and P

Is England "Better Together" in the UK? Some Fiscal Facts.

Here are the latest British official estimates of the tax raised in each of the three ‘home’ nations and province to the end of the 2012/13 financial year.

These figures should not be treated as exact to the last million because there are difficulties in allocating revenue to particular parts of the UK, for example, with corporation tax, but they are broadly indicative of what each country collects in tax. 

There are two sets of figures to show the differences when oil and gas is allocated on a geographical and a population basis.


Table 1 Total HMRC Receipts (Geographical Split of North Sea Revenues), £m 2012-13

UK                England    %           Wales      %       Scotland   %        Northern Ireland %
469,777   400,659 85.3%    16,337 3.5%   42,415 9.0%       10,331   2.6%

Table 2 Total HMRC Receipts (Population Split of North Sea Revenues), £m

469,777   404,760 86.2%    16,652 3.5%   37,811 8.0%        10,518    2.6%

Compare this with public spending for each of three small home countries in the calendar year 2013 (ie Not including UK spending on Welfare, Pensions, Defence, Aid, Foreign Affairs etc):
 
Scotland      £53.9 billion – deficit  of £12 billion approx. between tax raised and money spent
Wales            £29.8 billion – deficit of £13 billion approx. between tax raised and money spent
N. Ireland         £19.8 billion – deficit of £9 billion approx. between tax raised and money spent

So an identifiable £34 Billion a year subsidy from England to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and no contribution from them for any UK expenditure which therefore all comes from the pockets of English Taxpayers.
Better Together?

NB differences between tax raised and money spent are based on Table 1 figures which give the most favourable interpretation of Scotland’s tax position (£16.1 Billion for Table 2 Figures).

PRESS RELEASE – SCOTLAND FAILS THE INDEPENDENCE TEST!

Here is our PRESS RELEASE –  
SCOTLAND FAILS THE INDEPENDENCE TEST!

The English Democrats commiserate with the Yes campaign and the Scottish National Party and Alex Salmond on the disappointing result of the Scottish Independence Referendum.  They should however be congratulated on an excellent campaign against all the lies and propaganda and dirty tricks put up by the British Political and Media Establishment. 

The abiding memory for the People of England of the Scottish Referendum will be the sight of senior “British” politicians demonstrating again and again and again that they have no interest in properly representing English interests, England or the English Nation and every intention of selling us down the river. 

Robin Tilbrook, the Chairman of the English Democrats said:- “It is now England’s turn to be heard and the English Democrats have every confidence that the People of England will reject the shabby deal concocted by the Unionist Westminster elite in a conspiracy against English interests.  This was rushed through for the purpose of subverting the democratic process in the Yes/No Scottish Referendum after the same gang had refused to allow the Devo-max option to actually be put on the ballot paper.   The Westminster elite has shown itself to be utterly self-interested, dishonest, undemocratic and unfit to run our country. So far as England is concerned the English Democrats call upon all those who care about England to block the implementation of “Devo-max” until exactly the same is offered for the whole of England as a national unit.”

Robin continued:- “The great danger now facing England is an equivalent, undemocratic, dishonest conspiracy by the Westminster elite to try to ram through, without any democratic mandate, their plans to break England up.  Any such attempt is totally unacceptable and is nothing short of an act of war against England.  It should be met with a response that is appropriate for an act of war!”

Have you seen the following link asking if I am the English Alex Salmond?  >>>? BBC News English Democrats Robin Tilbrook on party conference – YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAyLqe69IOY

Robin Tilbrook

Chairman,

The English Democrats

Blog: http://robintilbrook.blogspot.co.uk/

FaceBook Profile: http://www.facebook.com/robin.tilbrook

Party Tel: 0207 242 1066

Twitter: @RobinTilbrook

Party Website: www.englishdemocrats.org

English Democrats’ FB Page: http://www.facebook.com/robin.tilbrook#!/www.EngDem.org

Chairman’s FB

Page: http://www.facebook.com/robin.tilbrook#!/Robin.Tilbrook.English.Democrats

Key facts about the English Democrats

The English Democrats launched in 2002. 

The English Democrats are the English nationalist Party. We campaign for a referendum for Independence for England; for St George’s Day to be England’s National holiday; for Jerusalem to be England’s National Anthem; to leave the EU; for an end to mass immigration; for the Cross of St George to be flown on all public buildings in England; and we support a YES vote for Scottish Independence.

The English Democrats are England’s answer to the Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru. The English Democrats’ greatest electoral successes to date include:- in the 2004 EU election we had 130,056 votes; winning the Directly Elected Executive Mayoralty of Doncaster Metropolitan Borough Council in 2009 and also the 2012 referendum; in the 2009 EU election we gained 279,801 votes after a total EU campaign spend of less than £25,000; we won the 2012 referendum which gave Salford City an Elected Mayor; in 2012 we also saved all our deposits in the Police Commissioner elections and came second in South Yorkshire; and in the 2014 EU election we had 126,024 votes for a total campaign spend of about £40,000 (giving the English Democrats by far the most cost efficient electoral result of any serious Party in the UK).