Over the last two weeks, Theos has hosted a series of blogs on the Scottish independence referendum. Nigel Biggar and Doug Gay set out the cases for Union and for independence. Theos' Ben Ryan asked whether it might be a good referendum to lose, and Jonathan Chaplin what the debate was actually about. Paul Bickley now assesses the implications of the NO vote, arguing that the Union survives, but still faces fundamental challenges.
Britannia stared into the abyss. The abyss is still staring back.
The Scottish Independence referendum resulted in a less-close-than-expected no (55.3% NO, 44.7% YES, if you'd managed to miss it). The Union survives, but ‘survives’ is the right word. It doesn’t flourish. It’s won a battle, but the war is yet to be fought.
In Scotland, 1.6 million people have woken up frustrated. Time will tell if the vote has been a moment of catharsis. I suspect not. For all the carnival flavour of the YES campaign, it has also drawn from the well of political cynicism, and cynicism is not conducive to citizenship. Equally, the NO campaign were right to call attention to the financial and political pandemonium that would have followed a YES vote, but no-one should imagine that todays result is a request for 'more of the same'. The many and various reasons why people voted for independence (or considered voting for independence) have not evaporated. If we are indeed ‘better together’ then Scotland and the rest of the UK need to listen closely to what those who have voted for change have said over the course of the last two years.
In Wales, England and Northern Ireland, millions of others wake up feeling inspired, thankful that the union endures, or perhaps a little aggrieved. Plaid Cymru have already asked that the Scottish settlement be reflected in Wales - and why should they not? “Wales should no longer be a spectator in its own journey”, said Leanne Wood AM of Plaid Cymru this morning. Things will have a unique flavour in Northern Ireland, and we must pray that what has been a largely civil debate in Scotland will not be a spark to something less civil over the Irish Sea. “The Union has changed and is no longer fixed” – Gerry Adams on Radio Ulster this morning.
England, meanwhile, is mute - it has no way of articulating its needs and aspirations – no credible party, no Alex Salmond, not even a Gordon Brown. But just because it’s silent doesn’t mean it’s happy. Dominated by a global city state, which simultaneously is both its greatest success and its greatest problem, power piles up in London and the South East, and so does money. It doesn’t take (shouldn't have taken?) a Scottish Nationalist to tell you that it’s starting to smell.
Rightly, there is considerable pressure to ‘do something’ but we need to mix urgency with caution, haste with wisdom and avoid what could easily become just another fix. It’s not just about the West Lothian question, and can’t be resolved by some bureaucrat inventing a sufficiently non-disruptive way to ensure English MPs are the only people voting on English laws. It’s more fundamental than that – it's about the weakness of local government, and the lack of psychological proximity between Westminster and just about anywhere else – it could be Lambeth, Redruth, or Stoke as much as Glasgow.
A flurry of Tory advocacy on 'the English question', outside of a wider debate about the shape of the UK, will only succeed in cementing the perception that the Conservative Party really is an English party, with no substantial vision for the other nations – where then for its Unionism? Labour will remain a genuinely national party (excepting Northern Ireland), but must now consider whether it will follow people like Jon Cruddas MP into a serious conversation about English identity.
Not forgetting that we can’t afford to turn inward at a time of real global conflict, this is, without a shadow of a doubt, a constitutional crossroads. We can either continue to offer further piecemeal change to whichever jurisdiction is shouting the loudest and angriest, continuing to feed a grievance shaped politics, or take a leaf from Scotland’s book and ask some fundamental questions about the distribution of political and economic power in these islands.
In a speech on banking last year, Justin Welby quoted Basil of Caesarea. “A great torrent rushes in thousands of channels through the fertile land. By a thousand different paths make your riches reach the homes of the poor. Wealth is like water that issues forth from the fountain. The greater the frequency with which it is drawn, the purer it is, while it becomes foul if the fountain becomes unused.” So for the institution of finance, so for the institutions of government – where is power being hoarded, where could it be given away? The principle of subsidiarity should run further than Trafalgar square.
It will not be simple, but we need to engage Britain in a meaningful conversation of how its institutions should be shaped to meet the next century – we’re very eager to do it for Europe, but less so for ourselves.
We don’t need “proposals in the next few days” – we need a constitutional convention, taking this debate out of the stream of party politics and into the hands of ordinary citizens, aided and abetted by those capable of giving us the long view: historians, philosophers and – yes – theologians. I have a Scotland-shaped hunch that the British public might be up for a discussion.
Paul Bickley is Director of Political Programme at Theos
Image by Tim Green from flickr.com under the Creative Commons Licence.
