Scottish Independence?

Today has been a day of high emotion for the inhabitants of the United Kingdom as the people of Scotland vote on taking themselves independent. Not one of my meetings has passed today without the subject being raised, as with a regular spatter of emails from chums seeking an opinion. So here you have mine for what it’s worth in the dying hours of what could be our United Kingdom.

I have seen this as a somewhat one sided affair. Not the Yes over the No or vice versa but something more fundamental. Why the other members of the United Kingdom are getting little say in effecting the outcome of such a serious matter which impacts them as much in many ways as it does Scotland has never been clarified. A factor little attended to by the somewhat self-absorbed inward looking nature of what have been very negative debates conducted by both the Yes and No camps of the thwart Scots. Neither side have conducted themselves particularly honourably, with a rush to the bottom in the bullying debates. Debates that set the worst kind of example for any hot blooded Scots, as subsequent escalations in threats and even violence demonstrated. Then there is the facile intervention by the Cameron administration demonstrating crass policy, ineptitude with their statements throughout and particularly at this late juncture on Devolution Max. The kitchen is clearly too hot for Cameron and his troupe of political lightweights with a performance almost as bad as their Libya and Syria debacles, which was why most of the sense in the Scottish debate from Westminster came from the older political cadre.

In the face of the hotly disputed social, political and economic battlegrounds that established a case for the folly of an independent Scotland, if the unprecedented happens, the United Kingdom will survive. A UK with a regrettably absent much loved member of the family. It will still be a union if only of England, Wales and Northern Ireland. As for the form this union will take and the ramifications on lands far beyond, only time will tell. Oh yes and God save the Queen, literally!!

I suspect that as with a petulant child leaving home, once the heat of a division abates, the family rallies round. I hope for nothing less should Scotland sadly fall victim of a fractional Yes majority. The frightening level of aggression that has been displayed particularly by the Yes camp whatever the outcome in such a close run contest, risks leaving a deep divide to be healed. This will call on great political and social fortitude to rebuild trust if the fallout from this experience is to be minimised.

Whoever wins, you can guarantee the respective losing movement will already be up to full speed guaranteeing the feuding will rumble on. This will not be game over, but just the commencement of a second innings. Or third perhaps if you count the 1707 Acts of Union as the first.

And so the world goes round and with it the cyclical nature of such deep rooted family feuds, repeating patterns, same old story, no one daring to write a new script to heal the wounds of division .…..