Many would probably say that September 18th cannot come quickly enough, that after such protracted debate all can finally be settled at the ballot box, the 'marriage/divorce' metaphors can be retired, and things can move on. Only really now in the final furlong has the seismic potential of the Scottish referendum struck me personally, being that it could possibly - with the dissolution of a union lasting over three centuries - be one of the most significant political events of my lifetime.
Watching the Salmond/Darling debates, I found it almost impossible after a while to resist sinking into a near-fatal state of boredom. The posturing charade appeared to be orchestrated around one loudly asserting a factual statement, armour-plated with statistics, and the other repudiating it, equally loudly, as being a lie.
Were I to be a Scot with a vote, I would by now have installed a force-field of scepticism to guard against almost anything Alex Salmond says. This is not to accuse him of being deliberately misleading, just that the notion that with a 'Yes' victory he will have secured his legacy in Scottish history alongside the likes of Hume, Scott and Burns, must surely be like trying to keep a thumb clamped over the pouring tap of his own ego. Objectivity for Salmond must long since have withered away under the beating sun of ambition and the humid lust for glory.
Economically, there are rows of persuasive pillars holding aloft the case for a union. I've tried engaging in these debates but I am no economist and cannot bring any fresh insight at all. All I know is that economics is crucial but, on this issue, it is far from being everything.
Rather oddly, I'm far more concerned about what the fate will be of the man who plays bagpipes on Westminster Bridge! He will no doubt be exiled to his native land forthwith as one very immediate victim of independence.
There are compelling arguments wrestling against each other with regard to the currency issue. The ‘Better Together’ campaign has stipulated that there will be no chance of a currency union in the event of independence, and in any case that would result in Scotland immediately ceding sovereignty to the Bank of England and the remaining UK’s economic policy.
However, the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has countered that a currency union would not only be possible but accepted because of the Scottish and UK economies being so closely intertwined in terms of trade like fiscal loom bands (okay, I added the last part). In his view, the UK government is bluffing over its opposition, as it may well be about shipping contracts no longer being awarded to the Clyde; in line with Nicola Sturgeon’s assertion that contracts would persist by default on the grounds that it is the only place in the UK currently capable of fulfilling them.
Meanwhile, the Adam Smith Institute has touted the notion of ‘sterlingisation’, i.e. keeping the pound regardless of there being no union, the Bank of England not being ‘lender of last resort’, and so on. This has been cited as the ‘Panama model’ – several Latin American countries' adoption of the dollar – and suggests that, ‘far from being problematic, this constraint reduces moral hazard within the financial system and forces banks to be prudent, significantly improving the overall quality of the country’s banks.’ (Panama’s main banks are considered to be among the soundest in the world.)
This, I think it’s fair to say, could only be a positive step. The other opposition argument is that Scotland would lose their share in the harvest from the UK’s financial services industry, although this could also be seen as a welcome escape from a drastically over-ploughed field that is operating on borrowed time until inevitably it is surpassed elsewhere.
The journalist George Monbiot recently approached the issue in a fascinating reversal – that why would an independent country abandon their sovereignty and shackle themselves to the UK? For all the sentimentality propagated by the ‘No’ campaign, you have to wonder what exactly it is that they are so keen to preserve? Is it really anything more substantial or tangible than retaining the Saltire as the backdrop of the Union Jack?
It surely can’t be patriotism for a country run purely in the interests of the banking industry that we are told is simply ‘too big to fail’; where areas in the North of England are now some of the poorest in Europe; where (according to a 2012 study) some 46% of the top 50 publicly traded firms had a parliamentarian either as a director or a shareholder; and where, as James Meek demonstrates in his new book ‘Private Island’, vast tranches of formerly public services have been privatised and effectively re-nationalised in foreign countries.
The Scots should seize this chance at self-determination and aspire towards a leaner and more socially democratic country, free from the auspices of Westminster and the sun-like luminance of London around which the rest of the country is held in a rigid gravitational orbit. Free from a country in which Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson are considered political mavericks, and where billions are due to be spent renewing Trident nuclear weapons. Wouldn’t you want to grab an opportunity for a real alternative from this if given the chance?
If I were to make a prediction, I believe the result will be negative. In the lead-up the headlines are full of polls predicting the gap to grow increasingly skinny as the patriotic fervour starts to starve rationality. Yet I think, once in the polling booth, pen in hand, the majority will buckle from the implied risks of voting ‘Yes’ and the anxiety of the relatively unknown. ‘Better the devil you know’, many may think to themselves, considering their children, their mortgage, their job, their savings.
Once the dust has settled and a few years of reflection have gone by, I doubt you’ll be able to go to Scotland and find a single Scot willing to admit having voted ‘No’. It’ll be rather like the Sex Pistols gig in Manchester that entered the annals of music legend, where nearly everyone of a certain age claims to have been one of the 50-or-so attendees…
Were Scotland to vote for independence, I think it would prove to be a tremendous colonic irrigation for the rest of the country; perhaps helping to shift the neoliberal capitalist dung heap that has built up on the centre ground over the last 20 or 30 years. People argue that without Scotland, Labour would struggle to win a majority in a general election. The surety of right wing dominance then might prove finally to be the galvanising impetus that wakes the political left from their interminable slumber and begins to assert itself as a radical and viable alternative.
To use the tired anthropomorphic analogy; it could have the effect on the British electorate of someone seeing a best friend leave their long-term partner and them slowly coming to realise that perhaps similar action regarding their own relationship might be the best course of action. So I say, go for it Scotland, take this chance whilst you have it and don’t look back!
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