SALMOND HEADS FOR HIS OWN CULLODEN.

A couple of days ago, Alex Salmond's lot in the chilly wastes of Scotland published their plans for an independent nation. That these plans are peppered with so many assumptions and holes that are worthless has been missed by very few.

 

Salmond wants his 'country' to be independent and yet he also wants to keep almost everything it currently has - the Queen as Head of State, the pound sterling as its currency, membership of the European Union etc., etc. He seems to have a notion that Scotland is the most successful and productive part of the United Kingdom, based on a variety of past issues and the belief that North Sea oil will last forever. What he really seems to want is to turn the clock back some 300 years, to the days when Scotland was little more than a collection of fiefdoms, nominally under the overlordship of a king or queen.

 

Salmond is attempting to con the Scots into voting for independence by promising them that the only significant change they would see would be the cessation of control from Westminster. This is, of course, nonsense. His assertion that a newly independent Scotland would still be a member of the EU has been refuted by a raft of EU officials; they are united in saying that Scotland would have to make a fresh application for membership and take its place in the queue.

 

Whether or not the Queen would wish to remain as Head of State is another question; would she wish to be Head of State of a foreign country which had rejected the old Union ? Would, indeed, the people and government of England, Wales and Northern Ireland wish to share their monarch with a foreign country which had shown such antipathy to the Union ?

 

Regarding Salmond's stated intention of retaining sterling as the new nation's currency, he has again made a claim which ignores European rules. Any new nation wishing to join the EU is required to adopt the Euro as its currency; Scotland would be no different, whatever Salmond might want. Even if this were not the case, would the Government of the reduced United Kingdom wish to share its currency ? What would be the effects on both Scotland and the nation it had left ? Tying itself to a foreign currency would certainly have a significant impact on the ability of a Scottish government to manage its own monetary affairs independently and might well make many of Salmond's other plans for a future economy impossible to achieve. One has only to look at the mess of the Eurozone to see this.

 

Salmond is a fanatic and all fanatics are dangerous. In his case, he is dangerous to the stability and future of a country, the United Kingdom, which has endured since the Act of Union in 1707. Salmond is also dangerous to his homeland, Scotland which, by the way, has not really been a country in an international sense since that same Act; it is part of the United Kingdom in the same way that New South Wales is part of Australia and California is part of the USA.

 

If the Scots want to go their own way, so be it, but let it be for genuine and supportable reasons, not the hyperbole of a mad modern-day Jacobite.  The one good thing about this whole process is that it will all be over by the end of next year, at least for a generation or two.