Scotland wants to talk independence.

A few days ago, a survey by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) found that English voters, like many of their Scottish counterparts, are falling out of love with the UK.


According to the IPPR, fully 40 per cent of English voters say that Englishness is more important to them than Britishness.

Meanwhile, almost one in four English voters would like to wave farewell to the Scots, while four-fifths support the so-called ‘devo max’ option, which would give Scotland complete financial autonomy without completely severing the Union.


Since only 31 per cent of English voters say they are ‘very attached’ to the UK, it is not hard to see why, despite the polls, Mr Salmond is so bullish.


For even if his countrymen fail to deliver the death blow in 2014, some commentators predict that the English will eventually pull the plug themselves, condemning the UK to the dustbin of history.

The plain and unarguable truth is that the British experiment has been the most influential partnership in history, banishing old enmities and creating the most successful nation-state the world has ever seen.


All of us — whether English, Welsh or Scottish — like to tell ourselves that we have always walked tall on the world stage.


Yet the reality is that until our nations joined hands, we cut minor, even irrelevant figures, lurking anxiously on the European periphery.


By contrast, the list of achievements of the UK is simply astonishing.

Working together, men and women from Aylesbury, Aberystwyth and Aberdeen created the world’s first industrial nation, an economic powerhouse that redrew the limits of possibility and prosperity.


Our generals, explorers and missionaries built the biggest empire the world had ever seen, often with Scotsmen in the vanguard.

Historians estimate that in the half-century after the Act of Union, some 30,000 Scots settled in the American colonies alone.


Canada, Australia and New Zealand are as much Scottish creations as they are English, while the intrepid Scot David Livingstone became one of the most famous explorers in history.


One estimate suggests that one out of three British colonial governors after 1850 was Scottish — a clear sign that Great Britain Ltd’s supposedly junior partner was punching well above its weight.


As for the Welsh, their contribution belied their nation’s small size. The regiment known today as the South Wales Borderers, for instance, served with distinction during the Victorian era Sikh Wars, the Indian Mutiny and, most famously, the Zulu War, where Welsh heroism at the Battle of Rorke’s Drift became justly legendary.

Over centuries, British identity — which had not even existed before 1707 — became associated with institutions such as the monarchy, Parliament, the Royal Navy and even the BBC. But there was more to it than that.

What brought us together was not just our shared respect for the rule of law, our love of free speech, our quirky sense of humour and our fondness for inventing ever more elaborate ball games.

It was our sense of ourselves as a special community, jumbled up together on a small, rain-swept Atlantic island, yet looking boldly outwards, unafraid to confront the challenges of the world.

For when they stood together at Waterloo, Omdurman, the Somme and Dunkirk, the men of England, Wales and Scotland knew that they were one people, united by ties of history, language, values and blood.

Of course, the UK must always keep evolving. Even that supreme Englishman, Winston Churchill, who served for a long time as MP for Dundee, predicted that one day ‘a federal system will be established in these islands which will give Wales and Scotland the control within proper limits of their own Welsh and Scottish affairs’.

With hindsight, you realise that devolution should have come earlier, thus strangling Celtic nationalism at birth.


Yet the irony is that today, it is actually the English who suffer the greatest democratic deficit, lacking any meaningful power to govern their own affairs.


Indeed, last week’s IPPR survey found that 45 per cent of English voters feel that Scotland gets ‘more than its fair share of public spending’. While 79 per cent would like to see Scottish MPs banned from voting on English affairs (the so-called ‘West Lothian question’) and 36 per cent would like to see a devolved English parliament.

As men and women of Great Britain, we have achieved great things. From the enterprise and ingenuity of the Industrial Revolution to the shared sacrifice of the Somme; from the Victorian railways to the D-Day beaches; from religious toleration to the rule of law, we Britons changed the world.


To lose all that, to sacrifice our shared history and common interests, would be utterly unconscionable, leaving us all culturally and economically weaker, smaller, sadder and poorer.

As it happens, the man who put it best was Scotland’s national poet, the Ayrshire Ploughman who, in a victory for decency and common sense, pipped the blood-thirsty William Wallace to the title of ‘Greatest Scot’ a few years ago.

Robert Burns was indeed a great Scotsman. But he was also a great Briton. And at a time when Britain’s very survival seems in grave peril, his words still ring clear and true:


Be Briton still to Britain true
Among oursel’s united;
For never but by British hands
Maun British wrangs be righted.