Steven Hawking's Tutor
Posts: 5,930 
May 8th, 2008, 12:00 PM
In 1922, what is now the Republic of Ireland broke away from Britain and became an independent state.
But will Scotland do the same over the next 10 years or so?
According to the Daily Mail, it will be highly unlikely that Scotland becomes independent - it probably won't be able to cope as an independent state and could end up begging to re-join Britain (the leader of the Scottish nationalists, Alex Salmond, has said than an independent Scotland could always re-join the UK if it ever wished).
What if Scotland DID become independent? A historian looks forward 20 years and imagines the future
By ANDREW ROBERTS
8th May 2008
Daily Mail
The Scottish Labour leader, Wendy Alexander, called this weekend for an early referendum on Scottish independence - even though her party previously opposed the idea.
The move is seen as an attempt to wrong-foot Alex Salmond's Scottish National Party, which is committed to a referendum in 2010.
But many say her challenge could backfire and that the SNP could benefit from any poll result that suggests a move towards independence.
So what would an independent Scotland be like? Here, historian ANDREW ROBERTS looks forward to the year 2025 and imagines ...
The new Prime Minister frowned as he stared across the Cabinet table at the embarrassed looking Scottish High Commissioner. Had he heard correctly? Was President Salmond really asking that Scotland be re-admitted into the UK, after only 15 years as an independent state?
Cry freedom: But would independence work for Scotland?
On-the-brink Brown faces fresh accusations of dithering - this time over a referendum on Scottish independence
They had been tumultuous years, of course, and 'the Tartan Revolt' had endured its ups and downs - mostly downs.
But was the Scottish Nationalist Party genuinely proposing to abolish itself, admitting the whole experiment had been a disastrous failure?
"I shall have to confer with the Cabinet, of course," the Prime Minister said.
Barely able to growl "Thank you, Mr Osborne", with a twist of his kilt the High Commissioner left.
The Rt Hon George Osborne MP, who had just returned from an audience at Buckingham Palace with King Charles III, sat back in his armchair in the middle of the Cabinet room and ruminated on the Scots' predicament.
Where had it all gone wrong? Of course, the 11-year-long international court case over who owned North Sea oil had been a serious blow to Scottish hopes when the 30 per cent share they were finally awarded turned out to have almost run dry anyhow.
The way that the English coastline jutted out into the North Sea and the Irish Sea just south of the border had persuaded the judges that was a generous settlement under international maritime law, but it seriously undermined Scottish Prime Minister Wendy Alexander's first term in office at Holyrood.
Then there was the termination of the annual Westminster subsidies to Scotland under the Barnett Formula, which in 2007 had amounted to £11.3 billion.
This ended overnight when the Scots voted - by 54 per cent to 46 per cent - for independence back in January 2010.
The ending of this £2,200-per-person subsidy meant the Holyrood Parliament in Edinburgh had to make severe cuts in public services, which rapidly became deeply unpopular.
Born blue: Mel Gibson as William Wallace in Braveheart. But it may be unlikely that Scotland will ever gain independence from the rest of Britain - and even if it does, it probably wouldn't be long before they begged to be let back in
The removal of every Scottish MP in Westminster had also come as a body blow to New Labour, which was trying desperately to hang on until the last minute before calling a General Election in the early summer of 2010.
Gordon Brown was forced to give up the premiership, since his own seat of Kirkcaldy disappeared under the new constitution. Many in his party - possibly including himself - thought his resignation something of a blessing.
Earl Brown of Cowdenbeath, as he subsequently became, turned out to be one of the shortest-serving premiers of modern times.
David Miliband did his best to lead a minority government without the 39 Scottish MPs at Westminster, but the task proved beyond him. Not wishing to spend his life in perpetual opposition, he took up a post in the City.
Any hopes that the more Anglophobic Scots might have had that their defection would harm the UK were dashed when the UK kept its name - in reference to the English, Welsh and Northern Ireland components of it - as well as its seats in the UN Security Council, Nato, EU, OECD and other international bodies.
Scotland on its own, however, swiftly found itself with a voice somewhere between that of Serbia and Cyprus in weight, representing only 4.6 million people (after half-a-million English and business people emigrated to avoid the anti-sassenach legislation and high corporation taxes).
The decision of the Royal Bank of Scotland in 2018 to relocate its head office for tax purposes to the Square Mile was a stark indication of how bad things had got.
After the failure of the Tartan Pound, and the Scots refusal to peg their currency to sterling, their decision to join the euro had also been damaging - not least because it meant they no longer had any significant input into decisions over interests rates and liquidity.
On the Queen's death, aged 95, in 2021, the Scots compounded their error by joining Australia in becoming a republic.
It was not simply King Charles III's sale to Sir Billy Connolly of Balmoral and Birkhall, but also the sense that - as with Ireland in 1949 - the act to become a republic had been primarily anti-British in intent.
The phrases that the British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson had directed towards 'North Britain' had only inflamed opinion further.
In retrospect, the decision to move the naval base from Rosyth to a port south of the border was a natural one for a Westminster government determined to safeguard the interests of national security.
So, too, was the abolition of the remaining Scots regiments, despite their ancient and glorious history as part of the British Army.
The unemployment that resulted north of the Border may have been soaked up had the Scottish economy been growing, but the SNP-Labour coalition that ran the country under President Salmond and Prime Minister Wendy Alexander made an error in choosing that moment to push through radical land policies.
When tenants were given the right to buy their own homes, it was hoped by the Left that the landed estates of the Scottish aristocracy would be dispossessed in a generation or two, and there would be more fairness and opportunity in the glens.
What, in fact, happened was that the aristocratic estates did, indeed, disappear, but with them went the enterprises that allowed sports such as shooting, stalking and fishing to flourish.
The great sporting estates that had attracted tourist revenue to the Scottish Exchequer in George Square, Edinburgh, were no longer productive.
Expertise built up over the decades was lost, and farms were broken up into smaller and smaller units, many of which could no longer operate.
Tourists stopped bringing their euros, dollars, yen and Chinese yuan because, paradoxically, independence had robbed the country not only of its ancient rural traditions but of its confidence and grandeur.
To visitors, Scotland no longer felt genuinely Scottish. It had turned into just another small, unremarkable European country.
It all got progressively worse with the loss of whisky revenues after the declaration of independence from the Orkney and Shetland Islands.
By the time Alex Salmond became president, his country was unravelling, and the English border towns such as Berwick-upon-Tweed that had voted to join Scotland - in order to take advantage of social benefits in the good old Barnett Formula days (not because of any actual love of Scotland) - were soon begging for re-admittance back into England and the UK.
The Time magazine cover story - 'Tartan Nightmare' - was a turning point in the Scots' self-esteem, especially when it equated the chances of a successful independent Scotland with those of seeing the Loch Ness Monster.
It was with no sense of schadenfreude that Prime Minister Osborne took the decision that was plain to him as soon as the High Commissioner had left.
Of course, he would consult with the King, his own predecessor as premier Lord Cameron of Whitney and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, but he was pretty certain that they would agree with his conclusion.
The answer must be 'No'. The Scots had chosen their destiny, and now they must live with it.
dailymail.co.uk
In 1922, what is now the Republic of Ireland broke away from Britain and became an independent state.
But will Scotland do the same over the next 10 years or so?
According to the Daily Mail, it will be highly unlikely that Scotland becomes independent - it probably won't be able to cope as an independent state and could end up begging to re-join Britain (the leader of the Scottish nationalists, Alex Salmond, has said than an independent Scotland could always re-join the UK if it ever wished).
What if Scotland DID become independent? A historian looks forward 20 years and imagines the future
By ANDREW ROBERTS
8th May 2008
Daily Mail
The Scottish Labour leader, Wendy Alexander, called this weekend for an early referendum on Scottish independence - even though her party previously opposed the idea.
The move is seen as an attempt to wrong-foot Alex Salmond's Scottish National Party, which is committed to a referendum in 2010.
But many say her challenge could backfire and that the SNP could benefit from any poll result that suggests a move towards independence.
So what would an independent Scotland be like? Here, historian ANDREW ROBERTS looks forward to the year 2025 and imagines ...
The new Prime Minister frowned as he stared across the Cabinet table at the embarrassed looking Scottish High Commissioner. Had he heard correctly? Was President Salmond really asking that Scotland be re-admitted into the UK, after only 15 years as an independent state?
Cry freedom: But would independence work for Scotland?
On-the-brink Brown faces fresh accusations of dithering - this time over a referendum on Scottish independence
They had been tumultuous years, of course, and 'the Tartan Revolt' had endured its ups and downs - mostly downs.
But was the Scottish Nationalist Party genuinely proposing to abolish itself, admitting the whole experiment had been a disastrous failure?
"I shall have to confer with the Cabinet, of course," the Prime Minister said.
Barely able to growl "Thank you, Mr Osborne", with a twist of his kilt the High Commissioner left.
The Rt Hon George Osborne MP, who had just returned from an audience at Buckingham Palace with King Charles III, sat back in his armchair in the middle of the Cabinet room and ruminated on the Scots' predicament.
Where had it all gone wrong? Of course, the 11-year-long international court case over who owned North Sea oil had been a serious blow to Scottish hopes when the 30 per cent share they were finally awarded turned out to have almost run dry anyhow.
The way that the English coastline jutted out into the North Sea and the Irish Sea just south of the border had persuaded the judges that was a generous settlement under international maritime law, but it seriously undermined Scottish Prime Minister Wendy Alexander's first term in office at Holyrood.
Then there was the termination of the annual Westminster subsidies to Scotland under the Barnett Formula, which in 2007 had amounted to £11.3 billion.
This ended overnight when the Scots voted - by 54 per cent to 46 per cent - for independence back in January 2010.
The ending of this £2,200-per-person subsidy meant the Holyrood Parliament in Edinburgh had to make severe cuts in public services, which rapidly became deeply unpopular.
Born blue: Mel Gibson as William Wallace in Braveheart. But it may be unlikely that Scotland will ever gain independence from the rest of Britain - and even if it does, it probably wouldn't be long before they begged to be let back in
The removal of every Scottish MP in Westminster had also come as a body blow to New Labour, which was trying desperately to hang on until the last minute before calling a General Election in the early summer of 2010.
Gordon Brown was forced to give up the premiership, since his own seat of Kirkcaldy disappeared under the new constitution. Many in his party - possibly including himself - thought his resignation something of a blessing.
Earl Brown of Cowdenbeath, as he subsequently became, turned out to be one of the shortest-serving premiers of modern times.
David Miliband did his best to lead a minority government without the 39 Scottish MPs at Westminster, but the task proved beyond him. Not wishing to spend his life in perpetual opposition, he took up a post in the City.
Any hopes that the more Anglophobic Scots might have had that their defection would harm the UK were dashed when the UK kept its name - in reference to the English, Welsh and Northern Ireland components of it - as well as its seats in the UN Security Council, Nato, EU, OECD and other international bodies.
Scotland on its own, however, swiftly found itself with a voice somewhere between that of Serbia and Cyprus in weight, representing only 4.6 million people (after half-a-million English and business people emigrated to avoid the anti-sassenach legislation and high corporation taxes).
The decision of the Royal Bank of Scotland in 2018 to relocate its head office for tax purposes to the Square Mile was a stark indication of how bad things had got.
After the failure of the Tartan Pound, and the Scots refusal to peg their currency to sterling, their decision to join the euro had also been damaging - not least because it meant they no longer had any significant input into decisions over interests rates and liquidity.
On the Queen's death, aged 95, in 2021, the Scots compounded their error by joining Australia in becoming a republic.
It was not simply King Charles III's sale to Sir Billy Connolly of Balmoral and Birkhall, but also the sense that - as with Ireland in 1949 - the act to become a republic had been primarily anti-British in intent.
The phrases that the British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson had directed towards 'North Britain' had only inflamed opinion further.
In retrospect, the decision to move the naval base from Rosyth to a port south of the border was a natural one for a Westminster government determined to safeguard the interests of national security.
So, too, was the abolition of the remaining Scots regiments, despite their ancient and glorious history as part of the British Army.
The unemployment that resulted north of the Border may have been soaked up had the Scottish economy been growing, but the SNP-Labour coalition that ran the country under President Salmond and Prime Minister Wendy Alexander made an error in choosing that moment to push through radical land policies.
When tenants were given the right to buy their own homes, it was hoped by the Left that the landed estates of the Scottish aristocracy would be dispossessed in a generation or two, and there would be more fairness and opportunity in the glens.
What, in fact, happened was that the aristocratic estates did, indeed, disappear, but with them went the enterprises that allowed sports such as shooting, stalking and fishing to flourish.
The great sporting estates that had attracted tourist revenue to the Scottish Exchequer in George Square, Edinburgh, were no longer productive.
Expertise built up over the decades was lost, and farms were broken up into smaller and smaller units, many of which could no longer operate.
Tourists stopped bringing their euros, dollars, yen and Chinese yuan because, paradoxically, independence had robbed the country not only of its ancient rural traditions but of its confidence and grandeur.
To visitors, Scotland no longer felt genuinely Scottish. It had turned into just another small, unremarkable European country.
It all got progressively worse with the loss of whisky revenues after the declaration of independence from the Orkney and Shetland Islands.
By the time Alex Salmond became president, his country was unravelling, and the English border towns such as Berwick-upon-Tweed that had voted to join Scotland - in order to take advantage of social benefits in the good old Barnett Formula days (not because of any actual love of Scotland) - were soon begging for re-admittance back into England and the UK.
The Time magazine cover story - 'Tartan Nightmare' - was a turning point in the Scots' self-esteem, especially when it equated the chances of a successful independent Scotland with those of seeing the Loch Ness Monster.
It was with no sense of schadenfreude that Prime Minister Osborne took the decision that was plain to him as soon as the High Commissioner had left.
Of course, he would consult with the King, his own predecessor as premier Lord Cameron of Whitney and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, but he was pretty certain that they would agree with his conclusion.
The answer must be 'No'. The Scots had chosen their destiny, and now they must live with it.
dailymail.co.uk
