William Hague the future father of Scottish independence and England as part of NAFTA? - from Scotia 21/11/00
[another Scotia list member stated]I actually believe that it will be Willy Hague or his successor who will produce an independent Scotland. He will whip up the English Nationalism which exists, to such an extent that the Union will be destroyed from England. I see England as part of NAFTA, looking to America in just about everything, while Scotland is part of Europe.
I would go along with most of that up until the NAFTA part. I just can't see that happening as the masterplan appears to be for NAFTA to stretch from Nome, Alaska to Tierra del Fuego covering all points in between and I don't think English participation would be seriously considered in Washington. Raw Nationalism can usually only take something so far then the underlying economic practicalities are what usually guides things eventually. After the cataclysmic upheavals of the WWI era the IFS/RoI settled for 26 counties as the UK was its major trading partner in the final analysis and biting the hand that feeds you is not a good move. The GFA is driven by the success of the 26 county state economically in recent years and the demographic shift within NI. The last thing the Dublin elite wants in the forseeable future is a 32 county state with all the NI paramiltary people from both sides on board as potential discontented future citizens even if they cannot say it straight out publically and the last thing London wants is bombs going off again in London periodically so the Dublin and London elites have removed the ideological underpinning of the conflict on both sides and forced a compromise in NI to keep it in a holding pattern while both the UK and RoI get on with the business of merrilly making money economically and keeping their electorates happy and voting for the party in power.
The UK has benefited immensely from being within the EU and entry in 1975 was driven by economic pain experienced due to the attempt to maintain a global based economy aligned towards the commonwealth rather than the European market that was right on the doorstep so to speak. The business community and even the TUC realise that but the political and cultural elite are still emotionally globalist and Atlantic in their outlook rather than European so they cannot stomach the political price tag that goes with the economic benefit. Maybe the UK could wind up like Norway. In economically but out to a large extent politically. I can't see anything as drastic as a complete withdrawal taking place as the City of London financial markets are just too influential within the Westminster political process for something that extreme and economically damaging to happen. I think Hague and co will eventually regain power maybe not next time but the time after. They will answer the WLQ by removing the voting rights of Scottish MPs on England + Wales affairs and will scrap the Barnett formula and force the Scottish parliament to raise its own finances through taxation revenues raised only in Scotland and they will not join the Euro unless or until there is a strong economic imperative for doing so if Blair has wimped out of strongly making the case for entry and taking the plunge in the interim.
What is the key for Scotland moving to independence? IMO it will happen once a significant portion of the business community in Scotland finally embraces the idea of independence in Europe when it sees London as a distant and increasingly irrelevant hindrance to getting the job done vis-a-vis the EU due to Westminster's inherent Euroscepticism. The traditional business view of Westminster has been that it is a bulwark against the schemie Bolshevism of people like Tommy Sheridan. Now that Scotland has self-government business people have a vested interest in making the process work well for them rather than simply trying to stop it from ever taking place as was the case pre-1997. The current "settlement" is a case of wanting to have the cake by having a Parliament and eating it too by not raising taxation for its expenditures in Scotland alone through funding from a Westminster block grant. This suits both London and Clydeside Labour down to the ground which is why it won't survive a Hague or Portillo government in its current form. In a Full Fiscal Freedom environment Scotland once the Barnett formula has been scrapped, where day to day pragmatic practicality will have replaced pie in the sky fantasy as the mainstay of Scottish political debate, independence in Europe is very likely to happen IMO once the perception of needing a Westminster subsidy to survive has been eradicated amongst the electorate and people in Scotland stop trying to blame England for anything and everything that goes wrong and decide instead to take full responsibility for Scotland's internal affairs.