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While England is awash with the cross of St George, Gordon Brown chose last week to announce the minting of a new coin to celebrate the Act of Union of 1707 that brought England and Scotland together. The Union flag flies conspicuously above 11 Downing Street, and the chancellor has made clear that he supports England in the football world cup, adding the dubious claim that two-thirds of Scots share that view. In fact, Brown knows that his enthusiasm for Sassenach success goes down badly with his supporters at home. He has compounded the offence by praising the goal scored by Paul Gascoygne that helped to end Scottish hopes in the Euro 1996 competition. The remark exhibited a degree of magnanimity rarely associated with the chancellor. Why is this risk-averse man, a politician to his fingertips, alienating his Scottish constituency? Because an English backlash against Scottish devolution could make it highly controversial for an MP from a Scottish seat to become prime minister, and English discontent may dominate Brown’s tenure in 10 Downing Street. The forces unleashed could terminate the union of Scotland and England. Amongst other consequences, Labour would find it difficult to win a majority in the English parliament that would then emerge. The problem arises because Labour’s devolution of power to Scotland, like its reform of the House of Lords, is half-baked. North of the border members of the Scottish parliament legislate on issues such as health, education and transport. But the members elected from Scotland to the Westminster parliament vote on such matters for England, even when the legislation does not affect their own constituents. That so-called Midlothian question (named because it was first raised by Tam Dalyell who represented that seat at Westminster) will not go away. Indeed it is more prominent now because with a smaller majority than before Labour may from time to time need the votes of Scottish members to carry bills that apply to England alone. John Reid, who appears daily on our television to hector English civil servants, judges and the public, is pretty unmistakably Scottish. His ranting serves to remind us that two of the great offices of state are now held by MPs from Scotland, but whereas the chancellor has responsibility for the United Kingdom economy, the Home Secretary’s has only limited powers north of the border. The full implications of having a prime minister from Scotland have probably not yet impinged on the public mind. But when Brown occupies that position he is likely often to be put on the back foot as he makes policies that do not affect his own voters in Kirkcaldy. It is painfully apparent that the greatest talents in Scottish politics would not be content with running their own country of five million people. They prefer to rule over the sixty million who make up the United Kingdom, thus enjoying the sway in international affairs that Britain as a whole carries. If today’s opinion polls were translated into a general election result there would be a high chance that Labour would have enough seats to form a United Kingdom government, but be second to the Conservatives in England. So a Scottish prime minister would wheel out Scottish MPs to vote down that English Tory majority. It is hard to see how the present “settlement” between England and Scotland can last. A Conservative peer, Lord Baker, has proposed legislation that would oblige Mr Speaker in the Commons to decide for each bill whether the Scots should have any say on it. At the last election the Tories pledged to disbar MPs with Scottish seats from voting on English matters, and that is one Michael Howard policy that David Cameron will not disown. Labour warns that such a change would create two classes of MP. So it would, and perhaps the party should have thought of that before embarking on its devolution course. Brown will be thinking that the prime minister could scarcely be chosen from the B class of parliamentarian. The balance of terror has shifted. The English used to be worried that Scotland would break away. The Tory Party was against it because its full title was Conservative and Unionist. Whilst Britain felt economically inferior to Germany and France the English worried that they would count for still less if they lost part of their population, and they feared that the Scots would make off with North Sea oil and gas. All that has changed. The Tories see the Midlothian question as a good stick with which to beat Brown. In the longer term their chances of holding office would be better if England bade farewell to Scotland. Britain today is growing faster than our large continental rivals, and the loss of a twelfth of our population in a region that drags down our national performance could not harm us. Our hydrocarbons are less of an issue now that they are being exhausted. Anyway, the English are tiring of Hibernian Anglophobia. Even though I am half Scottish by blood, I weary of the whingeing which has continued even though they now have their own parliament. The announcement made by the Scottish first minister Jack McConnell that he was supporting Trinidad and Tobago against England displays an undignified chippiness. It offends me despite the fact that football bores me. Perhaps McConnell needs reminding that his population lives as well as it does thanks to subsidies extorted from English taxpayers. That last point leads to the thought that separation might not be so bad for Scotland either. It is a pensioner economy existing on English handouts, and consequently its politicians implement centralising policies of a kind that have been abandoned in the former Soviet satellite states. When the chairman of Scottish Enterprise remarked last year that government spending in Ayrshire was at “Eastern bloc” levels it led to heated disputation between academics and columnists. But Scottish politicians scarcely troubled to debate it. The Scottish Executive and parliament have invariably opted for policies that increase the size of the state. They have abolished student tuition fees and granted free nursery places for three- and four-year olds and free personal care for the elderly. As Scottish public debt rises, it is doubtful whether the giveaways are sustainable. New Labour is an English phenomenon. The party’s Scottish core is unreformed. In the grip of old Socialist thinking, Scotland’s economic growth rate has been almost a percentage point lower than England’s over the last decade. In the Calton district of Glasgow male life expectancy is 53.9 years, much less than in Bangladesh. The majority of adults live on benefits and child obesity is higher than the American average. In contrast to Scotland, Slovakia has enjoyed a growth rate over recent years averaging more than 5 per cent. It has standardised corporate and individual tax at a flat rate of 19 percent. Ireland has done about as well, and it has chopped corporate tax to 12½ percent. Also as the Irish economy has freed itself from British influences, and in a new context for relations between London and Dublin created by the European Union, the Irish seem largely to have shed their anti-British hostility. Before the expansion of the European Union, we used to think that Scotland would be too small to go it alone. But with a population of 5 million, it is larger than Ireland, Luxemburg, Cyprus, Malta, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia, and about the same size as Denmark and Slovakia, all of which are member states. A current BBC television series celebrates the Scottish Enlightenment of the eighteenth century when the rationalist philosophy of David Hume was influential across Europe. There are hundreds of examples of brilliant Scots whose intellect and skills substantially assisted the progress of mankind. Yet today it seems that the thinking of Adam Smith is better respected and applied in Bratislava than in Edinburgh or his native Kirkcaldy. Perhaps Scotland could return to greatness if it severed the apron strings that bind it to England. Given its independence it would need to slash the size of its state and compete for foreign investment. Leadership would surely pass from the trade unionists and former public sector workers who fill the posts now, to those who could display the necessary dynamism. Socialism could not survive there any more than it has in Eastern Europe. A Tory Scotland would be on the cards again. Only such a dire prospect could lead the chancellor to declare his support for Beckham and the boys.
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